Posted on 02/24/2008 10:14:49 AM PST by fight_truth_decay
Calling Washington, D.C., "corporate-occupied territory," consumer advocate Ralph Nader launched his fifth campaign for the presidency Sunday.
"I'm running for president," said Nader in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." Nader downplayed the impact he might have on the ultimate outcome of the race, saying "if Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Actually, if you live in a Republican safe state, it makes sense. If Ralphie can get 5% of the vote, he is eligible for public funding. He can be the Republican's Ross Perot for years!
FINALLY.
There is a candidate for all the FReepers that are so PURE conservative, that they can't/won't ever vote for mcpain.
Better than sitting at home and navel gazing, go on out and withhold your vote from mcpain, let's hear it for the Nadar.
Corvair
Corvair
Corvair.
Run Ralph Run. The best news I have heard all day.
Then you have the Green-Rainbow Party.. You don't have to be registered Green-Rainbow to take a Green-Rainbow ballot. (Every Massachusetts voter who is registered as Unenrolled (also known as “independent”) can vote in the Green-Rainbow Party presidential primary instead of the Democratic or Republican party primaries."
Green Party Presidential Primaries February 6th, 2008: California: with 96% of the precincts reporting (but many uncounted absentee and provisional ballots), the results are: Ralph Nader 16,835; Cynthia McKinney 7,124; Elaine Brown 1,259; Kat Swift 843; Kent Mesplay 564; Jesse Johnson 506; Jared Ball 444.--Cynthia McKinney vs. Nader comments by Greens for presidential nominee.
"Occasionally, a third party effort such as Ross Perot’s in 1992 will tempt the politically alienated small government constituency. But the result of all third party efforts is to undermine the major party closest to it ideologically, often delivering victory to the greater threat from its own point of view. Thus, Ralph Nader’s quixotic campaigns only had the effect of helping George W. Bush—certainly a greater danger from Nader’s perspective on the issues than either Al Gore or John Kerry...Theoretically, a third party could supplant one of the major parties, as the Republicans did with the Whigs. While this sort of thing happens fairly often in other countries such as Canada, it has only happened in the U.S. when one party found itself incapable of dealing with an issue of overriding importance, such as slavery, which is what doomed the Whigs.."-- cato-unbound, by Bruce Bartlett Reaction Essay May 2nd, 2006
What party is he running in??? I’ll have to check him out for the first time...Maybe he’s less liberal than McCain...
Gee, isn’t he twice as old as McCain?!
“I may be very wrong, but I doubt that Ralph Nader draws any more than one-tenth of one percent of the vote.”
It doesn’t even take that much:
Election 2000 results for Florida:
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/2000.txt
VOTES:
BUSH - Votes = 2,912,790 -— Percent = 48.8%
GORE - Votes = 2,912,253 -— Percent = 48.8%
NADER - Votes = 97,488 -— Percent = 1.6%
Total vote cast: 5,922,531
Florida electoral votes - 25
Bush won the national election with 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266.
Bush won Florida by 537 votes, less than one ten thousandth (.0001%) of the total votes cast in the state.
If just 269 Bush voters had voted for Gore or if 538 Nader votes had gone to Gore he would have won Florida’s 25 electoral votes which would have given him the presidency.
In a country of 300,000,000 just 538 voters going for Nader instead of Gore gave Bush the presidency! - AMAZING!
In 2004 the difference of only about 120,000 votes in Ohio gave the election to Bush instead of Kerry.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/OH/
Makes life more interesting....
What I did learn in reading today, knowing Obama has been playing to younger voters, leads me to believe the youth only need to understand:
"those who must pay for the promised Social Security and Medicare benefits, the youth, are the most politically alienated group in society. Very few of them bother to vote or participate substantively in the political process. This allows politicians to easily ignore them and concentrate instead on the elderly, the age group most likely to vote and the one that is most politically engaged. So until the youth become politically activated and motivated to work for change, it is hard to see where meaningful support for political reform will come from, thus leaving us on the path of least resistance, which is to raise taxes gradually to pay for higher spending programmed in current law.
So Obama covers this issue by implementation of a system that gives college students annual $4,000 tuition credits in exchange for community service work. As one college student replied: " "I really liked that, for us to go out and earn it with community service," said A&M-Corpus Christi student Joe Ruiz, who occasionally coaches youth T-ball and who held up a sign at the rally that read "TAMU-CC 4 Obama." "I was a borderline supporter before -- he swayed me..."(Obama) came up to me, like a friend," Morales said. "He asked me about my major and minor. I was awestruck"..
Barack Obama urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign legislation extending state financial aid to illegal immigrant college students. That reply from a college student was: " was considering voting for Obama, but not any more! If someone is an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, then why should taxpayers foot their college bill?
Another problem is that we all expect to join the ranks of the elderly eventually and thus become the beneficiaries of the government’s largess. Thus young people in France recently revolted against changes in labor law designed to make it easier for young people to get jobs. They preferred the current system, where jobs are very hard to get but almost impossible to lose if you have one. Therefore, one cannot assume that the logical reaction of young people to the unfairness of the current fiscal system will be to overthrow it. They may become even more determined to make sure that they get theirs, too.
I would welcome a serious debate among libertarians and small government-types on a realistic political strategy for achieving their goals. Simply damning the existing system and withdrawing from it is just a prescription for accelerating the trend toward bigger government.--cato institute
Nader: .." law school tuition was unnecessarily high, especially at universities with endowments the size of Harvard's. "Why are students paying full tuition," he asked, when "the [Harvard] law school endowment alone is over a billion dollars?" This, he noted, was larger than other top law schools' endowments combined. In addition, he said, the law school was "constantly tapping into us as alumni…nonstop"..."If not providing some relief to students, he wondered, "what is all this money for? Building more buildings and endowing more chairs?" He went on to suggest that recent moves by Harvard College to make tuition more affordable for middle class students ought to be emulated by the university's graduate schools."--Nader Criticizes Corporate Influence at Law Schools
Nader said as president " he (2004) would work to eliminate college tuition..."Like the public education systems in Australia and New Zealand that charge marginal fees for college, American public universities should not charge students tuition"..
Obama could lose the some young voters on this if it is highlighted by Nader.
Most of the leftists are still POd at him over the 2000 election.
With McCain as the GOP candidate and Obama/Clinton as the Dem’s, Nader could be the most conservative person running.
Obama opened the youth vote floodgates. He got them excited over change and hope. So Obama can be thanked for addressing the youth-whether educated voter or not. He still covers up they will pay for the elderly in more taxes but as I said before he offers some financial/volunteer incentives. If Nader, on the other hand, touts free public university education, and is going after Harvard Law and other law schools in corporate spending on new buildings, the costs to alumi for fancy offices and new chairs etc, instead of affordable tuition..then he can capture part of the college audience and their parents.
The Green movement is highlighted by the Clinton camp, which has been part of the platform of Nader's for years. Green has already started when you see Green Stocks with good returns being added to a portfolio. You have wind farms going up in N.H. and one being discussed in Maine. With tax creditsunder a bill offered for new wood clean burning stoves, already available for insulation type products in homes; then on these factors, Nader was just ahead of his time. Helped along with the high costs of oil, gas, electricity.
McCain is all about the war in regard to the voters. Votes from overseas (not military) voted hands down for Obama.
People do want change and that is a given..but the RIGHT kind of change. Right off, Obama calling Nader a "stubborn egomaniac" made me laugh. Is this the first name calling of Nader by a presidential hopeful upon announcing his run again?
What will the mainstream media do? Most have picked their candidates. I don't think anyone should sell him short this time around..he's about to take a bigger bite out of the pantlegs of all the candidates.
I've been saying all along do not underestimate the clintoon machine.
This is not over by a long shot. There's a long way to go yet.
shillary will get the nomination. I'll bet it's a done deal.
Again I say do not underestimate the 'toons.
I think I will send a few bucks to Nader, just for fun. ;>)
He makes Obama look like Reagan...
On CNN’s “Late Edition” today: Mr. Huckabee: Well, I think it always would probably pull votes away from the Democrats, not the Republicans. So naturally Republicans would welcome his entry into the race and hope that maybe a few more will join in.z
CNN’s John King: As you know, there has been chatter from time to time about the prospect of a third party candidacy from the right. Have you picked that up at all in your travels? That if John McCain is the Republican nominee, perhaps there would be a significant third party challenge from the right?
Mr. Huckabee: I don’t think so. I mean, a couple of times it will get mentioned. But people will say, would you ever consider it? And my answer is emphatically no. I think it is a suicide mission, third party candidates are not going to win the election. At best they are going to take away from one of the major parties.
Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska was asked today on CNN about Mr. Nader’s nascent candidacy and about Mr. McCain’s run.
Mr. King: Ralph Nader dropped his toe into the race today, saying he is going to run again. What is the impact of that? And is Chuck Hagel out of the mix here? Have you talked to Mayor Bloomberg lately?
Mr. Hagel: Chuck Hagel is out of the mix. I’m going to continue to focus on my job in the Senate, and do what I can do to influence the direction of our country over the next year.
As to Nader, I think it’s one of those years that is very unpredictable, and I think there will be many twists and turns with a very unpredictable current running right now. Mr. King: You say Chuck Hagel is out of the mix. You are still the Republican senator from Nebraska, a fellow Vietnam veteran. John McCain is likely to be your party’s nominee.
Any question — will you support John McCain?
Mr. Hagel: Well, I’ve not been involved in the primary and I am still not involved in any of that. At the appropriate time, then I’ll have something to say about it.
Mr. King: Are you saying you might not support the Republican Party’s nominee?
Mr. Hagel: I said at the appropriate time, I’ll have something to say about it.
"Nader's participation offers him the chance to air to a wider audience his view on corporate power and what he sees as the failure of traditional Washington politics dominated by lobbyists. "You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalised and disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."
Does Huck sound sweet on Nader?.
What party is he running in???
Nader received 2.7 percent of the vote for the Green Party (won 65 elections this year) in the 2000 presidential election, but ran as an independent in 2004.
Nader website: http://www.naderexplore08.org.
Ralph Nader Launches Presidential Exploratory Committee to Mull ’08 Run
The same day John Edwards exited the race, Nader launched a presidential exploratory committee to decide whether to run as an independent candidate.
Nader talks about his potential run and gives his assessment of the remaining candidates in the presidential field-— http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/31/ralph_nader_launches_presidential_exploratory_committee
Ok, you’ve convinced me to save my money for now. ;>)
Of course, I don’t respect for anything that Huckabee or Hagel might have to say.
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