Ralph Nader, the radical US activist whose 2000 presidential bid was accused by many Democrats of costing them the election and putting George Bush in the White House, declared on Sunday that he would stand again this year.
The announcement was denounced by Democratic officials, who called on opponents of the Bush administration to rally around their presidential nominee: depending on the remaining primary elections, John Kerry or John Edwards.
But the Democrats also played down the significance of Nader’s threat, predicting that he would win far fewer than the nearly 2,9-million votes (2,7% of the total) he took in the 2000 elections, which ended in a dead heat between Bush and Al Gore.
The tie was broken only by the supreme court ruling in Bush’s favour.
The veteran consumer rights and environmental activist, who turns 70 this week, stood as a Green party candidate in 2000 but he has parted ways with its leadership, because it wanted to delay a decision to enter the presidential contest and to strike a tactical agreement with the Democrats.
Many of Nader’s former aides and supporters from the 2000 race have urged him not to enter.
Announcing his candidacy on an NBC political talkshow, Nader rejected the views of the ”liberal intelligentsia” and accused his critics on the left of trying to suppress free political choice.
”It is an offence to deny millions of people who might want to vote for our candidacy a chance to vote,” he said on the programme, Meet the Press. ”Seeds have to be given a chance to sprout in nature. It’s called springtime.”
Although he has been complimentary of Senator Edwards in the past, Nader repeated the main plank of his 2000 platform, that the Democrats were as much in thrall to corporate sponsorship as the Republicans.
He said, ”Washington is now corporate-occupied territory”, and argued that a ”for sale” sign had been put up on government agencies, allowing corporations to place former executives in powerful positions in return for campaign contributions.
”The two parties are ferociously competing to see who is going to go to the White House and take orders from their corporate paymasters.”
Last month Nader told reporters that he would make up his mind at the end of January, after contacting potential supporters and financial backers.
His decision appears to have been put off pending the outcome of Howard Dean’s populist bid for the nomination, which attracted many young activists of the kind who backed Nader in 2000.
Dean ended his campaign last Wednesday and urged his followers not to support a third-party candidacy, but his elimination from the Democratic primaries may appear to Nader like an opening.
The leftwing Washington weekly The Nation, which provided Nader much encouragement four years ago, this week published an open letter by its editors imploring him not to compete.
”For the good of the country, the many causes you’ve championed and for your own good name — don’t run for president this year,” it said.
”Ralph, this is the wrong year for you to run: 2004 is not 2000. George W Bush has led us into an illegal pre-emptive war, and his defeat is critical.”
A recently introduced website, ralphdontrun.net, argues that Nader’s candidacy in 2000 cost the Democrats states such as Florida and New Hampshire, where his vote was far greater than Bush’s margin of victory over Gore.
”This time we need Ralph Nader with us. Not against us,” the website said, asking voters to log on to the Nader website and plead with him not to run.
”I don’t think he’ll have a sizeable impact, but it’s terrible if he goes ahead because it’s about him, it’s about his ego, it’s about his vanity and not about a movement,” Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico and a possible vice-presidential candidate, said on Sunday.
Nader admitted that as a late entrant he would have difficulty collecting enough signatures to put his name on the ballot in all 50 states, comparing the task to ”climbing a cliff with a slippery rope”.
But he would persevere in the interests of three-party politics. ”This isn’t just our fight. This is a fight for all third parties … I don’t think America belongs just to the Democratic and Republican parties.” – Guardian Unlimited Â