Need help finding a Nader Interview from 2000 about destroying Dems

[ShaneGR]

I can't find it, I know it was in a socialist paper. Where Nader basically said he didn't care if Bush was President and the goal was to destroy the Dem Party so they would miraculously decide to become Greens.

Anyone have it bookmarked?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. Just found this one...

For immediate release
Monday, October 30, 2000
Nader in Secret Pact with Bush to Stay in Race to Destroy Gore's Chance to be President
--------------------------------------------------------------
Nader believes a Bush Presidency will Drive Millions of Democrats to his Green Party

<http://www.billyjack.com/nader/nader_press.html>

[Terwilliger]

3. ooooo....billyjack.com!

:eyes:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

10. Are you more comfortable with Joe Conason?...

Nader's sorry legacy
The Green Party's goal: Ensuring that Republicans take over the Senate.
<http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/naderssorrylegacy/>

[ShaneGR]

13. That is a VERY good artice

Interesting take on his double-speak.

[stevedeshazer]

50. I don't understand your tactics

Other than getting attention, what do you intend to accomplish here? Shouldn't you be focusing on the real enemy, Bush and the Radical Right?

You seem like a smart enough individual not to waste time on this useless pursuit of Nader.

[Terwilliger]

14. you mean another Democratic party apologist?

Oh yeah, I'm amazed to see criticism coming from Democrats :eyes:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. What can I say, Terwilliger? You and I seem to have no disagreements...

...about JFK's assassination, but when it comes to using the same analytical magnifying glass on Nader, you seem eager to disregard factual information.

I don't get it. Help me out here.

[ShaneGR]

20. Defender of morality and virtue and discussion

Except when someone criticizes Commondante Nader.

[Terwilliger]

23. excuse me?

the factual information says that Nader was not responsible for Gore's loss (played a negligible part at best) and factually, Nader shouldn't have any influence on what the Dems do

[ShaneGR]

25. Yeah, he didn't cause Gore to lose..... except for

Saying he didn't care if Bush won. Getting thousands of votes in Florida. Allowing Bush to use his image in GOP commercials. Refusing to not campaign in states where the election was close.


Should I continue? Have you read any of the articles posted in this thread?

[Terwilliger]

30. all of them...and none of them say what you want them to say

just because you want to feel better about your hatred

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Forkboy]

28. lol

like stories about how much his life sucks because he can't watch the shows he wants? That kind of stupid drivel?

[PatrickS]

8. LOL!

"Nader believes a Bush Presidency will Drive Millions of Democrats to his Green Party"

Well, that strategy really worked!

[Hep]

2. Ralph the Leninist

From slate.com:

http://slate.msn.com/id/1006380/

[ShaneGR]

7. That's a good one

But I can't find the link to the interview at 'In These Times' website.... it looks like it hasn't been updated for three years.

[kodi]

15. try these

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/24/24/moberg2424.html

"He acknowledges that if he were voting in the district of a progressive Democrat congressman, like Rep. Henry Waxman of California, he would support Waxman. Then again, if there was a Green candidate, even a weak one, he said he would vote against his longtime ally. "There's an overriding goal here, and that's to build a majority party," he says. "If you're going to build a new party, you go all the way.

"I hate to use military analogies," he continues, "but this is war on the two parties


http://naderwatch.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_naderwatch_archive.html

http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/deep-ecology/2000/msg00548.html


"Nader has made it perfectly clear that his campaign isn't about trying to pull the Democrats back to the left. Rather, his strategy is
the Leninist one of "heightening the contradictions." It's not just that Nader is willing to take a chance of being personally responsible for electing Bush. It's that he's actively trying to elect Bush because he thinks that social conditions in American need to get worse before they can better."

[Terwilliger]

31. none of that says he wants to destroy the Democratic party

and it's funny that he always supported Democrats in his 40+ years of consumer advocacy

[kodi]

33. oh, when you declare war on a political party it isn't to destroy them?

dude, you didn't just drink the kool aid, you main-lined it.

"Nader abandoned this message in mid-campaign and began attacking even the most liberal congressional Democrats with a vehemence that echoed his disdain for Gore. In the closing weeks of October, Nader declared "war" on all Democrats and voiced a desire to lead the Greens "into a 'death struggle' with the Democratic Party to determine which will be the majority party."

"The candidate went on to claim, bizarrely, that the best strategy for progressive reform lay in running Green candidates against the very liberals who were poised to enact progressive agendas as chairmen of key committees if the Democrats won back the House of Representatives."


http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/26/green-j.html

[Terwilliger]

34. no kool-aid here

I don't have a sycophantic love of a party or a politician...I leave that to the Dems and Pukes

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Terwilliger]

45. sheesh

what a poor debater...are you exemplary of the whole of the Democratic party?

[Name removed]

49. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hep]

53. Um

I think he pussied out.

[Terwilliger]

4. Sorry Shawn, that's your interpretation

Only Carlos has said that Nader wanted to destroy the Democratic party

[ulysses]

5. wouldn't be this, would it?

[Terwilliger]

6. heh

[KG]

9. heh

:)

[Cheswick2.0]

11. here is a useful article

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0304-02.htm

[Terwilliger]

12. good article

"All this stuff about me is just static," he said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. "But it's good friction, and it's generating a lot of good thought and debate. It's like I'm performing a public service. That's what I've done all these years."

[fujiyama]

16. Here's a link...

to where Nader says if he were on the senate he would have voted for impeachment:

http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2000/10/29/113251

(Haha, yes Newsmax...those on the fascist right and laughing their asses off about Nader)

Or better yet, let's see what sort of company he's with since the election:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/Nader_020612.html

So, those who support Nader ARE doing the right wing's work. As Lenin put it they're "useful idiots".

[Terwilliger]

17. speaking of idiots...

that was Stalin

And the ABC article has a quote from Norquist acknowledging that Norquist and his group had little in common with Nader.

[fujiyama]

42. Thank you for correcting me...

I still have no respect for Nader and what he's done to this nation.

He's a hypocrite and full of lies...

But hey, believe what you want...If you think things are going fine under Bush, well, you're welcome to feel that way...But if you're voting AGAINST the democrat in the next election, you're really not helping the situation in any way...

[ShaneGR]

18. That ABC article

Damning

[Hep]

21. Another link

From realchange.org, a site that in 2000 compiled damning info on every candidate:

http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm

[Terwilliger]

24. yes, so post the links about Gore, Clinton, and Bush

no? why not?

[Name removed]

52. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jiacinto]

22. Well

There was another interview where he flat out said that he preferred Bush to Gore. But that link went away when my computer was stolen.

[Q]

27. Nader 'wanted' Dems destroyed and Bush* actually DID it...

- Is this as good as it gets? I'm beginning to wonder if those like sgr2 believe that the 2000 election was just a 'close race' instead of being outright stolen.

[ShaneGR]

29. That's an interesting take Q, I'll respond

I do believe the Bush's took the opportunity to steal Florida and the election. BUT, I also believe that they wouldn't have had that opportunity if Nader wasn't campaigning in Florida. What seals it for me is Nader's wherabouts while the post-election recount was going on. The supposed 'advocate for the people' was nowhere to be found then.

[Q]

32. The Bushies planned to steal the election...

...whether Nader ran or not. You continue to concentrate on Nader's influence in the election at the expense of investigating and prosecuting those who kept the actual winner of the election from taking office.

- Yeah...Nader's an asshole because he participated in the 2000 election and said nasty things about Democrats. But the Bushie Republicans broke the law and cheated their way into office. I don't understand why THIS doesn't piss you off more than Nader (legally) running for president.

- Is this just one more indication that some Democrats have screwed up priorities?

- And speaking of the 'whereabouts' of certain politicians: Where were the Democrats when the Congressional Black Caucus needed their help in investigating civil rights violations? Where were they when Lieberman was encouraging Gore to concede? Nader wasn't the only one hiding in the shadows as the Bushies took our Democracy away from us.

[ShaneGR]

38. Q

I may tend to agree with some things you say, but Nader's consideration of a run in 04 (Despite what has happened) shows me that he is nothing more than an egomaniac. Anyone who would do something that might help re-elect Bush is a menace.

[Forkboy]

40. here's something I can agree on

Nader is ego driven.

Of course so is every single person who has ever run for office...

[Terwilliger]

48. yeah, Nader has an ego...

but that just doesnt apply to Democrats! They're all just good people! :eyes:

[Terwilliger]

47. but its only you and Dem partisans who think that

all the while you ignore the fact that the Democratic party is responsible for its own failures.

[Noordam]

39. Question: Was the hi-jacking of the Reform Party a Karl Rove Operation

Q like I have always believed.

http://home.earthlink.net/~bartcopdisk/reform.html

[Ardee]

36. The dems need the green party

I was going to make this a separate topic but feel that it will reach its target audience, the foam at the mouth green bashing neocons who are destroying the democratic party with their GOP-like zeal to post and repost outright lies. It concerns the current SF mayoral race but speaks to a point that I have long held to be truth:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/02/EDGCT3CQL51.DTL


Issues in the San Francisco Mayor's Race
Why the Democrats need Matt Gonzalez

Peter Gabel Tuesday, December 2, 2003


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Out of a misplaced desperation about a Green Party candidate becoming the mayor of San Francisco, the national Democratic Party leadership is apparently ready to pull out all the stops to defeat Matt Gonzalez in the Dec. 9 mayoral runoff against Gavin Newsom.

Many of us read with astonishment that even former Vice President Al Gore is coming to town today to insert himself into a race he knows nothing about, no doubt reflecting a generalized anxiety by the party's leadership that its base in California is being decisively weakened: first, by Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory over Gov. Gray Davis; and now, by Gonzalez's challenge to Newsom as the Democratic establishment's heir-apparent to Willie Brown. The Democrats still believe that but for Green candidate Ralph Nader, Gore would be president, and that a Gonzalez victory here will only further weaken the party's base.

As has so often been the case over the last 30 years, the Democrats have got it all wrong -- in fact, exactly backward. The reality is that the Greens have not been a threat to the Democrats, but have rather been their lifeline, re-energizing the progressive base that the Democrats have continued to mistakenly abandon in order to appeal -- or, to be more blunt, to pander -- to a nonexistent "mainstream" they wrongly imagine sits to their right.

Before Nader entered the race, Gore was headed for a landslide loss to George W. Bush, running a campaign that was so bland that I defy you, dear reader, to remember one thing that Gore stood for. Only Nader's entry stirred up enough hope in the progressive core of the majority of the population to get people to come out and vote in such large numbers between 5 and 8 p.m. on election night, some for Nader but many, many more for Gore as the projected incarnation of the Democrats' progressive heritage.

It was Nader who stirred voters to remember the progressive values at the core of the Democratic Party, precisely by criticizing the party from its left and with a Green hat on. Sometimes the emperor has to be told he's wearing no clothes in order to remember to get dressed. If Gore had grasped that it was Nader and the force of the progressive spirit that had released the genie that generated Gore's 600,000 majority in the popular vote, he could have mobilized that spirit nationwide to then win the battle for Florida, instead of handing it to Bush on a silver platter.
---cut---
I urge you all to read the rest, if you can put aside your childish hatreds for a moment.

[quaker bill]

37. What a crock

Rationalization is fun. Unproductive, but fun.

[Forkboy]

41. "if you can put aside your childish hatreds for a moment."

that will never happen.Do the repukes still hate Hillary?

[Ardee]

44. well something around here certainly stinks.

I suspect it is your attitude, inappropriately named one. Did you even bother to read the damned article? Did you even bother to open your mind? I doubt it.

[ajacobson]

43. Dateline 2054

12/2/2054

DU v.12.0

Remember that election in 2000, whatsn't that a mess
********
NADER, fuck NADER blah blah blah...
********
Hasn't Nader been dead for forty years?
********
I don't care! Fuck NADER blah blah blah...



Jumping Jesus,
It's like those Japanese soldiers found in the jungle ten years after the end of WW2 still thinking the war was still going on! FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS

[w4rma]

46. What you are looking for may be here

For some time now, Nader has made it perfectly clear that his campaign isn't about trying to pull the Democrats back to the left. Rather, his strategy is the Leninist one of “heightening the contradictions”. It's not just that Nader is willing to take a chance of being personally responsible for electing Bush. It's that he's actively trying to elect Bush because he thinks that social conditions in American need to get worse before they can better.

Nader often makes this “the worse, the better” point on the stump in relation to Republicans and the environment. He says that the Reagan-era interior secretary James Watt was useful because he was a “provocateur” for change, noting that Watt spurred a massive boost in the Sierra Club's membership. More recently, Nader applied the same logic to Bush himself. Here's the Los Angeles Times' account of a speech Nader gave at Chapman University in Orange, California, last week: “After lambasting Gore as part of a do-nothing Clinton administration, Nader said, 'If it were a choice between a provocateur and an anaesthetiser, I'd rather have a provocateur. It would mobilise us.'”

Lest this remark be considered an aberration, Nader has said similar things before. “When {the Democrats} lose, they say it's because they are not appealing to the Republican voters,” Nader told an audience in Madison, Wisconsin, a few months ago, according to a story in the Nation. “We want them to say they lost because a progressive movement took away votes.”

That might make it sound like Nader's goal is to defeat Gore in order to shift the Democratic party to the left. But in a more recent interview with David Moberg in the socialist paper In These Times, Nader made it clear that his real mission is to destroy and then replace the Democratic party altogether. According to Moberg, Nader talked “about leading the Greens into a 'death struggle' with the Democratic party to determine which will be the majority party”. Nader further and shockingly explained that he hopes in the future to run Green party candidates around the country, including against such progressive Democrats as Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, and Representative Henry Waxman of California. “I hate to use military analogies,” Nader said, “but this is war on the two parties.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,393674,00.html

Last Thursday morning CNN showed Nader voters ecstatic and unapologetic about their part in the election mess. “I'm a part of history,” burbled one woman.

Along with that woman CNN showed another Naderite who shrugged off the prospect of a Bush presidency with the following: “I believe things have to get worse before they get better.”

That seems to me to adequately sum up the belief of Ellen Willis who, in a Salon piece supporting Nader last week, wrote: “More and more I am coming to the conviction that Roe vs. Wade, in the guise of a great victory, has been in some respects a disaster for feminism. We might be better off today if it had never happened, and we had had to continue a state-by-state political fight. Roe vs. Wade resulted in a lot of women declaring victory and going home.”
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/15/nader/

When asked if someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose, Nader answered without hesitation: “Bush.”
“If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win.” - Nader
http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/200008/200008camp_nader1.html

The only prominent Democrat who Nader seems to believe offers the party any chance for redemption is Russ Feingold, the maverick senator from Wisconsin who cast a lonely vote against the Bush Administration's antiterrorism legislation. Feingold is a rare Democrat who consistently says things like, “Ralph Nader is talking about issues Democrats should be talking about.” But the mutual admiration goes only so far. Nader rejects the idea of backing a Feingold run for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. “I'll say a lot of good things about him, but we're not trying to build the same party,” he says.

Nader admits he experiences “lots” of frustration with the Greens. He warns that the party is not running enough candidates to achieve critical mass at election time, and he says it must do so--even where that means challenging relatively liberal Democrats.

Does Nader worry, even just a little bit, that another candidacy might divide progressives and produce another Bush presidency? “Look, I'd rather be engaged in the nonpartisan work of building a civil society. For me, there has been a gradual commitment to getting involved in the electoral process, and I still cling to this civic, nonpartisan vision of how to do things,” Nader says. “But if you do an acute analysis of why things don't change in this country, you come back to what has happened to the Democratic Party. When I look at how the Democrats have responded to Enron so far, it seems to me that we all have a responsibility to try to jolt them into an understanding of what is at stake. If Democrats respond effectively, there will not be much point to me or anyone else challenging them. But if they do not, something has to give. People realize that. People know what the Enron scandal means. This is a test. Are Democrats capable of addressing massive corporate crimes effectively? If Democrats cannot, if they are in such a routinized rut that they are incapable of responding, then how could anyone make a case that they should be given deference at the ballot box?”
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020225&s=nichols

Regarding Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN), Nader said that he is willing to sacrifice them because “that's the price they're going to have to bear for letting their party go astray.”
In an interview with In the Times, 10-30-2000

In a recent Time magazine interview, when asked if he felt any regret about the 2000 election, Nader responded, “No, because it could have been worse. You could have had a Republican Congress with Gore and Lieberman.” -- Time magazine, 8-05-02

“Let's see what really happens. Ashcroft is going to be a prisoner of bureaucracy.” -- Common Dreams 4-03-2001

“I'm just amazed that people think I should be concerned about this stuff. It's absolutely amazing. Not a minute's sleep do I lose, about something like this - because I feel sorry for them. It's just so foolish, the way they have been behaving. Why should I worry?” -- Common Dreams 4-03-2001
http://www.damnedbigdifference.org/quotes

[Ardee]

51. So you are shocked!

Well so am I, shocked that it is necesary for a principled intelligent man such as Nader to believe that the Democratic Party has betrayed us all, shocked that what he says is truth itself.

You are so busy being loyal to your party that you have failed to note that your party has failed to be loyal to you and worse has failed the nation.