Ralph Nader

In The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor, the political party of Mayor Frank Skeffington has a ringer who runs against the mayor in every election and helps the mayor get elected by drawing votes away from the mayor’s chief opponents. It is an old technique and has influenced the outcome of many elections. I have always thought that Ralph Nader was actually a ringer for the Republican Party. How else could one explain his attempt to defeat Democratic candidates for the presidency and thereby destroy everything he has ever claimed to stand for?

Look what he did in 2000. Nader ran on the ticket of the “Green” party, a party that claims to fight for the environment. But the Democratic candidate that year was the most active and ardent environmentalist of our time, Al Gore. The race came down to Florida. In the end, five hundred votes separated Al Gore from George W. Bush. Nader drew 97,421 votes in Florida. Exit polls showed that if Nader had not run, 25 % or 24,355 of his voters would have voted for Bush and 38 % or 37,019 would have voted for Gore. The rest would not have voted at all. Gore would have received 12,664 more votes than Bush and would have won the presidency. By running against Gore, Nader defeated our best hope for environmental action during the years 2000-2008. We are now faced with catastrophic global warming thanks to Ralph Nader.
What does this say about the Green Party? In Europe, this is a legitimate party determined to protect the environment. In America, it is a group that thinks the best way to help the environment is to nominate a jackass who will only siphon votes from the party that will do the most for the environment.

In 2000 I thought that Ralph Nader was an egomaniac. I still think so, but I also realize that he is much more than just an egomaniac. He is an obsessive-compulsive-paranoid narcissist. His primary compulsion is to exalt himself. His greatest fear is that he will sink into obscurity. He is the kind of mentally unbalanced fanatic who would be very dangerous if by some miracle he ever got elected president.

Nader projects himself as the quintessential liberal. He claims to support the working man but has a history of paying salaries to his employees well below the minimum wage. He has fought against unionization of his employees. He says he supports civil rights and feminism. But this year he wants to prevent the election of the first serious African American or the first serious female candidate ever nominated for president by a major party. Thanks Ralph!

Even if one were to take Nader at his word and not presume he is lying for his Republican backers, he is a dangerous man. He obviously hates America. He hates all corporations without distinction. He hates our political establishment and he hates the voters of America. He talks about giving power to the people, but he does not accept the verdict of the people who gave him a tiny fraction of the vote in the past two presidential elections.

I think I understand the Nader type. He exemplifies a long line of obsessed leaders from Savonarola to Hitler. He is too compulsive to live an ordinary life. He never got married because his “cause” was too important allow him to be distracted by something as petty as a family. He lives austerely in a small Washington D.C. apartment with very few amenities. He eats at a modest restaurant where customers get a free meal after dining there five times. He is habitually obsessive about cleanliness. He doesn't own a car and keeps nearly a dozen manual typewriters stashed away so he'll never be forced to use a computer. He is worth over $4 million, but he is miserly in the extreme. His wardrobe looks like it was last updated in the 1960s.

In 2000, Nader received 2,883,105 votes, or 2.74 % of the vote. In 2004 he ran as an independent and received 463,653 votes, or 0.38 % of the vote. Judging by the results of his last run for the presidency, it is unlikely that Nader will ever be able to substantially affect the outcome of another election. Democratic voters now realize that he is a spoiler and not a serious candidate. He has single-handedly made the Green Party look like a bunch of morons. Now, in his 2008 race for the White House, the best that can be said about Ralph Nader is that he is a sick joke.