Nader Declares Candidacy, Nobody Notices
Monday, February 25th, 2008Aging 1960′s reject Ralph Nader has declared his candidacy for President:
WASHINGTON — Consumer activist Ralph Nader launched a run for president Sunday, eight years after he attracted votes that some Democrats believe helped elect George W. Bush.
Nader told USA TODAY that he’s running because “American politics is saturated in taboos and self-censorship to a level where the greatest issues in the campaign are off the table.”
Democrats Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton aren’t proposing the sorts of changes the public wants, he said, such as a unified government-paid health care system and a tax on carbon emissions.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard anyone begging for the government to tax carbon emissions. Also, except for Democrats, I haven’t heard anyone begging for Universal Unified Socialized Health Care, either.
In the 2004 Election, Nader received less than half of one percent of the total votes cast, which was down from 2.7% of the vote in the 2000 Election. If current trends continue, he’ll probably end up with about 17 votes this time around, if his family isn’t sick and they can make it to the polls. So, with absolutely no chance whatsoever to win this contest, why is he running?
On NBC’s Meet the Press, Nader, who turns 74 on Wednesday, said there was “not a chance,” that he would play the role of spoiler. “If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form,” he said. “You think people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain this year?”
Alright, if he can’t win and he isn’t a spoiler, than why is he in the race? I’ll tell you: ego.
In the Sixties, Nader performed what many thought to be a public service when he worked as a consumer advocate and forced car makers to make a lot of changes to their vehicles to make them safer. However, he did this when he was in his thirties. The past 40 years have been spent by him attempting to recapture the public spotlight and to once again save the American people from the evil corporations. The fall from relevance to obscurity was fast, steep, and so far unrecoverable. The only problem seems to be that he fails to grasp the reality of his situation, and therefore continues to inflict his sixties’ radicalism on the public. Really, I don’t know if it is sad, pathetic, or sadly pathetic. I just know I want it to stop.
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