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Get Four
|  | MAY 11, 2004
Why Ralph Is Running Again Nader explains: Dems say, "'We have to beat George Bush.' I'm sorry. We played that game for 20 years. We're not playing it" He's back. Consumer activist Ralph Nader is running for President again -- giving Democrats fits and angering even some of of his own former Nader Raiders. Progressives can't forgive him for costing Al Gore at least two states in 2000 election, most notably Florida, and the Presidency. Yet, while he attracted nearly 3% of the popular vote in the 2000 election nationally, polls are showing him doing even better this time, with 5% to 7% backing. He could cost Presidential candidate John Kerry at least seven states where the election is close, according to polls. Is Nader reconsidering? Not a chance. Even though he's supposed to meet with Kerry later this month, the longtime scourge of Corporate America says he has no intention of pulling out -- and he predicts Kerry won't even ask him to do so. He recently sat down with reporters and editors in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau to discuss the race. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation: On why he's running for President again: If someone told me 15 to 20 years ago I was going to do this, I'd say I'm a full-time citizen. I want to get legislation, lawsuits filed. The problem now is that most people who do citizen work in [Washington] can't look at themselves in the mirror in the morning and come to the conclusion that they have been stripped of their power. They're defining victories now as defensive victories, less and less significant defensive victories. Why am I such a lone voice among the progressives? I like to be charitable. They don't have the sense of urgency because they have gotten too comfortable, and their expectation levels have been repressed. They're working harder and harder for less and less. What do we do as red-blooded Americans who want clean politics and progressive, responsive policies [do]? We sit around engaging in the "least worst?" [He imitates a voter, holding his nose.] "I'll go vote for Gore." Or do we get out there, like Thomas Jefferson counseled, try to change the paradigm, enrich the dialogue, get more candidates, local, state, national. All the things that you could do in the '60s and '70s, you can't do now. If we started auto safety now, we wouldn't get a hearing, never mind a bill signed in six months. Shut down like this, you got a choice. You either go to Monterey and watch the dwindling number of whales, or you go into the electoral arena. On meeting with Democrat John Kerry: We've got a call in. He's on the road, I'm on the road. We'll get it this month, I think. If Kerry asks Nader to drop out: He's not going to. It's going to be a very agenda-oriented meeting. I've got 10 ways that Kerry can beat Bush -- a living wage being the principle [issue]. There are 45 million American workers who make under $10 an hour -- $5, $6, $7, $8 an hour. We need a living wage. I'm going to say [to Kerry], look, you're not doing that well in the last month. Here's a chickenhawk [what liberals like to call Bush for his stint in the national guard instead of going to Vietnam] making you explain your first Purple Heart, and why you did this and that. You've had Dick Clarke [the former head of anti-terrorism policy at the White House] and [liberal activist and film director] Michael Moore and [Washington Post journalist and author of a new book on the President and the war in Iraq] Bob Woodward putting Bush on the defensive, and you're getting blurred. The problem is these consultants who have got their hooks into the Kerry campaign. I mean, $27 million for a Madison Avenue image builder? He's not his own person. If there's one thing the mass of voters can see through, that's someone who is not his own person, someone who has more antenna than brains. They really see through that. On the real John Kerry: You saw him temporarily in Iowa. He dropped his Senate-ese, which is a rare language. The problem is, if you sit around every day listening to consultants say "do this, don't do that, this is a good idea," you lose your own judgment without knowing it. Bush does this, too, but Bush has this exterior image that he's decisive. Ignorant people can be very decisive. People who have no principles can appear to be very decisive. People who are expedient can appear to be very decisive. Like [imitates a Bush supporter], "He never regrets any decision, doesn't lose any sleep." Kerry is more nuance. This business of "I voted for the $87 billion [to fund the war and occupation in Iraq], then I voted against it." Anybody who knows anything about how the Senate operates, there's nothing disturbing about that. He voted against it because of the way it was financed. Soundbite journalism is very intolerant on that. I'd like to have a debate with Kerry, focusing on Bush. On President Bush and the war in Iraq: I mean, this is serious stuff. You can take the greatest country in the world into a war quagmire, based on fabrications, deceptions, and lies.... The one thing you don't want to do when you're fighting terrorism is to produce more of it, and he's doing exactly that. He's now turned Iraq into a magnet for stateless terrorists, and we're stuck, because now collective ego is involved. "We're not going to cut and run. We got to support the troops." To which I say, I want to to protect the troops, to get them out of there. On poll data showing that five out of six Nader voters would vote for Kerry if Nader weren't in the race: It's wrong. The Wall Street Journal reported several weeks ago there wasn't any tilt either way. It depends on how deep the poll is. In New Hampshire, there was a poll that went deeper, and 4% of Democrats supported me, 8% Republicans supported me, 11% of independents supported me. The liberals have abandoned this candidacy. They're coming back into the fold [and supporting Kerry]. There are plenty of voters for the Democrats to scramble for than to whine about the Greens or an independent candidacy [like Nader's]. I don't think the Democrats can win without the vulnerabilities of the Bush Administration being portrayed in front of them, for them to pick up. Where is the confidence that the Democrats know how to beat the worst of the Republicans? Let's start in 1994. They've been losing at the local, state, and national levels constantly. And they have no different game plan. There's no sports coach analogy that they're going to open up new agenda areas differently, whatsoever. Then they say, "support us, we have to beat George Bush." I'm sorry. We played that game for 20 years. We're not playing it.
BW MALL
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