Intro: "Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012."
Nader rules out another run in 2012, but says Obama will have a challenger in the Democratic Primary elections. (photo: Scrape TV)
Nader: 'Almost 100 Percent' Chance of a Democratic Primary Challenger to Obama
06 August 11
alph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.
Nader now says that a primary challenge is a near certainty.
"What [Obama] did this week is just going to energize that effort," Nader promised in an interview with The Daily Caller. "I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent."
The only question, he said, is the stature of that opponent and whether it will be either "an ex-senator or an ex-governor" or "an intellectual leader or an environmental leader."
In approximately a week and a half there will be "another chapter of this effort," Nader predicted.
The Public Citizen founder said he disapproved of how Obama handled recent debt ceiling negotiations, and claimed the deal's failings prompted this week's dramatic stock market drop.
"He made a deal that did not provide for a public works project to create jobs all over the country. All he did was he agreed to cut spending," Nader said. "And that's what the market is reacting to."
President Obama "shouldn't have even had that problem," Nader said. "When he surrendered the continuation of tax cuts for the rich last December, the least he could have gotten was the debt ceiling increased. He didn't even do that. So he set himself up for this hostage situation by the Republicans and it's his own fault. And the country and the workers are paying the price."
Asked whether the Tea Party movement was responsible for an unsavory resolution to debt ceiling negotiations, Nader responded: "It's not really a movement. It's the conservative non-libertarian wing of the Republican Party."
Nader continued: "Ron Paul is a conservative libertarian. These are the conservative corporatists that have decided they like the brand name 'Tea Party' because the press reports on every movement of the Tea Party. So they've jumped on the bandwagon and hijacked it.
"There are a lot of Tea Party people, for example, who wanted more revenues. I think the polls showed that half of them wanted more revenues. And a lot of the Tea Party people want to get out of the wars. But its been hijacked by the corporatists."
Nader said he doesn't plan to launch another campaign for president, either as an independent candidate or as a primary challenger to President Obama.
In 2000, Nader received nearly three million votes as the Green Party's presidential candidate. Some disillusioned Democrats blamed him for handing Florida, and with it the election, to George W. Bush.
Nader ran for president in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 as a left-wing alternative to the Democratic nominee, but has decided another campaign is "very unlikely."
"I've done my rounds," he said.
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These are desperate times. This is no time for academics or intellectual discourse. We need a DAVID to match the GOLIATH of our facistic adversaries.
hurray...
So long as progressives vote for corporate bimbos like Obama, the Dems will NEVER mend their ways and offer up a viable progressive candidate. We have to make it clear that if they want to run a Republican, they will NOT get our votes. That's why I'm so delighted that Nader appears to have found someone to primary this loser.
God forbid, though, that we place the blame where it belongs -- a shitty campaign and an even shittier job of handling the recount and legal wrangling that followed, not to mention rigged voting machines and a corrupt state government that did everything in their power to control the outcome for Bush.
Unless you have a viable, electable, progressive who can and will win, please stay out of this business,
He needs to step back, and forget his ego, and think of the country. And stop being a fame junkie.
I'm sure that all the Tea Party members like "Still Standing" will be glad to hear this.
Link to documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ06OM9viRY
If you weren't a Blue Dog DINO, you wouldn't be holding a disgusting wimp like Obama up as a suitable Democratic candidate. He's absolutely appalling as the following link demonstrates: http://stpeteforpeace.org/obama.html
And as a matter of fact Nader did not give the election to Bush. The Florida Sec'y of State did and then the Supremes, or at least 5 of them.
Personally I live in California so it was safe to vote Green. Gore took the state so handily that Nader's votes didn't matter in the least.
This administration has dissed its base--we're "fu*ing retards" according to Mr. Emanuel--and assumed we were in their pocket so totally that every position could be surrendered with impunity, sometimes even BEFORE negotiation.
Yellow dogging it is already losing.
Personally I like Bernie Sanders. Maybe he could reregister as a Democrat.
BERNIE in 2012!!!!
They just lie down and whimper for a Democratic President, even the best of them.
Personally, I'd be just as happy if some Republican got elected. That way at least the left would be mobilized instead of counting on the useless Democrats to push a progressive agenda. Those who continue to bleat that "ANY Democrat is preferable to a Republican" are seduced by symbolism. In terms of policy, there's not a lot of difference. So do you prefer the wolf, or the wolf in sheep's clothing? I prefer the wolf. Vote your principles, not your fears.
Anyone who thinks that Obama is a capable leader is kidding themselves; he doesn't have what it takes to lead us into anything but the new Depression we are in now. He can't fight, won't fight, and the Repubs and TP's and their backers know it.
Regardless of who the Repubs put up against him, can anyone imagine anything good for the citizenry coming out of a 2nd term for Obama? Nader is not and never will be a candidate, but he's smarter and more committed to you and me than Obama will ever be. Better to listen to him.
If Nader now agrees to assist we the sheeple (and God knows, we need all the help we can get to restore democracy, rights, regulations being enforced, etc. etc. etc.), by encouraging a real McCoy Dem. to replace OhBombAh on the Dem. ticket, then encourage and praise him to the sky we must.
Yes, there are Dems. who have walked the walk (Kucinich and a few others come to mind) and not merely talked the talk and let us down bigtime, i.e., a Pres. named Obama. My dream is for a Kucinich/Grayson team, with Sanders Sect. of State.
Go, Nader, go. You certainly can help getting a real McCoy candidate for pres. on the ticket instead of OhBombAh. Should OhBombAh again be the candidate, the probability of getting a Tea Party idiot elected is high.
Dump him!
We hope NAder has good inside information and that a really srong challenger will register.
Wo Wo!
S&P's downgrading of US credit status is a strong vote of no confidence in Obama's ledadership
But the larger question is whether the electoral process itself has become hopelessly corrupted: voter suppression legislation in many states, the Citizens United decision, hackable electronic voting everywhere. Perhaps the only authentic thing to do is publicly to boycott the electoral process until it is fixed. With the Super-Committee prepared to further redistribute wealth from everyone to the super-rich by cutting social security and medicare, a noisy election process boycott would announce in advance that we do not regard the actions of future legislators as legitimate, which they would not be, given the pervasive corruption of the system. To participate in the electoral process is to "buy into" the result a corrupt process will produce.
Hillary Clinton would be just about the worst possible candidate to run against Obama. The kind of balls she exhibits are all in the direction of warmaking, imperial reach, & world dominance. If she were operating in the domestic domain as well as the foreign, I dread to think of the further abridgments of constitutional rights she would engineer.
What we need is a candidate that challenges Obama from the left not the right. If we want a woman (or two), Cynthia McKinney paired with Cindy Sheehan would be pretty inspirational.
I had refused to accept that extremists were on both sides "equally."Yet here we are with the "worst president ever" baloney.
Put Hillary up? Sure, that's brilliant -- the haters would pay to have her as their target.
Get real and get to work to educate voters in your territory about alec, norquist, kochs, armey, theocrats, etc..
Recall the animosity between O and Hilary, the tireless Sec'y of State and purveyor of Obama's policies? Maybe you can herd cats.
A strong unequivocally progressive challenger could be a wake up call to the Democratic establishment that we can't be relegated to a protest pen outside the main event, as with the 2004 convention, and that dissing the base has consequences.
A weak one would be a disaster.
While I have to agree with everything Mr. Seeger said, his conclusions leave nowhere to go. What's the alternative? The Arab Spring model? The Anarchist's? NGOs?
That's what Nader's supporters said in 2000.
I suggest that the democratic challenger run on the theme of "Real Change we can believe in."
Just think what WDC would have looked like and what the outcome would have been if Americans in the thousands had demonstrated at the Congress. Picture this: growing numbers of irate CITIZENS from everywhere in the country in WDC; they don't go home on Sunday afternoon, but stay on and on, making themselves heard. Kinda like Tahrir Square!
The biggest fear of our elected "representatives " is losing their seat and all that goes with it. Voters can beat the money if they are loud enough, show strength in numbers and really demonstrate their citizenship instead of the current mode of being subjects.
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