According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama is not worried.

   

"Barack Obama said today during a visit at the Ohio State University Medical Center that he wasn't terribly concerned about the prospect of a Nader campaign. "I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage [points] of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference."

   An email to supporters from Nader's presidential exploratory committee ticked off a list of issues that have been "pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year," including defense budget cuts, opposition to nuclear power, and a single-payer national health insurance system.

   Obama responded to criticism from Nader, who has suggested that the Democratic hopeful lacks substance, by noting that Nader has reached out to his campaign. "My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who if you don't listen and adopt all of his policies thinks you're not substantive," Obama said, before praising Nader as a "heroic" and "singular figure in American politics."

Obama may not be worried, but I am.  Ralph Nader's ego is so out of control and someone needs to burst his bubble.

A reminder that each time you insult Nader, you insult everyone who voted for him and worked on his campaign.   That's a strange way to win support.

Did you mean to reply to the diary or to RFKdem?  

It may have been your saying that Nader helped give us Bush.  Perhaps you don't think that's provocative because singling out Nader in this way doesn't necessarily mean that you don't think lots of others helped in giving us Bush.  It doesn't even necessarily mean that you think Nader had any significant role at all in giving us Bush.  There are a lot of people out there who choose to believe that Nader is a bad person for attracting signatures to get on ballots, for getting contributions of time and money from volunteers and donors, and for standing for progressive ideas.  If anyone reading this does think ill of Nader, I recommend they view the documentary An Unreasonable Man.    

that Ralph Nader's candidacy contributed to Al Gore's defeat in 2000.  Now, whether it contributed 1%, 10%, or whatever, I don't know, but still, I think we can all agree that it was a factor.  By the way, I say this as someone who greatly admires the work Ralph Nader's done in his life.

We'll have to wait for Sherry to decide whether I guessed right about her being insulted at your casual singling out of Nader for giving us Bush when you admit that as far as you know he might have been a very minor reason why Bush is President.

Whatever.

On one issue alone, health care, I think Nader's message that where we really ought to be is single-payer is very important to this year's campaign.

Hillary Clinton has really one major advantage over Barack Obama.  Her health care plan would be truly universal while Obama has to hope he's right that all those who could afford health care under his plan would voluntarily sign up.  Clinton makes a truly compelling point that if we start the tough debate conceding from the outset that universal coverage doesn't need to be on the table, it'll make it that much harder to get there.

Nader can make an even more compelling point that if we start the debate conceding that single-payer is off the table, we probably won't get there.

Obama admitted that if we were starting from scratch he'd prefer single-payer.  His campaign is premised on change.  Why not start from scratch on health care?

on Meet the Press this morning.  It's clear that the 97,000+ votes Nader got in Florida tilted the balance against Gore in a state where Bush won*(I'm giving it one of those Barry Bonds' asterisks due to other concerns about the vote count) by 537 votes and exit polls had Nader voters saying two to one they would have gone for Gore if they hadn't gone for Nader.  Give credit where credit is due.

Jeb Bush was the Governor.

Katherine Harris was the Secretary of State.

Jim Baker was Bush's fixer.

Justice Kennedy lacked the guts to stand up to Scalia.

Many probable Gore voters had their votes illegally suppressed because of prior convictions and vote caging.

A Dem-designed confusing ballot in Palm Beach made many Gore voters vote for Buchanan by mistake.

Gore chose not to contest all of Florida.

Not a single Dem Senator, not even the late great Wellstone, chose to join the Dem House members in contesting the counting of the electoral ballots.

I assign the penultimate amount of the blame to the part of the 50 million Bush voters who took the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years for granted and took a flyer on someone who, even without the crisis of 9/11 and the decision to invade Iraq, was manifestly unqualified to be President.  [I will concede that there are somewhat reasonable people, like John Perry Barlow, who may have took comfort in Cheney becoming VP and were surprised at how much Cheney changed in office and how bad things could get when that much power is given to a VP, especially one serving under a stupid criminal.]

I assign most of the blame to those who could have voted in 2000 and chose not to.

Ralph Nader is a decent man with decent values.  He has every right to run for office.  Choosing to elevate his issues from that platform isn't even close in sinfulness to the compromises our major party nominees have to make.

Nader also used Republicans to collect signatures and help him get on the ballot.

helping his campaign now.

Honestly, he has simply become the Harold Stassen of our time.

If Obama wins the nomination, all the people who would have been Nader's base in the past, will give a collective yawn. His candidacy is simply superfluous.

Who can predict, as opposed to speculate, whether he will matter or not?

True, he didn't make a difference in the outcome in 2004. But he made all the difference in the world in 2000. All else being equal, but for Nader we have President Gore, not President Bush. (NOTE: There are a number of "but for" issues that would give us Gore rather than Bush. but for the butterfly ballot, but for the politicization of the Supreme Court, and so on. But Nader is definitely one of them -- no insult to Nader intended)

One thing for certain. To the extent Nader draws votes from one candidate or another, he is more likely to draw votes that would otherwise be cast for the Democratic nominee, whether Clinton or Obama. This is just common sense -- and it follows from the relative similarity between his and the Democratic Party positions on major issues.

In 2000, Nader brought many many people to the polls who probably would have not voted.  He didn't steal those votes from anyone.

He brought many fewer voters out in 2004 and probably would bring fewer still out this year.

If the Dem nominee is interested in keeping Nader from stealing her or his votes, there's an easy way to do it - adopt Nader's positions.

Obama would have a leg up on this, because of his change message and his appeal to independents.  Because of Nader's independence from interest groups he can advocate more extreme positions like single-payer health care and abolition of nuclear power.  If Obama were to simply reiterate how he prefers single-payer health care in theory and acknowledge the problems of nuclear power, he could leave Nader only with the most extreme voters who are very few in number.

Exit polls were showing almost 1/3 of Nader's voters would not have voted, but about 2/3 would have, and almost ALL of them would've voted for Gore.  Al Gore would've easily won Florida and the Presidency.  Nader didn't bring anybody out; he lied.  He told people, just as he's telling them now, that there is no difference between the candidates.  BS, and he knows it.  He's running on ego, which at this has probably ballooned large enough that it has developed it's own gravitational pull.

Second, Nader wasn't an issue in 2004 because his supporters in 2000 saw what had happened because they had refused to vote for what they saw as "the lesser of two evils."  It was like when Al Gore stood up at the 2004 convention and said "Do you see the difference now?"  They did, and most Nader supporters in 2000 voted for Kerry, which is why Nader, who got 2% of the vote in 2000, couldn't even break a single percent in 2004.

It's like that joke in the Simpsons, where it is revealed that he is a secret Republican sabotaging the Democratic Party.  By running, he hurts the party that is more likely to agree with at least some of his concepts.  For Nader, it's more about ego than anything else.  All Nader has now are his loyal followers who wouldn't vote for a Dem anyway.  He's not going to make any difference in this race.  Now, if Bloomberg got in, it might be a different story.

Barack Obama has a keen grasp of the issues and he knows what is doable in Congress.  One of his appeals is that he would be willing to work across the aisle to bring change to America. He is also fresh, honest, free of special interest ties, and brings the promise of hope to politics. He's already attracting the type of supporter who used to be Ralph Nader's base.

Nader, on the other hand, with his my way or the highway approach, couldn't win, wouldn't govern effectively, and could only be a spoiler who hurts progressive causes.

The only reason he won't be is that most sensible people, even those who did sincerely support him in 2000, actually realize that there was a huge difference between Bush and Gore.  Many of them now, ironically, are among the biggest admirers of Al Gore because they realized that between Nader and the corrupt, lazy, biased news media, they were hoodwinked in 2000.

They're not falling for it again 8 years later.

Mr. Nader is, I think, so far not the candidate of any party, which he was the last time(s) he ran. So, how will he get on the ballot in most states? Where is his party ground organization? Will this situation not, in all likelihood, limit his effectiveness?  Not to mention that, frankly, I find him to be stale news, able to influence the debate only if the media continue to give him lots of coverage and a platform.

Of course, it seems probable that Republicans will secretly give him plenty of funding, as they did before, in order to throw an apple of discord among Democratic-leaning voters. He's kind of the Joe McCarthy of the Left,  or, if you prefer, yes, the Harold Stassen perennial candidate of our time. Yawn.

If he really wanted to be sure his favorite topics were addressed during the campaign, there are lots of other ways he could make waves and promote them (instead of himself). Do you suppose he would have announced his candidacy if John Edwards had not bowed out?  

I mean if he has a passion for these things, then why not have used all that time since 2000 to build a mass movement in society for those things.  He could have been building a movement to help effect that change.  How does running for president when you can't win help that?  And if you think the two parties are broken, instead of decrying that, you could try to fix them from within.  The beauty of both party structures is that they are open to change.  Look at how Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed transformed the Republican Party.  

He is free to run.  And that is the beauty of America.  That is assuming he can meet all the requirements to get on the ballot in 50 states.  

Also, why president?  Why not take some smaller steps up the public office ladder before going straight for the highest one?

he'd most likely support Edwards if Edwards were the nominee.
I think it's good that Nader is giving a choice to those who prefer a non-Corporatist candidate.

Let me be the first to say it: a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for four more years of Republican rule in the White House.  

Ralph Nader will NEVER be President.  And wasting a protest vote on him is absurd.  Nader's people in 2000 said they didn't want to vote between the lesser of two evils.  Most of them now wish they did.  Do you want to be one of those people that after Four Years of McCain, and the Wars in Iran and Syria regret not voting for Barack Obama?

First of all, how are either Obama or Clinton corporatist candidates whatever that means?

Second, if you want to fight the "corporate" agenda, voting for Nader is a mote in the eye of God in that respect.  You need to get out and pound the pavement.  You need to find friends, make allies, form a movement.  When you reach the level of the Suffragettes, the Temperance Movement, the Labor Movements or the Civil Rights Movement you'll be able to challenge corporate power.  One candidate who has a snowball's chance in hell of landing the highest job in the land does not make a lick of difference.  And even if he could, he still has to contend with the Legislative branch which if you think Hillary and Barak are part of the corporate agenda, then you have to include 99% of Legislative branch in that.  And if they didn't impeach him and remove him from office, they could just as easily block his agenda.

On the corporate power thing, ITT sent Chile's economy into a tailspin when they elected Salvador Allende.  That was just one corporation.  Oh and long story short, Salvador Allende was killed and Augusto Pinochet (radical free market capitalist dictator) took his place.  You think you are going to fight these people with a single vote.  Corporate America sits on a vast amount of capital to counter your one vote.  They have an army of lawyers and lobbyists that spend their 40 hour or more work weeks just pushing that agenda.  That is at least 2080 more hours than you if you are just voting for Nader, and that is just the time of one of their lobbyists.  And one political candidate is not going to unravel all of that.