Unsafe at this speed

A couple weeks ago, consumer advocate and generally pissed-off citizen Ralph Nader announced he would, once again, be running for president. He has, of course, already run twice unsuccessfully – in 2000, as the Green Party candidate, and in 2004 as an independent.\nDemocrats have a soft spot in their hearts for Nader, of course. He is, after all, one of the scapegoats for the debacle in Florida in 2000. He supposedly took votes away from Democrat candidate Al Gore – votes that, had Gore received them, would have delivered him the presidency and saved the nation from eight years of President George W. Bush.\nThat’s unfair, since there were many, many extenuating circumstances around that election that led to Gore’s downfall. Nader didn’t lose the election for the Democrats, though he surely didn’t help anything. With that being said, he really has no reason to run for president this year.\nFirst of all, he won’t be able to meet the primary goal of the third party candidate – to have an effect on the major parties’ platforms. Everyone – including Nader himself, unless he’s delusional – knows that he has about the same chance of winning as Ron Paul, which is to say no chance at all. His only legitimate goal would be to use his campaign and whatever popular support he could garner to get one party or the other to add some of his policies onto its platform. That, however, is highly unlikely. The Republicans will ignore him outright, because his ideas don’t jive with the party’s ideals. The Democrats are a much better fit, but because of the remaining bitter feelings from 2000 – and believe me, there are remaining bitter feelings – it’s far more likely that the Democrats will just try to forget he exists. In short, nobody will listen to Ralph Nader.\nBesides, it’s unlikely that Nader would even be able to find a niche in the campaign’s world. His two biggest draws, personality-wise, (the maverick and the change agent), have already been taken for this election by Senators McCain and Obama, respectively. Also, those two major party candidates already draw strongly from independent voters, so Nader’s base is even more depleted. It seems like there isn’t really a ton of room for Nader this year.\nI have a lot of respect for Ralph Nader for his work before my birth, and that leads directly into the main reason why he shouldn’t run for president. Much like his opponent in 2000, Al Gore, Nader is much more effective in achieving his goals from outside the political arena. He should honestly take the gravitas that he has left and do what Gore is doing – write another book, or a documentary film and use that as a jumping-off point to influence American politics. By doing that, he can transcend politics as Gore has and return to his old place as America’s foremost people’s advocate.\nRalph Nader can do the United States a lot of good. He just can’t do it in an ill-fated, irrelevant presidential campaign.