Ralph Nader ended weeks of speculation on Sunday by announcing that he will run for president this November on an independent ticket. Nader’s intention to run has been met with hostility from Democratic Party leaders, many of whom blame Nader, the former Green Party nominee, for President Bush’s victory over Democratic hopeful Al Gore in 2000. Democrats are rightfully concerned about the possibility of a repeat performance in 2004. While Nader has every right to run for office, and citizens have every right to vote for him, he must recognize that now is not the time to try and make a statement about third party politics when so much else is at stake. However, Democrats need to stop blaming Nader for their shortcomings, and should instead address the issues that allowed Nader to take three percent of the national vote in 2000.
In the 2000 Presidential election, Nader ran for president as the Green Party candidate in one of the closest elections in American history. After President Bush’s Supreme Court victory handed him the election, many disappointed citizens held Nader at least partially responsible for his election, claiming that he took votes that would have gone to Gore in the absence of a third party candidate.
Nader’s intention to “challenge the two-party duopoly” by running for president in November as an independent has angered many Bush dissenters, who believe that left-of-center Americans need to band together to defeat the incumbent president.
Given the magnitude of the issues on the table this November, Nader’s decision to run is grossly irresponsible. With key policy issues such as further United States involvement in Iraq, the war on terror, gay marriage, healthcare, social security, and tax cuts hanging in the balance, now is hardly the time to try and make a political statement regarding the flaws of a two-party system. All citizens that do not want a continuation of the last four years should be working together to get Bush out of office the only way possible: by supporting the Democratic nominee for president, whoever that may be.
Still, Democrats need to stop using Nader as a scapegoat for their own party failures. Whatever your opinion of Nader as a politician, there is clearly some legitimacy to his claim that the current party structure does not adequately represent all Americans. If the few million votes that Nader racked up during the 2000 election were that important, then the Democratic Party should address the legitimate concerns of those who chose to cast their ballots outside of the two-party system in the first place.
