after hearing Nader i remember why people can't help voting for him

[digno dave]

All this time i had been hoping Nader wouldn't run, for obvious reasons. Now, after hearing him on MTP, i remember why he is so appealing. It's sad that the Democrats have allowed the Repugs to marginalize this element of our party to the point that the Dems have kicked us to the curb.
Either way, we have got to choose our battles wisely and support the Dem nominee in November. The time to make a stand is in the primary, not the general election. If he is so keen on pointing out the way the Dems have strayed from their origins he should run as a Dem in the primary and direct the party back to his(our) liking.
Oh, well, hopefully he will spend more time bashing Bush than he will bashing Kerry.
Seems like he left the door open to supporting Kerry if it looks close come November.
.

[Gman]

1. I don't fault Nader's message of corporate greed

but he can't win. Nader can only be a spoiler. Nader doesn't have a clue what the REAL priorities are in this country.

[Tinoire]

2. Corporate greed that led to NAFTA job loss, labour exploitation,

utility privatization, war, occupation, a bloated Pentagon budget at the expense of social programs, death and destruction isn't a real priority in this country?

Surely you don't mean that.

If anything, Nader seems to have gotten it perfectly.

On edit: We need the others and the American people to get it.

[IndianaGreen]

4. Funny that a President Kerry will also try regime change in Venezuela

for Kerry is tied to the same financial interests of the Venezuelan ruling class.

A minor comment on some of the similarities between Kerry and Bush.

[Tinoire]

6. I haven't even touched that one. In a New Dem world where SOA is A-ok

it seems a bit futile.

People who have done their homework know exactly where Kerry stands and this is why they fear Nader getting up there and AGAIN pointing out that the American people aren't being given a real choice.

Kerry can't defend himself very well when Nader points this out.

Hence all the hysteria we're seeing.

The DLC at its finest again. At least with Edwards, Nader will have to admit there's a HUGE difference in their NAFTA stances.

With Kucinich? Nader wouldn't have squat to say. With Dean? Very very very little.

With Kerry? OMG. This is going to HURT but what does the DLC care? Better to lose an election and protect the corporations than risk taking the party even one millimeter to the Left.

[Eloriel]

10. Exactly

I only heard a little of him this morning, but I had to say to myself, "Damn, would it be grand if some of our fearless DEM leaders talked half as good about this stuff?"

Their corporate masters wouldn't approve.

[Tinoire]

12. Lol! If we were for regime rotation we'd be scared too.

I'm looking forward to hearing a lot more from Mr. Nader. Things that we said over and over in this forum but that have been ignored.

The race just got exciting again.
===

Make no mistake: the fix is in. As people such as Michael Choussovdsky and Mike Ruppert have suggested, the coming 2004 selection will have nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with REGIME ROTATION. All the recent "scandals" involving the Bush Regime are about the American Establishment moving to replace Bush with a Kinder, Gentler Fascist like John Kerry who will implement the same basic policies with a more Machiavellian mask. If you believe that getting rid of Bush is the primary problem, you are deluding yourselves and others. Bush is only the symptom. The American Empire is the disease.
Itis not that a Kerry administration would change any fundamental aspect of contemporary American policy, but rather that those policies would be pursued with a little more discretion and finesse, if it is possible to talk about discretion and war in the same breath.

<snip>

The New Year has been launched with ample reminders of the truth of the French phrase, "plus ça change, plus la meme chose." Take the Democratic presidential primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, for instance. Not so many days ago the acknowledged front-runner by a country mile was Howard Dean. Dean, one thought, was an insider, but his support was by all accounts grass roots.

In December, Dean attacked the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC is as close as one can get to the Party establishment. It is the cradle from which emerged Bill Clinton. Its neoconservative roots are well documented. Criticising the DLC is tantamount to an attack on the real Washington power structure. Suddenly, the presidential race was becoming interesting.

What he said was that the DLC is the Republican wing of the party. This is no more than the truth. The DLC was founded on the premise that the Democratic Party of the late 60s and the 70s had become too radical, that it needed to reorganise and get back to basics. This was classic third-wayism long before Tony Blair began to wear long trousers. Anyone who was in any doubt about what this meant should have learned by 1994 when Bill Clinton pushed the NAFTA accord through Congress. George Bush senior conceived it, and Bill Clinton presided over its birth.

<snip>
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/02/26306.php

[w13rd0]

7. Hey, but now that all of that has occurred...

...we have something to run on!

[tedoll78]

11. I've asked this of Nader supporters and I'll ask you.

Exactly how does "teaching the Democratic Party" a lesson via defeat to Bush move our party leftward?

Give me a diagram, step-by-step, like this:.

Step 1: Vote for Nader.
Step 2: Democrats lose, Bush gets elected.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: ???
...
Step X: Democratic Party voters move leftward in choosing a nominee.

Exactly what are Steps 3, 4, ... all the way to Step X?
How does this forward progressive values?

I've asked here before and gotten empty platitudes. I'm simply asking for some thought behind the position. How does this work?
Thanks.

[Tinoire]

13. I'm not a Nader supporter. I simply believe in democracy

and facing the truth no matter how ugly and sordid it is.

Nader has every right to run. So does Larouche. So does Bush.

That's just how it works in a Democracy.

Frankly, if the Democratic Party spent a little more time trying to get people to vote FOR it as opposed to against the other party, we might get a little further.

[JVS]

15. How about you explain the current system?

1. Vote for the Democratic nominee despite misgivings on direction of party and frequent triangulation.
2. Party wins and decides to continue on current rightward path due to success. After all, who can argue with victory.
3.?????
4.?????
......
Step X. How does this result in the Democratic party's leadership moving in a direction other than right?

Both crap systems? Possibly, but the 3rd party way is new crap and the vote for triangulation way is proven crap.

[youngred]

22. Well it should have worked the first time

but aparently the Dems weren't paying attention.

The point is you NEED the left. But instead of saying alright we're in trouble and we need allies who can we work WITH to beat Bush the DLC and DNC attacked Greens and made Nader the scapegoat for an election that was an aberration with a thousand variables that could have decided things differently. It's supposed to say hey! we're sick of being trampled on, show us some respect. It's supposed to say look if you don't want us we can go elsewhere but its going to hurt everyone.

we need to work with, not against Dem Unity

[westcoastbias]

3. If Kerry is nominated, I'll consider Nader

[cryofan]

5. Ralph is a TRUTH TELLER!

I hear where you are coming from. I still would like to see him cut a back room deal at teh convention to put a progressive in as VP, or to come out with real universal healthcare.

Then afterwards he could run as a bush-killer proxy for the Dems in the GE.

[PurityOfEssence]

18. "There's no difference between the two major parties"

None other than that national treasure, Daniel Ellsberg, said that this was probably the greatest lie ever promulgated in the history of American Presidential Politics.

I almost started to choke on some irony as I watched Al Sharpton point out that this was no time for vanity candidates, but upon reflection, Sharpton is mainstream, electable and rational. Even he knows that the support will have to go to the Democratic nominee.

Just because he gets some things right doesn't mean that Nader isn't on some kamikaze ego ride.

[legin]

8. You might want to watch for Zell Millers actions too

whether this preening around "i'm voting for bush*" gunk was actually aimed at getting a Democratic candidate that was satisfactory to him.

(slightly off topic-ish)

[krkaufman]

21. Miller's looking out for Miller...

... and aiming at punditry and book deals.

[youngred]

23. as is Nader

and where the two shall meet :shrug:

[John_H]

9. I missed it. Did he say how his Wal-Mart stock is doing?

[mouse7]

14. Nader could have run from within the party at the beginning.

If Nader REALLY was interested in being an agent of change, he would have run for President from within the Party. He not only didn't do that, he didn't even try.

Enough Nader rubbish.

[dkf]

17. C'mon you seen how the establishment treated Dean and he is a Dem.

You think they would treat Nader ok? You gotta be kidding me.

The more I see the way the parties work the more I understand that today we only have one party and that is the Republicrat Corporate Party.

Both parties are bought.

I hope Dean can reform the Dem party. Otherwise, another party needs to rise up to compete with the Republicrat Corporate Party.

[Jen72]

19. What party.....

Nader is no party attached to his campaign. He is also running against the Green Party, the people that supported him in 2000.
How is Ralph Nader's running for himself going to help create viable
new party for the left?
He is not only going try and damage Kerry's chances but he could
kill The Green Party too. How does that help too improve democracy?

[PurityOfEssence]

16. A HUNDRED MILLION people had no problem not voting for him last time

Let's hope Kerry isn't the nominee; to the facile and immature--Nader's constituency in THIS PARTICULAR RACE--Kerry will seem much more establishment than Edwards. I'm not claiming that he IS, just that the priority challenged will see it that way.

[youngred]

20. gotta choose our ground wisely

Doesn't mean I still feel left out of the party or betrayed by it but there are more important things than voting for an oportunist. Nader's ideas are right but he's too selfish to get there.


That's why I support DK. He speaks to ME and works within the party to try and amend the center-left split that the Repukes have capitalized on