Talk:Ralph Nader

Ames Revisited
I don't really understand why Ames's contribution was moved out. Nader deserves better, both pro and con. So far the article sucks, "before most of you were born" and all. I think Ames's POV fits right in until it is re-written. PoorEd 08:57, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Cut from article

 * 1) Clean Water Act
 * 2) Freedom of Information Act
 * 3) Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)
 * 4) Clean Air Act
 * 5) Atomic Energy Safety Act
 * 6) Privacy Act
 * 7) ...(that is off the top of my head)


 * 1) Seat belts
 * 2) Airbags
 * 3) Renumeration on airline tickets when they bump your flight

The above is not exactly writing, can we clean it up - and get cites attributing each of these things to Nader? 23:03, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That was a suggestion to comment here, not to just re-add them all and more... 23:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

);
Though I disliked Nader for causing Bush to come into office, I never thought he'd descend to this level. How many more good people on the left must we lose to the Paulbots? I'd be cool if Nader ran another time, but every new supporter of Dr. Ronald Ernest Paul represents another shift to the far right. The fact that Paul is preying on the youth vote is most sickening. I don't think he'll cause Obama to lose in November, but if this continues then the future will be disastrous.

Sorry, I just had to have my rant of the week. Mr. Anon (talk) 22:22, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Nader did not cause Bush to come to office. If Gore had carried his own state of Tennessee or Clinton's state of Arkansas, he would have won the election. If the Supreme Court had not given Florida to Bush, Gore would have won the election. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that only two parties should field candidates for the presidency, and to try to criticize someone for running for high office on the strength of his own political vision, or to try to criticize people for voting for a candidate whom they believed was the best choice is a profoundly undemocratic sentiment. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 22:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC) I am not particularly surprised by the endorsement. Left-wingers have a very long history of cozying up to people who do not share their views on economics, but who do agree with them on one hot-button issue. U.S. foreign policy is a very hot-button issue just at present. 22:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC)You forget New Hampshire, the state Gore lost by fractions of a percent. Nader spent all his time attacking Gore, and rarely attacked Bush. Worse, Gore was among the most progressive members of the Democratic Party. As someone pointed above, the best way to reform the system is to do so through legislature, where Nader's strongpoint is. Fact is, there's no point running to the left of the Democratic Party if you are going to go third party. Ross Perot, the most successful third party of all time (I don't count Teddy) had to run in the center. Voting for a third party in the current system is a waste of a vote, especially when one knows that it is only symbolic.
 * But that's not why I just edited his article. If you look at the history, I tried to make the article more neutral towards Nader, raising points about Gore's campaign strategy. What ticks me off the most is that he turns around and supports Ron Paul, the most conservative congressman since 1937. Mistakenly issuing a third party bid at the wrong time is excusable. Supporting a blatantly racist, sexist, and homophobic candidate like Paul at the same time as calling oneself a progressive is not. I like Nader for what he did, but I can't forgive him for this. Mr. Anon (talk) 22:34, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, you presume that Nader supporters would have voted for Gore. They may well have just stayed home that day if Nader had not run--just like many if not most Ron Paul supporters who voted in the Republican primaries. The GOP is foolish if they think the majority of those folks are going to support the party come November."Gore was among the most progressive members of the Democratic Party." For many on the left, that statement means nothing. Still nowhere close enough to "progressive" to draw their votes. "Fact is, there's no point running to the left of the Democratic Party if you are going to go third party." If the point is to get ideas out there, and give progressive people someone to vote for who represents their interests, that's all the point you need. Like I said, to try to marginalize a bunch of people because their politcal visions fuck with your party's strategy is profoundly undemocratic. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 22:39, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Fact is, we are not a Democracy. We are a constitutional Republic. Also, I've found many examples of Nader voters who have since regretted their vote. Again, even 20% of Nader's voters voting for Gore would have made the election an easy win, far beyond the reach of voter fraud. The purpose of voting is to impact the government towards your favor. Why vote in such a way that the opposite would happen? Let's make something clear: the majority of Nader's supports probably would say that Gore would be their second choice. Gore is much closer to Nader's views than Bush. So why did Nader spend so much energy attacking Gore and not Bush? Mr. Anon (talk) 22:44, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: I'm not trying to say it's all Nader's fault. Gore could have campaigned better, Lieberman could have been replaced with a better choice, and there could have been less voter fraud. But Nader should have known better than to run that kind of a campaign against that kind of opponent, especially in that close of a race under this system. Mr. Anon (talk) 22:52, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * "The purpose of voting is to impact the government towards your favor. Why vote in such a way that the opposite would happen?" If your favor is that Ralph Nader was the candidate who best represented your interests, then that is reason enough to vote for somebody. "Let's make something clear: the majority of Nader's supports probably would say that Gore would be their second choice." let's make something clear: who my second choice is is irrelevant if my fist choice is the guy that I'm voting for. Let's make something else clear: asking people if they would have voted differently in hindsight ain't worth a pinch of shit. Like I said, many if not most Nader supporters would not have voted at all if Nader wasn't there. I am fucking sick of Americans who bitch and whine and moan about politics in this country and then shut down one of the best options for changing it--opening up the system to alternatives outside the two major parties--for stupid strategic reasons that end up reproducing exactly what it is that pisses them off in the first place. "Don't vote for the third party guy! He won't win!" Well, he won't fuckin' well win unless short-sighted moronic assholes who are beholden to a corrupt fucking system open their minds and fucking well vote for him, will he? It's such bullshit. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 23:22, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Your statement implies that the only way to fix the two-party system is to vote for third parties that you know will not win. More and more states are agreeing to dropping the electoral college. That alone would encourage more third party candidates. Even as it is the system allows for third party candidates, as long as they are viable - Ross Perot has a real chance of winning in 1992. Thing is, voting for candidates this far to the left (or to the right, for that matter) is pointless if the candidate has no legitimate chance of winning. Why make a vote that will result in the country going against your favor? Why vote for Nader rather than Gore when you know it will only make a Bush presidency more likely? Don't give me the bullshit that you should vote whatever person in the world who most reflects your views - if that were the case, everyone should just write in themselves. Why vote for Nader when you know he won't win? Why not vote for Gore when you know that your vote could help him win, and that he would bring the country somewhat closer to what you desire, unlike the other guy?
 * Like it or not, we have a two party system, and until something is done about that electoral college, you will almost always just have a choice between those two parties and not voting at all. Speaking of which, what evidence do you have that "many if not most Nader supporters would not have voted at all if Nader wasn't there"? I can find plenty of people who voted for Clinton in '96 and Kerry in '04, but voted for Gore in 2000. If I put some effort, I could probably find over 537 such people in Florida alone. Mr. Anon (talk) 00:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * And again, you ignore some of my other points. Why did Nader focus so much of his energy attacking Gore, who had the most similar views to himself, rather than Bush? If you were a centrist, and you had people from both the left and the right attacking Gore, and only people from the left attacking Bush, why would you bother voting for Gore (as you are a centrist, you don't want Nader anyways) and not Bush? Mr. Anon (talk) 00:30, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

"Why did Nader focus so much of his energy attacking Gore..." Because he had zero chance of convincing a Bush supporter to vote for him and thought he had a good chance of creating a leftist movement that would draw from dissatisfied progressives in the Democratic Party (people pissed about Clinton's welfare reform being one example....).He wanted to pick votes off of the left and center-left parts of the Democratic Party, 'cause those were the folks who might vote for him. Trying to convince Republicans to move that far left would have been a wasted effort. That's good politics. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 00:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * But Nader also knew that he was not going to win. He knew that polls showed an overwhelming amount of Americans rejected him, and that America's constituents were not prepared to go that far. Deny it all you want, but Nader did not run to win. He ran to make a message. And because of that message, people who might have otherwise voted for Gore voted for a no hope third party, in one of the closest elections in history. Anyways I'm done with this debate. Mr. Anon (talk) 01:13, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * That's called politics, son. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 01:16, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Damnit
Consider the above a parting shot, but that is not the reason I made this section. As I said, although I partially blame him for 2000, I've respected him until now, when I discovered that he endorsed the likes of Ron Paul. That, in my view, is unforgivable. Mr. Anon (talk) 01:13, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * As it turns out, he did not "endorse" him per say. This is where my misconception originated, where he writes an extremely favorable article about the man without much thought for Paul's reasons for addressing those issues, and without much look at what his larger solutions are (isolationism being the answer to wars, private currencies being the answer to the Fed, etc). Mr. Anon (talk) 03:51, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Slacktivism
How comes that slacktivism is listed at “See also”? From what I see, Ralph Nader's and his Raiders' work has achieved a lot. This association seems undue to me. Sophophobe (talk) 22:28, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Disputed content

 * though in fairness, some of the current safety of nuclear plants is due to his years of activism.

For the life of me I can't imagine any reason to make this claim. None of the designs come from him, all the safety we have today was in place before he got started, and all he really did was get the AEC -> NRC transition sped up, which has made our reactors dramatically less safe and almost 20x as expensive, preventing them from stopping climate change.

Can RationalWiki provide a single fact-based reason to believe this? - John Haugeland
 * I added the content in question back, but I also added a Citation needed tag. 18:28, 28 December 2018 (UTC)