Ralph Nader to run for president
[He didn't say whether or not he was seeking the Green nomination.]
Nader announces new run for president
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party
candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to
big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will “shift the power
from the few to the many.”
Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and
Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy.
The consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly
policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many
lower- and middle-class people in debt.
“You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out,
marginalized and disrespected,” he said. “You go from Iraq, to
Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the
bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the
Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts.”
“In that context, I have decided to run for president,” Nader told
NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Nader also criticized Republican candidate John McCain and Democrats
Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for failing to support full
Medicare for all or cracking down on Pentagon waste and a “bloated
military budget. He blamed that on corporate lobbyists and special
interests, which he said dominate Washington, D.C., and pledged in his
third-party campaign to accept donations only from individuals.
“The issue is do they have the moral courage, do they have the
fortitude to stand up to corporate powers and get things done for the
American people,” Nader said. “We have to shift the power from the few
to the many.”
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, speaking shortly
before Nader’s announcement, said Nader’s past runs have shown that he
usually pulls votes from the Democratic nominee. “So naturally,
Republicans would welcome his entry into the race,” the former
Arkansas governor said on CNN.
Nader also ran as a third-party candidate in the 2000 and 2004
presidential elections. He is still loathed by many Democrats who call
him a spoiler and claim his candidacy in 2000 cost the party the
election by siphoning votes away from Al Gore in a razor-thin contest
in Florida. Nader vociferously disputes the spoiler claim, saying only
Democrats are to blame for losing the race to George W. Bush.
Though he won 2.7 percent of the national vote as the Green Party
candidate in 2000, his percentage dropped to just 0.3 percent as an
independent in 2004, when he appeared on the ballot in only 34 states.
