Ralph Nader Is At It Again, Endorses Ron Paul

[UrbScotty]

This is deja-vu all over again. In 2000 when Nader ran for president he siphoned enough votes away from Al Gore that it made the difference between a resounding win for Gore and what resulted in the Supreme Court electing George Bush, Jr. And for all you that see Paul as the anti-war leader…I implore you to scratch the surface of who this man is. For those of you out there who think that a vote for Ron Paul is any more a vote for a Libertarian or freedoms…think again. If Al Gore had been elected in 2000 over Bush, there are thousands of dead victims from the wars that Bush initiated that would take issue with the decision to vote Nader.

This is not only reckless, it is careless and endangers all of our freedoms. A recent position taken by Nader is that Obama is just as bad as Bush so he is supporting Ron Paul...

...

This is truly unbelievable to me. As I said, there was a time in Nader’s run in 2000 where it was abundantly clear that he had zero chance of winning – yet, did he do the right thing and throw his support toward Al Gore? Clearly he did not. So by staying in the race he pulled those crucial votes away and literally secured the election of GW Bush, Jr. Ralph Nader can pat himself on his arrogant narcissistic ass for assuring the deaths of thousands of American military men and women; the crippling and disabled who made it home and the tens of thousands of men, women and children who died as a result of a completely contrived war in Iraq.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/ralph-nader-endorses-ron-paul

It's a damn shame what has become of Ralph Nader in recent years.

[beyurslf]

1. Can we collectively as a community of democrats agree that Nader can be ignored

and put into the trashcan irrelevance? Who cares what he thinks?

[TheWraith]

4. Unfortunately, some people don't agree.

Including some here on DU who think Nader is still the best thing since sliced bread, despite singlehandedly giving the White House to Bush.

[Kennah]

12. Nader did have 5 friends help him out

[TheWraith]

30. Without Nader, there would have been no court case.

Florida would not have been close enough to have a recount, and we'd have likely ended up with 8 years of President Gore instead of the Bush administration.

[fasttense]

44. You are blaming Nadar for what the Supremes and the bushes did????

Have you read the decisions in the case? The Supremes twist their logic and distort the rule of law so badly that any half thinking adult can see how partisan and illogical the judges are.

Blame the people who were suppose to, and did not, up hold the rule of law and the US constitution not a candidate who did NOT win.

I'm not a Nadar fan but he was NOT responsible for the continually corrupt judiciary and a criminal, unelected president.

[TheWraith]

46. This is incredibly simple: WITHOUT NADER, THERE WOULD BE NO COURT CASE.

Period. End of story. If there were no Nader 2000 campaign, eagerly pimping for George W. Bush, there would have been no Florida recount, and no court cases. Nobody who rushes out to defend Nader for being a Republican shill seems willing or able to understand that. Even a quarter of the votes Nader drew off in Florida would have clinched the state for Gore, and the election.

[demosincebirth]

17. They could have cared less as long as they got their point across...what ever their point was.

[Old and In the Way]

8. I don't think that's a good idea.

With Citizens United, there's going to be a lot of conservative money available to back a candidate positioned well to Obama's left. We can't let people forget the lesson of 2000.

[pnwmom]

23. Not as long as he can get a few percent of progressives to vote for him. n/t

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. Yawn.

Here's what happened. Clinton, with his globalist trade agreements, disenfranchised members of the left, who fell off and went to Nader. The Dem party went too far right, lost base.

Now, Obama has done the same with war and civil liberties. Obama claimed GPS devices should be placed on cars without warrant, and I for one cheered when conservative judges in SCOTUS shot it down.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/24/us-usa-police-gps-idUSTRE80M1E120120124
The high court ruling was a defeat for the Obama administration, which had argued that a warrant was not required to use global positioning system devices to monitor a vehicle on public streets.

Which is why the left is losing members from its libertarian south now. They don't have any right to this base: If they want to keep them, they have to stand up for the issues these people think are important. Bottom line is, if you go so far right on an issue Republican candidates have a more moderate position than you, don't be surprised when you lose members of your base to those Republican candidates.

[jaxx]

13. If Democrats are going libertarian that means they will vote for Ron Paul?

That is really strange. The base won't leave the Democratic party.

[napoleon_in_rags]

16. Democrats have always had civil libertarians in their base.

If they come down on the wrong side of history, like the Obama admin did during the GPS tracking debate, they stand to lose people for whom civil liberties are the highest priority. This is the same thing that happened with Dems losing base to Nader after coming down on the side of the disastrous trade policies Clinton advocated that left us with this massive trade deficit to China. Nader isn't to blame, Dems need some critical introspection when they see base falling off, not just blame.

[jaxx]

18. That sounds like the libertarians will throw the election to the repubs.

Is that the game? Show them who's boss?

[napoleon_in_rags]

19. The game is that if you piss on people's interests, they won't support you.

Its not about libertarians, its about anybody: If the Dems throw union rights into the wastebin more than repubs, unions will vote repub. If they throw gay rights away more than repubs, gays will vote repub. Policies have consequences.

[jaxx]

20. Doesn't sound like a winning game to me.

Sounds like revenge. And 4 years of republican escapades. No thanks, I had enough of them to last a lifetime. I'll vote for President Obama and be damned glad he's running. Elections have consequences too.

[napoleon_in_rags]

21. People are going to go for what they care about, but its usually a mix.

I care about civil liberties, but the policy that really does the most good for America is Obamacare. So I support Obama. But I think the right is good at listening to their fringes, perhaps they are too good at it. But we on the other hand I think dismiss our far left guys too easily. My opinion is we should be proud of the Kuciniches, the people at the far left. We shouldn't lose them by trying to seek a centrist position.

[Doctor_J]

28. You don't think those who voted for Nader in 2000 were traditionally Dems??

I think that's what you're saying, and I also think it's wrong.

They were also wrong to vote for nader with the election hanging in the balance.

[saras]

14. "so far right on an issue Republican candidates have a more moderate position than you..." !!!!!!

I'm an old fart. If they're farther to the right than Richard Nixon, they're right-wing extremists.

[LeftishBrit]

26. 'if you go so far right on an issue Republican candidates have a more moderate position than you'...

There is no leading Republican candidate for the presidency who is more moderate than even the most conservative Democrats. They are all right-wing monsters who would drag America back to the early 19th century (or in Santorum's case the early 13th century).

[Old and In the Way]

3. No big surprise to me.

It's personal with Ralph. Democrats didn't join his Pied Piper campaign in 2000 and he made himself the enabler of the Bush/Cheney years. He's been well founded by Republicans to run to the left of any Democrat and he gladly did that, telling us how there's no difference between the parties - blah, blah, blah. So he's finally come out in support of a fellow oddball and closet racist whose whole schtick is destroying the progressive governmental vision Ralph spent decades trying to create.

Turns out, there's not a dime's worth of difference between Ralph Nader and the Republican Party.

[libodem]

5. oh god

FUCK Nader!

[limpyhobbler]

6. Nader did not endorse Ron Paul

Did he?

He was responding to the question "is there an anti-war candidate in this race?".
And he answered that Ron Paul is an anti-war candidate.

Nader did not suggest voting for Ron Paul over Obama.
At least that's how it seemed to me. No news media is reporting such a thing either, that I can see.

[Old and In the Way]

9. He's been tootin' Ron's horn for awhile.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/ralph-naders-grand-alliance/

Ralph Nader’s Grand Alliance
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Progressives find hope—in Ron Paul.

By Michael Tracey | September 28, 2011

It’s no secret that Ralph Nader has held the Democratic Party establishment in low regard for decades now: the marginally more palatable alternative in an ugly duopoly, he claims, is still quite ugly. But lately Nader’s disdain has reached a new high. “It’s gotten so bad,” he tells me, “that you can actually say a Republican president—with a Democratic Senate—would produce less bad results than the present situation. That’s how bollixed stuff has gone.”

Not that he was ever particularly optimistic about the Obama administration, especially its potential to make headway on curtailing corporate welfare, now Nader’s signature policy objective. But in that, as with so many aspects of Obama’s presidency, the adjectives “disappointing” or “inadequate” don’t even begin to capture the depths of progressive disillusionment. Looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, one might assume that Nader has little to be cheerful about.

Yet he says there is one candidate who sticks out—who even gives him hope: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

That might sound counterintuitive. Nader, of course, is known as a stalwart of the independent left, having first gained notoriety for his 1960s campaign to impose greater regulatory requirements on automakers—a policy act that would seem to contravene the libertarian understanding of justified governmental power. So I had to ask: how could he profess hope in Ron Paul, who almost certainly would have opposed the very regulations on which Nader built his career?


They deserve each other.

[noiretextatique]

33. no, he did no endorse ron paul, nor did he say that democrats should vote for paul

it's the usual anti-nader hysteria.

[Lint Head]

7. I never thought Nader would ever endorse a racist.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. "Recent years" = 30

Completely useless.

[Webster Green]

11. That was no endorsement. It wasn't even an opinion.

All Ralph did was answer some questions, and made statements about Paul's positions on issues. He didn't even say that he agreed with them.

Ralph makes a lot of sense. He pisses dems off because he calls them on their shit. Obama is worse than the chimp in some areas. His clueless war on pot comes to mind. He also really pissed me off when he put BP in charge of our US Coast Guard after the gulf oil disaster. He's OK with drilling in Alaska. There is much to criticize.

Blaming Nader for Bush's murdering rampage is just sick. Whoever wrote that is full of shit.

Gore won Florida.

[saras]

15. Nothing like a few facts to ruin a good hatefest...

[TheWraith]

31. That dodge was old and worn out when Greenwald used it.

When you're out there promoting someone's supposed positives, why people should vote for them, and completely ignoring or covering up their many negatives, that's an endorsement.

When you try to cover it over with a thin veneer of "Well, I'm not ENDORSING anyone... I'm just STATING the FACTS!"... That's actually worse than an endorsement. That's being a propagandist and an astroturfer.

[Webster Green]

40. That isn't what I saw in the video.

You seem to be reading things into it that aren't there.

That was no endorsement. Sorry.

[frylock]

22. this wasn't an endorsement ffs

[the other one]

24. I love group-hate!

we.should do this on a regular basis.

[Scuba]

25. Proof that Nader is nuts, since Paul stands for the opposite of everything Nader built his career on

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. Going for the Americans Elect longshot - on the ticket with Paul?

Ron Paul's Fans Want Him to Make a Third-Party Run

Americans Elect, the wacky but well-funded effort to put an independent "unity ticket" on the ballot in all 50 states through a public online voting process, opened its virtual floor to nominations last week. And already, one candidate is running away with first place, with over 1,000 votes: Ron Paul.

Paul may still be a contender for the Republican nomination, but his avid fanbase, it seems, already has begun to clamor for him to run outside the framework of the two-party system.

Paul has repeatedly said he doesn't plan to do this, though he has left the door slightly ajar by declining to totally rule it out. (There is, in political-speak, a world of difference between "I have no intention of doing that" and "I promise never to do that," even though politicians' promises are hardly any more permanent than their current intentions.)
...
But it's early. The "drafting" process goes through early May. After that, there will be three rounds of voting to reduce the field to six candidates, each of whom must pick a running mate of the opposite party or ideological persuasion. The ticket will be chosen at an online convention in June.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/ron-pauls-fans-want-him-to-make-a-third-party-run/252732/

The money running Americans Elect want a Wall St. candidate, eg David Walker, so it will be interesting to see if Paul's internet fans can force him in anyway. And Nader now makes the ideal 'opposite ideological persuasion' VP for him.

[MakingANoise]

29. Nader is consistent

Look, as a die hard progressive, i understand the disdain many of you have for Nader, i still do not believe it was his fault Gore lost.
Bush stole the election, period.

Everything Nader said back in the late 90s has come true, both parties are owned by lobbyists and Wall Street and Super PACS, period.


Obama has dissappointed me many, many times over the last 3 years:

Patriot Act
NDAA
No Public Option
GITMO open
bush tax cuts


i could go on.

Nader is correct with his view of the Democratic Party, but what is confusing here is, the fact that Ron Paul would end most of the things Nader supports and stands for, as well as remove most if not all regulations that Nader helped put together.

So, i cannot understand this one, to me he's just being stubborn and I disagree with him completely on this.
I support Ron Paul's foreign policy and his legalization of POT, but that's about it.

And though I'm very disappointed in Obama, i will hold my nose this November and vote for him again, hoping that in his second term, he will not give a damn anymore about politics but just do what WE ALL hoped he would do and know that he CAN do.

Peace

[flamingdem]

32. That's disgusting

Tells you all you need to know about Nader.

[hifiguy]

34. Who cares what that irrelevant, pathetic little pissant thinks.

Thanks for eight years of Chimpoleon, asshole. Now do the world a favor and disappear up your own fundament.

[Webster Green]

45. I do.

I like Ralph. He always makes a lot of sense, but he points out faults of the democrats, so he is hated by idiots who think there is some huge difference between the dems and the pukes. There is not. The only difference is how quickly they get on their knees to serve their corporate masters.

Nader didn't steal the fucking 2000 election. The US Supreme W. Court stopped the vote counting and appointed the chimp. Later investigations showed that Gore actually won Florida.

Keep on telling the truth, Ralphie Boy!

[Bill USA]

35. Thanks, in part, to Nader we got 8 yrs of a non-elected President who is probably the worst

president (along with being illigitimate) that we have ever had.

[Webster Green]

41. Wrong.

Thank the US Supreme W. Court, not Nader.

[Odin2005]

36. Fuck both of those SOBs.

[TBF]

37. Agreed. nt

[DonCoquixote]

38. It would be one thing

if he endorsed someone like a Cynthia McKinney, or even a Roseanne Barr, someone who would NOT close the EPA and the Department of the Interior.

How the hell does nader endorse someone who promises to do those things?

But no, some people will still worship him.

[center rising]

39. Always hated Ralph for costing Gore the presidency

[Webster Green]

43. Gore won Florida.

He wasn't allowed to serve his rightful term as president, thanks to our corrupt Supreme Court.

Thast's what really happened.

[center rising]

47. If Nader got out, there would have been no question about the result!!

[Zoeisright]

42. FU, Nader