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<blockquote>Our membership did rise, but Mr. Nader ignores the harmful consequences of the Reagan-Watt tenure. [[Logging#Logging and the environment|Logging]] in national forests doubled. [[Acid rain]] fell unchecked. Cities were choked with [[smog]]. Oil drilling, mining and grazing increased on public lands. A Bush administration promises more drilling and logging, and less oversight of [[Pollution|polluters]]. It would be little solace if our membership grew while our health suffered and our natural resources were plundered.<ref>Pope, Carl (November 1, 2000) [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E0DD1F30F930A35752C1A9669C8B63&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss "Nader's Green Logic (Letter to the Editor)."] New York Times.</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>Our membership did rise, but Mr. Nader ignores the harmful consequences of the Reagan-Watt tenure. [[Logging#Logging and the environment|Logging]] in national forests doubled. [[Acid rain]] fell unchecked. Cities were choked with [[smog]]. Oil drilling, mining and grazing increased on public lands. A Bush administration promises more drilling and logging, and less oversight of [[Pollution|polluters]]. It would be little solace if our membership grew while our health suffered and our natural resources were plundered.<ref>Pope, Carl (November 1, 2000) [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E0DD1F30F930A35752C1A9669C8B63&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss "Nader's Green Logic (Letter to the Editor)."] New York Times.</ref></blockquote>


On 26 October 2000, [[Eric Alterman]] wrote in ''The Nation,'' "Nader has been campaigning aggressively in Florida, Minnesota, [[Michigan]], [[Oregon]], [[Washington (U.S. state)|Washington]] and [[Wisconsin]]. If Gore loses even a few of those states, then Hello, President Bush. And if Bush does win, then Goodbye to so much of what Nader and his followers profess to cherish."<ref>Alterman, Eric (October 26, 2000 ) [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20001113/alterman Note One Vote!] ''The Nation.''</ref> After the election, Alterman said Nader was partially to blame for the election of [[George W. Bush]] because of [[Ralph Nader#Accusations of vote-splitting|vote splitting]].<ref>{{cite web
On 26 October 2000, [[Eric Alterman]] wrote in ''The Nation,'' "Nader has been campaigning aggressively in Florida, Minnesota, [[Michigan]], [[Oregon]], [[Washington (U.S. state)|Washington]] and [[Wisconsin]]. If Gore loses even a few of those states, then Hello, President Bush. And if Bush does win, then Goodbye to so much of what Nader and his followers profess to cherish."<ref>Alterman, Eric (October 26, 2000 ) [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20001113/alterman Note One Vote!] ''The Nation.''</ref> After the election, Alterman said -- <blockquote> Nader preferred to go down in history as the spoiler who gave us Bush. Iraq. Tax cuts for the wealthy. Destruction of the environment. Trashing of science. Corporate crime unpunished. That's Nader's real legacy, his megalomaniacal sanctimony notwithstanding.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://mediamatters.org/altercation/200702080007#3
|url=http://mediamatters.org/altercation/200702080007#3
|title=Dancing days are here again
|title=Dancing days are here again
|author=Eric Alterman
|author=Eric Alterman
|date=February 8, 2006
|date=February 8, 2006
|accessdate=2007-02-26}}</ref>
|accessdate=2007-02-26}}</ref></blockquote>


==The "spoiler" controversy after the election==
==The "spoiler" controversy after the election==

Revision as of 18:59, 2 October 2011

Ralph Nader speaks out against the presidential debates at Washington University in St. Louis from which he was excluded on Oct 17, 2000.

Ralph Nader ran in the 2000 United States presidential election as the nominee of the Green Party. He was also nominated by the Vermont Progressive Party[1] and the United Citizens Party of South Carolina.[2] It was Nader's second presidential bid as the Green nominee, and his third overall, as he ran a write-in campaign in 1992 and a passive campaign on the Green ballot line in 1996.

Nader's vice presidential running mate was Winona LaDuke, an environmental activist and member of the Ojibwe tribe of Minnesota.

Nader appeared on the ballot in 44 states, up from 22 in 1996 He received 2,882,995, or 2.74 percent of the popular vote, missing the 5 percent needed to qualify the Green Party for federally distributed public funding in the next election, yet qualifying the Greens for ballot status in many new states.[3]

Some people claim that Nader acted as a third-party spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.[4][5][6][7][8][9]

Campaign issues

Nader campaigned against the pervasiveness of corporate power and spoke on the need for campaign finance reform, problems with the so-called "two party" system, voter fraud, environmental justice, universal healthcare, affordable housing, free education, including college, workers' rights and increasing the minimum wage to a living wage, the "three-strikes" rule and exoneration for prisoners for drug-related non-violent crimes, legalization of commercial hemp and a shift in tax policies to place the burden more heavily on corporations than on the middle and lower classes. He opposed pollution credits and giveaways of publicly owned assets. The campaign staged a series of large political super rallies which each drew over 10,000 paying attendees (12,000 in Boston [10] and Minneapolis [11]).

Campaign developments

The Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) organized the national nominating convention that took place in Denver, Colorado, in June, 2000, at which Greens nominated Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be their parties` candidates for President and Vice President.[12][13] On July 9, the Vermont Progressive Party nominated Nader, giving him ballot access in the state.[14] On August 12, the United Citizens Party of South Carolina chose Ralph Nader as its presidential nominee, giving him a ballot line in the state.


Nader's supporters protest his exclusion from the debates

In October 2000, at the largest Super Rally [15] of his campaign, in New York City's Madison Square Garden, 15,000 people paid $20 each

to hear Nader say that Al Gore and George W. Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum -they look and act the same, so it doesn't matter which you get." Nader and his supporters believed that the Democratic Party had drifted too far to the right. Throughout the campaign, Nader noted he had no worries about taking votes from Al Gore; he said, "Isn't that what candidates try to do to one another--take votes?"[16] He insisted that any failure to defeat Bush would be Gore's responsibility: "Al Gore thinks we're supposed to be helping him get elected. I've got news for Al Gore: If he can't beat the bumbling Texas governor with that terrible record, he ought to go back to Tennessee."[17] The campaign also had some prominent union help. The California Nurses Association and the United Electrical Workers endorsed his candidacy and campaigned for him.[18]

Nader received 97,421 votes in Florida, where Bush had defeated Gore by 537 votes amidst charges that Republicans had stolen the election. The highly contested outcome prompted some Gore supporters to accuse Nader of tilting the election in Bush's favor, a charge denied by Nader and his supporters.[19][20][21][22][23]

Because Nader had been denied access to the ballot in some states, the Nader 2000 campaign launched an effort to challenge the inclusion criteria for the presidential debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The effort, however, failed.


The debate on the "spoiler" controversy prior to the election

As pre-election polls showed the race to be close, a group of activists who had formerly worked for Nader calling themselves "Nader's Raiders for Gore" took out advertisements in newspapers urging their former mentor to end his campaign. "It is now clear that you might well give the White House to Bush," the group wrote in an open letter to Nader dated 21 October 2000. "As a result, you would set back significantly the social progress to which you have devoted your entire, astonishing career."[24]

When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for "his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash," and "the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician," and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore's environmental record and calling Nader's strategy "irresponsible."[25] He wrote:

You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge... Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless.[26]

Pope also protested Nader's suggestion that a "bumbling Texas governor would galvanize the environmental community as never before," and his statement that "The Sierra Club doubled its membership under James G. Watt."[27] Wrote Pope in a letter to the New York Times dated 1 November 2000:

Our membership did rise, but Mr. Nader ignores the harmful consequences of the Reagan-Watt tenure. Logging in national forests doubled. Acid rain fell unchecked. Cities were choked with smog. Oil drilling, mining and grazing increased on public lands. A Bush administration promises more drilling and logging, and less oversight of polluters. It would be little solace if our membership grew while our health suffered and our natural resources were plundered.[28]

On 26 October 2000, Eric Alterman wrote in The Nation, "Nader has been campaigning aggressively in Florida, Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. If Gore loses even a few of those states, then Hello, President Bush. And if Bush does win, then Goodbye to so much of what Nader and his followers profess to cherish."[29] After the election, Alterman said --

Nader preferred to go down in history as the spoiler who gave us Bush. Iraq. Tax cuts for the wealthy. Destruction of the environment. Trashing of science. Corporate crime unpunished. That's Nader's real legacy, his megalomaniacal sanctimony notwithstanding.[30]

The "spoiler" controversy after the election

In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book Crashing the Party and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all."[31] (which would net a 13%, 12,665 votes, advantage for Gore over Bush.) When asked about claims of being a spoiler, Nader typically points to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that halted a Florida recount, Gore's loss in his home state of Tennessee, and the "quarter million Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida."[32][33]

A study in 2002 by the Progressive Review found no correlation in pre-election polling numbers for Nader when compared to those for Gore. In other words, most of the changes in pre-election polling reflect movement between Bush and Gore rather than Gore and Nader, and they conclude from this that Nader was not responsible for Gore's loss.[34]

Harry G. Levine, in his essay Ralph Nader as Mad Bomber states that Tarek Milleron, Ralph Nader's nephew and advisor, when asked why Nader wouldn't agree to avoid swing states where his chances of getting votes were less, answered, "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."[35]

Syndicated columnist Marianne Means said of Nader's 2000 candidacy,

His candidacy was based on the self-serving argument that it would make no difference whether Gore or George W. Bush were elected. This was insane. Nobody, for instance, can imagine Gore picking as the nation's chief law enforcement officer a man of Ashcroft's anti-civil rights, antitrust, anti-abortion and anti-gay record. Or picking Bush's first choice to head the Labor Department, Linda Chavez, who opposes the minimum wage and affirmative action.[36]

Jonathan Chait of the American Prospect said this of Nader's 2000 campaign--

So it particularly damning that Nader fails to clear even this low threshold (Honesty). His public appearances during the campaign, far from brutally honest, were larded with dissembling, prevarication and demagoguery, empty catchphrases and scripted one-liners. Perhaps you think this was an unavoidable response to the constraints of campaign sound-bite journalism. But when given more than 300 pages to explain his case in depth, Nader merely repeats his tired aphorisms.[37]

An analysis conducted by Harvard Professor B.C. Burden in 2005 showed Nader did "play a pivotal role in determining who would become president following the 2000 election", but that:

"Contrary to Democrats’ complaints, Nader was not intentionally trying to throw the election. A spoiler strategy would have caused him to focus disproportionately on the most competitive states and markets with the hopes of being a key player in the outcome. There is no evidence that his appearances responded to closeness. He did, apparently, pursue voter support, however, in a quest to receive 5% of the popular vote."[38]

However, Chait notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for.

There was the debate within the Nader campaign over where to travel in the waning days of the campaign. Some Nader advisers urged him to spend his time in uncontested states such as New York and California. These states – where liberals and leftists could entertain the thought of voting Nader without fear of aiding Bush – offered the richest harvest of potential votes. But, Martin writes, Nader – who emerges from this account as the house radical of his own campaign – insisted on spending the final days of the campaign on a whirlwind tour of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In other words, he chose to go where the votes were scarcest, jeopardizing his own chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, which he needed to gain federal funds in 2004.[39]

In a Harvard University study titled "Ralph Nader's Campaign Strategy in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election" by Barry C. Burden, findings indicate that "[Relph] Nader's appearances were driven primarily by opportunities for attracting a large number of voters, suggesting that earning 5% was indeed a central campaign goal," as opposed to the third party voting or "spoiler" theories put forth by others, including the Democratic Party.[40]

Another analysis and study by Neal Allen and Brian J. Brox titled "The Roots of Third Party Voting" draw similar conclusions, comparing Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign to that of third parties throughout U.S. history.[41]

Endorsements

Unions

Political figures

Celebrities

Newspapers

Political parties (organizations)

Political publications

Academics

Activists

Result

Best states

In order for the Green Party to qualify for federal funds in the next election, Ralph Nader would have needed 5% of the total popular vote. Nader did receive 5% or more of the vote in the following states/districts[85]:

Campaign Staff

  • Theresa Amato - Campaign manager [86]
  • Jim Davis - Campus coordinator for the campaign [87]
  • Howie Hawkins - Field Coordinator for Upstate New York

References

  1. ^ (2000-08-01) "Vermont Progressives Nominate Nader", Ballot Access News.
  2. ^ (2000-08-01) United Citizens Party Picks Nader, Ballot Access News.
  3. ^ Levine, Harry G. (May 2004). Village-Voice._"How the Great Crusader used the Green Party...Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber".. Retrieved 8-28-2009.
  4. ^ Burden, B. C. (September 2005). "Ralph Nader's Campaign Strategy" (PDF). American Politics Research: 673–699.
  5. ^ "Michael Moore message". Michaelmoore.com. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
  6. ^ Greenhouse, Steven (2004-07-28). "The Constituencies: Liberals; From Chicago '68 to Boston, The Left Comes Full Circle". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
  7. ^ Convictions Intact, Nader Soldiers On – New York Times[dead link]
  8. ^ Varadarajan, Tunku (2008-05-31). "Interview: Ralph Nader". Wall Street Journal.
  9. ^ "Nader on the Record". Grist. 2008-03-19.
  10. ^ Boston Globe (Oct. 2, 2000) republished on CommomDreams.org. Nader 'Super Rally' Draws 12,000 To Boston's FleetCenter
  11. ^ Green Party
  12. ^ Common Dreams Progressive Newswire (July 11, 2001). Green Meeting Will Establish Greens as a National Party. Retrieved 8-28-2009.
  13. ^ Nelson, Susan. Synthesis/Regeneration 26 (Fall 2001). The G/GPUSA Congress and the ASGP Conference: Authentic Grassroots Democracy vs. Packaged Public Relations. Retrieved 8-28-2009.
  14. ^ Ballot Access News (Aug. 1, 2000). VERMONT PROGRESSIVES NOMINATE NADER
  15. ^ Nader 'Super Rally' Draws 12,000 To Boston's FleetCenter
  16. ^ Ralph Nader. Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002.
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  18. ^ Socialist Worker."Nader, the Greens and 2008".
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  21. ^ NOW with Bill Moyers. Politics & Economy. Election 2004.The Third Parties.
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