Is Sanders 2016 Becoming Nader 2000?

[onehandle]

Bernie Sanders, for all his talk of revolution, never wanted to be Ralph Nader. He has a long history of keeping the Democratic Party at arm’s length, but he also has a long history of rejecting spoiler bids. Since 1992, he has always endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, snubbing Nader’s four left-wing third-party campaigns. He became a Democrat to run for president instead of keeping his “(I)” and following in Nader’s footsteps. He has pledged to support Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination and has ripped Donald Trump at every opportunity.

But even if Sanders isn’t deliberately trying to replicate the electoral trauma inflicted by Nader in 2000—when he probably cost Al Gore the presidency—Bernie’s lingering presence in the Democratic primary threatens to produce a similar result in November: delegitimizing the eventual Democratic nominee in the eyes of the left and sending many critics, if not to Trump, then to the Green Party’s Jill Stein or the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson.

In the first poll to assess the impact of third-party candidates, Public Policy Polling found last week that the inclusion of Stein and Johnson shaves 2 percentage points off Clinton’s lead over Trump. Conversely, the minor party duo loses a combined 2 points when Sanders is tested as the Democratic nominee, indicating that Sanders’ voters account for Clinton’s reduced standing.

A couple points, a couple million voters, is no big deal to Clinton if she’s trouncing Trump. But if he makes it a race, Democrats may find their political post-traumatic stress disorder from 2000 flaring up.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/is-sanders-2016-becoming-nader-2000-213893

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Well that does appear to be the goal of some campers.

[sheshe2]

2. KnR

[NCTraveler]

3. Kick. Nader taught us all something very important.

The both parties are the same crowd consists of two things. Idiots and idiots.

[mmonk]

4. You can't have it both ways.

[William769]

5. kick & recommended.

[baldguy]

6. K&R

And Fuck Ralph Nader. Just sayin'

[woolldog]

7. K&R!

[Gothmog]

8. Sanders and Nader have a great deal in common-tweedle dee and tweedle dum

Sanders and the traitor Nader share a love of stating that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties and have even used the same sad terminology. Sanders first used the same terminology of stating that there are no differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican party when he ran as a spoiler for governor. http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html?p1=Article_Trending_Most_Viewed

Hillary Clinton is not the first progressive Democratic woman to be challenged by Bernie Sanders. He ran against me in 1986 when I was running for my second term as governor of Vermont. At that time he had little affinity for the Democratic Party. When advised that his third-party candidacy might result in a Republican victory, he saw no difference between Democrats and Republicans, saying: “It is absolutely fair to say you are dealing with Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”[/div
After Sanders used this termination, Nader joined in first http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jun/30/ralph-nader/nader-almost-said-gore-bush-but-not-quite/

Again and again throughout the campaign, Nader implied that he thought Bush and Gore equally objectionable. "It doesn't matter who is in the White House, Gore or Bush, for the vast majority of government departments and agencies," Nader said in a news conference in September 2000.

"The only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door," he told supporters in California a month later.

"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote," Nader said in Philadelphia four days before the election, repeating a favorite refrain of his. "Both parties are selling our government to big business paymasters. ...That's a pretty serious similarity."

Nader also failed to challenge Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week when Donaldson said, "You don't think it matters. You've said it doesn't matter to you who is the president of the United States, Bush or Gore."

Nader replied, "Because it's the permanent corporate government that's running the show here ... you can see they're morphing more and more on more and more issues into one corporate party."

Sanders needs to back down from this crap if he wants to speak at the national convention

[jfern]

9. No. However, Hillary is becoming Richard Nixon with her lies, enemies list, and hawkishness.

[LWolf]

10. No.

And, of course, Nader was not the problem in 2000. Election fraud, Harris, the Supreme Court...those were big problems in 2000. Not that election fraud seems to be a problem for Democrats 16 years later.

Sanders 2016 is giving a voice to all of us the neo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party threw under the bus on it's march to power; it's too bad the Clinton campaign has not been successful trying to bully us into silent compliance, regardless of how ugly and how ridiculous, and ridiculously false, and constant, the attacks are.