Some Horseshit Like That

Ralph, Ralph, Ralph...



Here's Matt Stoller's take on Nader's run over at Open Left:

Yes, he's running for President.

Nader created a good deal of the antipartisan organizational apparatus of the 1970s and 1980s. What he did in his career was remarkable, and yet, now on TV he's taking no responsibility for his lies during 2000. Watching him on TV, it's clear he hates the Democrats and just won't recognize that it's a different Democratic Party, one that is much more movement-based, than it is when he ran in 2000. Nader is part of the TV cult of personality model of politics, similar to Dennis Kucinich, and he sounds kind of pathetic.

Nader's not wrong on a lot of his charges, but he's also in his own increasingly irrelevant way part of the problem.

UPDATE: Perhaps some more pungency makes sense - I don't see Nader as particularly progressive, and I do see him as a pathologically dishonest diva. That shouldn't take away from his very real accomplishments, but his claims in 2000, that there were no differences between Al Gore and George Bush, were lies and he is appropriately held accountable for them. As for his ideological stripes, Nader was on the wrong side of the Schiavo controversy, and that suggests a basic lack of concern for how to treat human beings. Working with religious wackos to invade someone's privacy at their most vulnerable moment, and lying about the Democratic Party to put George Bush in charge and hewing to those lies are not ok in my book.

Here's my less eloquent take. And this from the way-back machine.

UPDATE: Here's a post from James Fallows, a protege of Nader's on his decision to run.

I have liked and admired Ralph Nader so much. I first worked for him when I was in my teens (and he was in his 30s). …

Nader was funny, warm, brilliant-seeming, and, yes, caring. He visited my wife in the hospital after our first child was born. For years after that, he never failed to ask about both of our kids (or my wife) whenever I talked with him. I say all this as an indication of why Ralph Nader has so many people who actually are loyal to him -- and who wish they didn't have to face the reality about the choices he has made over the last eight years.

That he stayed in the race in 2000 was tragedy. (See: Invasion of Iraq, 2003, and subsequent occupation.) That he came back in 2004 was unfortunate; his entry in 2008 is farce. Farce because it suggests detachment from political reality (the differences between the Republican and Democratic nominees are so faint that we can say, What the hell!) and, worse, narcissism. The fact that it won't make any difference in the outcome actually is sad.