more anti-Nader ridiculousness

Dear reader (and I do meean that in the singular), my apologies for my extended absence. One of the drawbacks to writing a blog regularly for no money in your spare time is that you have to, um, work to pay the bills the rest of the time.

Anyway, this is a response to an column by Robert Paul Reyes, also known as "Look at me, I'm going to rehash every stereotype you've ever heard about Nader's candidacy" Guy:

I read today your column on Ralph Nader, and I’m disappointed at how factually inaccurate it is. You wrote, “Nader disingenuously claims that he takes as many votes away from President Bush as from Sen. Kerry. Public opinion polls dispute that absurd claim.” In fact, only one poll (Gallup) has been asking Nader voters which other candidate they would support, and it has shown for three months that a majority would back Bush over Kerry. Maybe you were referring to The Nation’s poll of supposed Nader swing-state supporters, but the fine print of that poll explains that almost half of the respondents described themselves as planning to vote for Kerry or as undecided voters who like Nader. (So the biggest news flash there, Mr. Reyes, is that Kerry voters like Kerry.)

You also misrepresent one of Nader’s key positions: Nader does not “conten[d] that there's no real difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.” Nader has long said that there are many similarities between the parties and these candidates, most often on fundamental issues too often ignored in the public discourse and particularly when compared to his own. Neither Bush nor Kerry support a health care system that covers everyone (which the rest of the Western world has had for decades), Kerry approved both Bush’s authority to go to war with Iraq and his ability to attack civil liberties under the Patriot Act, and both have remarkably similar plans for the continued occupation of Iraq. Only Nader consistently supports universal health care, has said that president’s invasion of Iraq was unconstitutional, and has developed a plan for the responsible withdrawal of U.S. troops to remove the target from America’s back. But Nader has never said there are no real differences, just that the differences are less important than the similarities. He also makes an excellent case that the leaders of both parties are influenced too heavily by the same corporate interests.

Perhaps Nader underestimates the differences, but you are certainly overestimating. We heard the same doomsday predictions about 3-4 retirements giving us an boogeyman conservative Supreme Court four years ago, but a whole presidential term has passed without a single retirement. Even Rehnquist seems on the road to recovery now. You also glossed over Kerry’s repeated support for preemptive strikes, a policy that predates Ronald Reagan and was expanded and codified under Bill Clinton.

But perhaps the worst thing you do is contradict yourself in describing the character of Nader: how can someone completely unconcerned with his “legacy” be “a selfish spoiler who can't see past his own press clippings”? If Nader were really concerned by his press clippings, he would have dropped out of the race (or jumped off a bridge) eons ago, because unfortunately most people who write about him don’t bother to get the facts straight, or pass off partisan rhetoric as fact. I wish I could say that your column helped shed some light on the candidate or dug into some new facets of the anti-Nader campaign – or better still, found something positive to say about any of the candidates – but unfortunately, it seems that you just dredged up the same old baseless accusations and presented them as facts.