Nader standing

Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, February 26th, 2008 - 12 comments
Categories: International - Tags:

Last night Ralph Nader announced his candidacy for President of the United States on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Many Democrats see Nader as a ‘spoiler’ candidate and blame him for losing them the 2000 election, but in his announcement he came out swinging, attacking the two-party system and pointing out that “If the Democrats can’t landslide the election this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down.”

Good on him, I say.

12 comments on “Nader standing ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Ruth 1
    26 February 2008 at 11:38 am

    Like Owen Glenn, Nader is just another old rich white guy with more money than sense. He couldn’t be less appealing – at least to me.

  2. Benodic 2
    26 February 2008 at 11:50 am

    I think it’s healthy for democracy to have someone with a bit of profile challenging the Republicrat duopoly.

    He might be an old rich guy with more money than sense but good on him for having a go. And if he gives the Dems a good rev-up then that’s even better.

  3. DS 3
    26 February 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Nader is scum. The fact of the matter is that under a winner-takes-all electoral system like the US, only two parties can win. Nader (whose campaigns are incidentally bankrolled by Republicans, for obvious reasons) is merely encouraging people who would otherwise vote for a viable Democratic candidate to waste their vote in the name of ideological purity. The end result is that the Republicans laugh all the way to the polling booth, and everyone suffers.

    Anyone who thinks, after the Bush Years, that Al Gore would have been as bad as George W. Bush, or that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, has rocks in their head. Nader has never accepted responsibility for actively working to inflict Bush on the world, and his runs in 2004 (and now 2008) reflect that.

  4. Ruth 4
    26 February 2008 at 1:05 pm

    Just as an aside some top level corporate American business people were here last week, and they said the rumour going around is that if Hillary gets the nod she will make Bill vice-president! They seemed to take this seriously.

    As an Obamaholic I was appalled 😉 Agree with DS _ the Dems don’t need a rev-up, they need the rest of the mod to get out of Obama’s way.

  5. Ruth 5
    26 February 2008 at 1:06 pm

    That ‘mob’ of course.

  6. Phil 6
    26 February 2008 at 1:49 pm

    DS,

    An American former-colleague of mine (D) made a remarkably insightful comment to me a while back; “Democrats are on the inside exactly the same as what Republicans are on the outside”.

    If you really think American foreign policy will change to any great degree, then you are the one with the rocks.

  7. Pablo 7
    26 February 2008 at 1:50 pm

    “Just as an aside some top level corporate American business people were here last week, and they said the rumour going around is that if Hillary gets the nod she will make Bill vice-president! They seemed to take this seriously.”

    I believe Bill is prohibited from being VP as he is ineligible to take up the post of Pres should the incumbent kick the bucket or order the burglary of a hotel room.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#The_relationship_between_the_22nd_and_12th_amendments

  8. Ruth 8
    26 February 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Yeah – I thought it was illegal too. That was mentioned, and they disagreed it would be illegal. The rumour is pretty weird I must say. Can’t see it happening myself.

  9. Matthew Pilott 9
    26 February 2008 at 3:27 pm

    I understood it was legal – some of this is mentioned in that wiki article, but the VP has to be constitutionally eligible to be President. The President can’t be elected for more than two terms – but if Hillary had to stand down for whatever reason, Bill wouldn’t be elected as such.

    However I’ll leave that one to the Supreme Court!

  10. DS 10
    26 February 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Phil, the Democrats aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Leaving aside the fact that Congress is a collection of Bush-enabling cowards, many of them would be to the Right of NZ’s National Party. But if you think that an Al Gore administration would have invaded Iraq after September 11th or a John Kerry administration would have basically sat on its hands during Hurricane Katrina and gleefully watched New Orleans rot, then you’ve got another thing coming.

    Democrat vs Republican (both in 2000 and 2004) wasn’t Tweedledum vs Tweedledee, it was a mediocre Democrat up against the scum of the earth. If nothing else, Bush has proved that some “bad options” really are worse than others.

  11. Phil 11
    26 February 2008 at 4:08 pm

    I’m not interested in defending Bush on those topics, because I broadly agree with you. My concern is that the rest of the world is looking to the Democratic party to fundamentally change the nature of American international interest, and for all the rhetoric from Obama, it simply wont happen.

  12. DS 12
    26 February 2008 at 5:10 pm

    “My concern is that the rest of the world is looking to the Democratic party to fundamentally change the nature of American international interest, and for all the rhetoric from Obama, it simply wont happen.”

    Foreign policy-wise, it’ll be a return to the Clintonian 1990s, so in that respect the Bush legacy of militaristic unilateralism will go. The foreign policy elephant in the room is, of course the Iraq War, and the Democrats at some point will have to bite the bullet and get themselves out of there.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.