Posted on 07/22/2007 12:57:11 PM PDT by neverdem
When the Democrats enlarged their tent to include leftist activists, Ralph Nader was left in the cold.
At a green party convention in Reading, Pa., on July 14, Ralph Nader provoked admirers and detractors alike when he declared that he is once again "considering" a run for the presidency.
This would be the 73-year-old activist's fourth third-party race. For a decade now and counting, Nader has presented himself as the outsider's outsider, as the reformer's conscience and as a sturdy crusader against a corrupt party system -- meaning, in effect, against Democrats, from whom he siphons votes (a fact amply noted by the Republican donors who boosted his Green Party campaigns in 2000 and 2004).
As Nader's advocates do not weary of pointing out, American third parties have often been the vehicles in which those excluded from the two-party system (such as the abolitionist Republicans of the mid-19th century and the Socialists of the early 20th) hitched a ride. The idea is that when the major parties duck the urgent and transforming issues of their time, outsiders will fuse their passion and ideals into a battering ram. They are likely to lose in the end, but they will be influential.
There's some truth to that argument, and especially to the idea that their self-sacrifice is both inevitable and, at times, somewhat effective. A rhythm of outsider assault followed by accommodation runs through American history. The moral declaimers aim to upend the table but eventually find seats there -- if not for themselves then for their ideas, as espoused by their better-behaved, more accommodating cousins. The Socialists and Progressives, for example, were rarely elected, but their ideas were critical to the New Deal. And many of Alabama Gov. George Wallace's anti-federal attitudes found their way into Ronald Reagan's programs.
What Nader...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Really, I think this country could really benefit from Nader/Sheehan third party run. :)
A run by moneybags Bloomberg could hurt the neoCOMs more.
The gift that keeps on giving :)
Nader/Sheehan; Now there are two nutcases in the news who haven’t discovered deodorant.
>>A run by moneybags Bloomberg could hurt the neoCOMs more.<<
That would be wild... You’d have the three front runners, Clinton, Guiliani and Bloomberg with essentially the same positions.
If there was ever a way for a conservative to win that would be it - a three way split on the other side.
>>Nader/Sheehan; Now there are two nutcases in the news who haven’t discovered deodorant.<<
Yeah but it gives a kind of guilty joy to watch them chewing on Pelosi etc for not being liberal enough.
run ralph, run
LOL!
Combined with a Bloomberg run, it could be a consummation devoutly to be wished. The GOP nominee might be competitive in California, even if his name isn't Giuliani.
I covered Nader in the 1970s. The press corps nicknamed him B. O. Plenty.
Yes—a winner! Bloomberg/Nader 2008.
Slogan?
Rich and Bitch.
Well that could also be Bloomberg/Sheehan
Or Hildebeast alone. Richbitch
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