[Marxism] Nader to Bypass DillyDallying Greens?

["Tony Abdo" <gojack10@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

It seems that Nader correctly perceived the Green Party as being too mired
in self-censorship of its presidential effort to mount a serious campaign
against the two-party system.    His position was that the Green Party was
going to deliberately kill his ability to run for President by simply
delaying making a decision until it no longer would mean anything.

Unfortunately, Nader's primary purpose seems to be to just force Kerry to
posture further Leftward some, for the country.    He believed that the
national Green Party leadership did not even want to do that, and appears to
have been correct in his assessment.    This now puts the Green Party in the
awkward position of running a pitiful and meaningless campaign independent
of Nader, or to join in the Democratic Party chorus that Nader 's run is
going to throw the election to Bush.

Tony Abdo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Published on Saturday, February 14, 2004 by Knight-Ridder
Nader Expected to Launch New Bid for the White House
by Maria Recio
WASHINGTON - Oops, Ralph Nader's doing it again.

Almost exactly four years after he announced he would run for president, the
former Green Party candidate is poised to declare that he's running again
this year, this time as an independent.

Despite a vigorous effort on the part of the left to keep Nader from running
and despite his insistence that he's still mulling over his decision,
friends, associates and insiders say he's determined to run again.

"I think there's very little doubt," said Micah Sifry, the author of a book
on third-party politics and a longtime Nader watcher. "I think he's going to
run."

Nader has twice delayed saying whether he would be a candidate, but with the
anniversary of his Feb. 21, 2000, announcement coming up, insiders expect
the latest declaration next week.

Sifry is part of the campaign to stop Nader from running, which went into
high gear last month with an open letter to him in The Nation, a liberal
magazine that has been associated with him for 30 years. The letter, signed
by the editors, urged him not to run. Nader contributors from 2000, such as
Ben Cohen, a co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, also are organizing "No,
Ralph, No'' efforts.

At the heart of the anti-Nader effort is the determination to defeat
President Bush and the belief that Nader, blamed for tilting the close 2000
election to Bush by siphoning off votes from opponent Al Gore, especially in
Florida, could once again play the "spoiler" role.

"The stakes are too high," said Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The
Nation. "We feel Bush's defeat is critical."

"We have an extremist administration which misled the nation into war and is
undermining democracy," she said in an interview. Referring to Nader's
dismissal of his Republican and Democratic opponents in 2000, she said,
"It's no longer Bush and Bush Light."

Nader, a citizen activist who has always had a stubborn, contrarian streak,
is equally determined to exercise his right to run and to make issues such
as anti-corporate power and universal health care central campaign themes.

A spokeswoman for Nader's exploratory campaign, Linda Shade, said, "Nader is
in the final stages of making a decision."

Nader, in an interview Feb. 4 on National Public Radio, responded with
irritation to the effort to stop him: "It's a marvelous demonstration by
liberals, if you will, of censorship. Now mind you, running for political
office is every American's right. Running for political office means
free-speech exercise; it means exercising the right of petition, the right
of assembly. ... To say `Do not run' to anybody is to say, `Do not speak. Do
not petition. Do not assemble. Remain silent.' That's just unacceptable,
especially coming from people like the editors of The Nation."

Nader is polling volunteers from the 2000 campaign via e-mail asking whether
he should run, but his exploratory committee already is examining state
ballot-access requirements.

According to Richard Winger of the newsletter Ballot Access News, Nader
asked him about the difficulties of getting on ballots as an independent.
"It's not as hard as people think," said Winger, who estimates that hiring
firms to get the necessary 600,000 signatures nationwide would cost about
$1.8 million.

Nader backed out of running as a Green Party candidate in December, largely
because the party won't determine what kind of presidential campaign it will
run until its June convention in Milwaukee. "That would be too late," he
said last year.

The question now is whether Nader, who spent about $8 million on his
campaign in 2000, can raise the money and attract supporters to make a
difference in the election. So far, donors and activists from 2000 have been
scarce, with a proliferation of Web sites such as:
http://www.repentantnadervoter.com/ urging him not to run and high-profile
supporters such as Cohen and filmmaker Michael Moore working against a Nader
repeat.

Some Nader advocates had an epiphany after the 2000 election when the
outcome was decided by Florida. Bush won the state by 537 votes, defeating
Democratic nominee Gore. Democrats say Gore would have won with a small
fraction of Nader's voters, who gave Nader 97,488 votes in the state. Nader
also arguably cost Gore New Hampshire, where Bush won by 7,211 votes. Nader
received 22,198 votes in the Granite State.


Nader always has rejected the spoiler label. "It is not my job to elect my
opponents," he has said. And he has some die-hard supporters, even among
Greens. "There's an effort among a lot of Greens nationwide to get Nader to
run," said Jerry Kann, a New York-based Green Party member. "He's the best
spokesperson for our values."

© Copyright 2004 Knight-Ridder

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