Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader had a candid, unflattering response to the second 2024 Republican primary debate, saying: “It’s pretty embarrassing that this is what they put forward to become the president of the most powerful country in the world.”
The current Republican field presents even more evidence that third party candidates are relevant and important, as Nader told Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!.
[Note: Nader ran for POTUS four times; most famously in 2000 with the Green Party against Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. Nader received close to three million votes and was accused of “helping” Bush win a close election.]
Yet Nader continues to defend third-party candidates including Cornel West, who is currently running as a People’s Party presidential candidate, and urges the Democratic Party to “stop engaging in candidate suppression.”
But this election cycle, given the stakes — which Nader characterizes as fascism (Trump) vs. autocracy (Biden) — Nader is throwing his vote behind Biden, as representing the lesser — as the phrase goes — of two political evils.
Still, Nader reminds Americans that running for public office is a constitutional right — and he sees third party candidates as valuable. It may be a right, but even some who know the constitution very well — like Laurence Tribe below — often categorize third-party candidates as vain and foolish.
WTF?! Does @CornelWest really want to help the GOP nominee win — the way Ralph Nader helped GW Bush defeat Al Gore in 2000?
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) June 5, 2023
Ego trips can come at a heavy price, Cornel.
Please stop this foolishness, before you really hurt the things you care to help. https://t.co/bdoQLhg8ui
Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School (Nader’s alma mater), tweeted in June, ”WTF! Does Cornel West really want to help the GOP nominee win — the way Ralph Nader helped G.W. Bush defeat Al Gore in 2000? Ego trips can come at a heavy price, Cornel. Please stop this foolishness, before you really hurt the things you care” about.
Nader says the penultimate time he ran for president (against incumbent George W. Bush and John Kerry), Tribe “flew down to Florida…trying to get me off the ballot, which is basically saying, ‘Shut up. Do not exercise your right of free speech.'”
Nader suggests that rather than blaming third-party candidates for when Democrats lose elections, they should adopt more of their popular agendas. Nader gives an example: “That’s what Harry Truman did to Henry Wallace in 1948. He took some of Henry Wallace’s progressive agenda, and Henry Wallace started dropping in the polls.”
Biden may already be taking Nader’s advice to heart. Walking the picket line with the UAW workers last week — a first for a President — Biden declared an unequivocal solidarity with the workers that fits right in with Cornel West’s agenda.
Nader, who is now 89, claims with first-hand experience that Democrats “are very good about candidate suppression, third-party candidates…bumping them off balance, harassing them, suing them,” but he still hopes for a competitive democracy in the future.
Get ready to see more of Nader: he’s promoting his new book, The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right, which will be released on November 14. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote a blurb for the book.
