Ralph's Return

After Ralph Nader announced he would run for president this year, Democrats haunted by the memory of the 2000 election had a fit. After all, he spoiled an election once; he could certainly do it again. But Democrats’ foreboding sense of déjà vu gives Nader too much credit. Voters may have used Nader’s last campaign to broadcast their dissatisfaction with the options America’s two major parties offered, but they have learned an important lesson. Nader, apparently, has not. Faced with lackluster support, an outdated platform and opposition on all sides, he has stubbornly embarked on what voters must recognize is an empty quest.

It says volumes about the strength of Nader’s candidacy that most voters may not even have the option of voting for the man. As an independent, Nader has to gather signatures in each state to get his name on the ballot—upwards of 1.5 million in total. Texas, the first deadline, requires Nader’s volunteers—he will not hire help—to collect 64,000 signatures by May 13, an enterprise that Texas Democrats will undoubtedly hinder.

The only way for the Nader campaign to escape the sheer magnitude of the task is to garner the support of third parties with ballot lines, such as the Green Party. However, after withdrawing his candidacy for the Green Party nomination, Nader must bank on the “Redraft Nader” campaign, which seeks to grant him party nomination at the Green Party National Convention in June. Even there, his chances for success will be severely diminished by the contingent of Greens who question the logic of running a candidate at all and would prefer to back the Democrats.

Nader is also miserably behind in fundraising. At last count, his campaign had $175,000, a far shot from the $8.5 million he spent in 2000, and his failure to win at least 5 percent of the vote in the last election prevents him from supplementing donations with federal election money.

But the biggest problem for Nader’s campaign is not its tiny war chest. Over the last three and a half years, Nader dug his own grave by saying little as the Bush administration pursued a far-right agenda. Once an outspoken advocate of reform and a significant public figure in the world of American politics, Nader has all but disappeared in the years since the 2000 election. The last four years have seen monumental changes in foreign and domestic policy, but through it all, the man who claims his campaign is based on outrage at the direction the current administration is taking us has remained in the background.

If Nader’s lack of involvement was not bad enough, he has scarcely acknowledged the changed political landscape, choosing to lump the election’s major issues, including health care and the war in Iraq, into what is practically an addendum to his platform from 2000. He insists on pitching the same policies he touted four years ago—but new questions require new answers, and Nader doesn’t have any.

With no real plan and no real political or financial backing, Nader has set out on a hopeless personal crusade, an act that even Democratic candidate Al Sharpton, one of Nader’s strongest supporters in 2000, said portrays him an “egomaniac.” With the 2004 election looming, following him again—disorganized campaign, lagging funding, regurgitated platform and all—is a mistake only the most clueless or cynical voters could make.