Ralph Nader said yesterday that he won't back off from his latest campaign for the White House even if the major candidates are tied in polls going in to Election Day, a scenario that led many friends and former supporters to urge him not to run again.
A possible repeat of the 2000 election, which ended with George W. Bush defeating vice president Al Gore by razor-thin margins in states where Nader polled thousands of votes, did not deter the consumer advocate from declaring his candidacy on Sunday. He suggested a close race might be more detrimental to the president than the Democratic nominee.
"I'd go after Bush even more vigorously as we are in the next few months in ways that the Democrats can't possibly do because they're too cautious and too unimaginative, but they can pick up the vulnerabilities and the failures of the Bush administration that we point out," Nader said Monday on ABC's Good Morning America.
Nader rejects the spoiler label as a "contemptuous" term used by those who want to deny voters a choice. He accuses both major US political parties of being dominated by corporate lobbyists who care little about the needs of ordinary Americans.
"We've got to give people more voices and choices," Nader told ABC. "And let me tell you, with 100 million people not voting, we've got to give them more voices, choices, more exciting involvement and participation so they're not just spectators watching candidates parade in front of them with emotional slogans."
Nader was to lay out his campaign themes -- including universal health care, campaign finance reform, fighting poverty and addressing environmental concerns -- at a press conference yesterday in Washington before campaigning in Texas later this week.
But even old friends such as liberal Representative Bernie Sanders, the only independent in the House of Representatives, called Nader's decision "counterproductive," pre-dicting "virtually the entire progressive movement is not going to be supportive of Nader."
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, who personally urged Nader not to run, called the decision "unfortunate."
Sanders and others also said Nader will not pull close to the 2.7 percent of the vote he won in 2000 because he will have a difficult time getting on many state ballots.
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