Ralph Nader

Socialists and the 2020 Election

Solidarity By Linda Thompson and Steve Bloom January/February 2020 issue PROSPECTS FOR SOCIALISM are off in the future. The 2020 presidential election is here and now, and confronts us with a right-wing menace unlike any that has been faced before. When asked what our goals are in the 2020 elections the majority of left activists in the USA will say: “to defeat Donald Trump.” Many are even more specific: “We are Bernie or Bust.” If we are honest with ourselves, however, we must acknowledge that many of these will also end up urging people to vote for the eventual Democratic…


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Debunked: The Myth That Ralph Nader Cost Al Gore the 2000 Election

disinfo By Good German November 2, 2010 Editor’s Note: While this article is from 2010, it’s well worth another read in 2016 Matthew Jones of USC’s Political Science Department says: It’s really difficult to make the argument that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election, for multiple reasons. There were only 560 votes separating George Bush from Al Gore. That’s essentially within every margin of error, which when it gets within the margin of error, means that there’s too many other factors that could have affected it to say with any confidence what caused Al Gore to lose and…


The Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil

CounterPunch by John Halle May 20, 2015 Notes on Spoiling For a decade and half, the spoiler factor has been a third rail of progressive politics. Some of those who have raised the issue are genuinely concerned with the prospect of a third party candidate enabling a far right victory. But others are Democratic Party hacks who, in Matt Taibbi’s phrase “would triangulate their own mothers” to maintain their lock on power. Spoiling for them is a bad faith exercise in maintaining electoral politics as a bipartisan gated community from which left, populist candidates are excluded. Fortunately, there are signs…