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WASHINGTON — "They talk in terms of 'oh, perennial candidate, spoiler.' It is so trivializing."
Ralph Nader is determined not to be trivialized. In announcing his third run for the presidency, the veteran consumer activist has vowed to ride a progressive wave against the two-party hegemony of American politics.
This will come as a surprise to those who believe that Barack Obama is already riding that wave and that Mr. Nadar is as anachronistic as a Ford Pinto.
But Mr. Nader doesn't think Mr. Obama is the real thing. He has described his voting record in the Senate as too "cautious" and "mediocre" for a true progressive. The Illinois senator, in Mr. Nader's eyes, remains within the tired mainstream of a Democratic Party that sold out long ago.
"But good luck to him," he added yesterday in an interview. "I believe in open competition. I believe in open doors. Let the best prevail."
Most Democrats respond to Ralph Nader's name with a smirk or an epithet. By capturing almost 3 per cent of the popular vote in 2000, and polling strongly in Florida, many liberals believe Mr. Nader deprived Al Gore of the presidency, handing it to George W. Bush.
To which Mr. Nader responds that the Democrats defeated themselves in 2000, and that no one can know for sure where his vote would have gone. (They all might have stayed home.) By capturing a paltry 0.4 per cent of the vote in 2004, Mr. Nader seemed to demonstrate that his influence on American progressives was at an end. But the 74-year-old perennial thorn-in-the-side believes that there is still life in his movement, that his voice still commands respect, that he deserves to be heard and that he can do better this time out and restore democracy in America.
"When the system says: 'Don't run,' it's like saying don't talk, don't act, don't put that play on, don't write that article," he maintains. "It's all in the tradition of censorious bigotry."
Mr. Nader pioneered the great consumer safety campaigns of the 1960s and '70s. He gave the world mandatory seat belts and shatterproof windshields. He warred against the nuclear-energy industry and multinational corporations. Without his advocacy, there might never have been an Environmental Protection Agency, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration or a Consumer Product Safety Commission. Yet by Mr. Nader's own admission, virtually all of his agenda for progressive change remains unfulfilled. Mr. Nader's platform consists of a shopping list - a very long shopping list - of progressive priorities. To remake health care in the Canadian model, to slash military spending, to rein in what he sees as Israeli aggression, to impeach the current administration, to shift taxes away from individuals and onto corporations and speculators.
And that's not the half of it: "Credit cards, cellphones, poverty - the poor pay more - the exploitation in the ghettoes, pay-day loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. ..." The agenda for reform just goes on and on.
"You've got to keep pushing for justice."
Most of all, Mr. Nader intends to push for reforms that eliminate the first-past-the-post electoral college, and the relentless gerrymandering of congressional districts that ensures the Republicans and the Democrats always have things to themselves.
"No Western democracy treats small candidates and minor parties that way," he protests. "This is a major civil-liberties, civil-rights issue for me."
That said, this may be the last time you read Ralph Nader's name until election night. In an Obamamaniacal election, the onus will be on Mr. Nader to demonstrate that there is still a coalition to be won - that the left wing of the Democratic Party, the young who have been previously apathetic toward politics, the social activists who believe that America no longer even qualifies as a democracy, remain outside Mr. Obama's tent, are searching for a champion and are willing to embrace Mr. Nader as that champion.
Otherwise, trivialized is exactly how Ralph Nader will remain.
