Nader haz a sad. I haz a glad.
Fresh off the heels of The New York Times’ report that Black people still really love them some President Obama, comes the news that Nader’s progressive pony project isn’t going to meet the deadline for qualifying to enter the New Hampshire primary.
::cue tiny violins::
The man makes a good point about standardizing state elections but I’m not going to pretend that I’m not glad that Nader and his Princeton bros, Cornel West and Chris Hedges aren’t going to be lurking about just waiting to screw things up.
Six weeks ago, word got out about a progressive project that could have Ralph Nader playing a familiar role: Electoral scold. He was the best-known member of a coalition to recruit five progressive candidates to run, as Democrats, against Barack Obama. At 4:30 p.m. today, the coalition was going to face its first deadline: qualifying to enter the New Hampshire primary.
Nader’s group won’t make the deadline.
“[Secretary of State] Bill Gardner switched the days on us,” Nader says. “He threatened to change the primary date after Nevada moved up its caucuses, and in the process, he moved up the filing deadline. So he’s pulled the rug out from under us — you think it’s late November, and all of a sudden it’s October 28.”
Nader is annoyed, and understandably so. “You ought to have one federal standard for every state’s elections,” he says. “Do you know why he moved the filing date, just because the primary moved?” (Actually I don’t know.) “We were pulling something together quite nicely, but New Hampshire — that’s the big one, isn’t it? Between the size of the state and the fact that the press is up there, it was a good place to make this statement.”
When Nader decided to throw his hat into the ring, my reaction ranged from “Pfft!” to “This fucking guy?”
Just so we’re clear about the basis for my hostility toward this man, Ralph Nader called president Obama an Uncle Tom on the day he was elected. He was pre-disappointed in President Obama and has been spouting the same racist bullshit as several other progressives of perpetual disappointment. (I’m looking at you, Michael Moore1 and Bill Maher.)
Does Ralph Nader truly believe the crap he spewed about President Obama being half-African and appealing to white guilt? I don’t much care.
In fact, if he doesn’t believe it, it’s almost worse — it demonstrates a willingness to say or do anything, no matter how racially charged and offensive, to remain in the spotlight and stretch out a fifteen minute period that has long since expired.
Ralph Nader doesn’t care about anyone but Ralph Nader. He needs to sit down.
1 Sorry seems to be the hardest word, doesn’t it, Mr. Moore?
[via Slate]
Fucking Ralph Nader.
I’m not buying his story about how Gardner switched the dates on them; actually, it’s more supportive of the point I was going to make overall about this. That being: they were either not prepared, or (more likely) they never had a candidate. I mean, five candidates? You’re so confident that you can beat Obama from the left, but you need five candidates for a primary?
It’s like the axiom in the NFL about quarterbacks: if you have more than one, you don’t have any.
Now, I agree that the primary process is a joke–this unwritten rule that Iowa and NH “Absolutely MUST BE FIRST, NO EXCEPTIONS AND FUCK YOU” is ridiculous. Being first in a primary, it seems, is more an economics and tourism move than it is anything else. Really, other than the states (and Washington, D.C.) that want to be first, nobody really gives a shit.
But Nader–yes, I’m aware of his work on safety regulations, and I thank him for that profusely, having been in a collision 10 years ago where nobody was injured–is a troll who likes to claim that both parties suck (which, to different degrees, is true, but none more regressive than the current Republican Party), yet offers no palatable solutions other than to organize a protest vote every 4 years.
And I lost respect for him back in March when he suggested that the president bring Egyptians into Washington, D.C., to show the citizens how to protest for that municipality’s voting rights in congress…when that authority is granted through Congress. It was both a pedantic and assholistic letter; smug and self-serving to the last. Not that he’s lived there for most of his life and done anything to help the process, or anything like that.
Whatever. If those five candidates raise $20,000 collectively, I’ll be shocked.
Pretty sure you’ve contracted my typographical affliction where entire words disappear as they travel from my brain to my fingers on the keyboard. If so, IFTFY. Everything else you posted was pretty spot on. After dealing with a whiny pissant like Nader for well over 10 year, if not longer, the most I can add to your prose is “Yeah, fuck that guy.”
Nothing more satisfying than seeing the machinations of the Impotent EmoLeft evaporate before their eyes.
spot on, as usual.
Nader’s ego trip has finally hit the wall called Obama Reality.
This Clip Layouts out the Political Realities of Obama and the Professional Left.
Basically, the professional left has failed to deliver for progressives and working people for 30 years. Republicans are running the asylum. And Obama frankly has called them out.
And folks like Nader are pissed that Obama called their bluff. For all his strutting rhetoric, Nader has only served Nader for years.
Well state Cappadonna. You speak the truth.
Not only does he need to sit down. He needs to STFU. His time and relevance expired long ago.
Barack Obama as Joe Clark talking to Ralph Nader as the Black football coach:
Obama: “Mr. Nader do you know why I choose Elizabeth Warren over you to create a federal department to protect consumer finances?”
Ralph Nader gives a blank, scowling stare
Obama: “Because I’m sick and tired of watching Vulture capitalists run roughshod over progressive reformers while you host $1000 per plate dinners to merely talk about reform instead of leading the charge for it. Thank you, SIT DOWN!!
The one scene explains so much of the tension between Obama the so-called Professional Left and Emo-Progs its scary.
Dear Ralph: So long, and thanks for all the seatbelts.
Won’t someone please buy Ralph a Corvair?
Seriously, I have personal experience with Nader and he is the most self-absorbed, arrogant little shit I think I’ve ever seen.
Than again, I’ve never seen Eric Cantor in person. Things could change.
Hey ABL….Chris Hedges is involved in this????
according to weigel in the linked slate article he is. unsurprising, really.
So wait — the guy who couldn’t keep track of a fucking primary filing date (which, as commenters at Weigel’s piece point out, wasn’t a problem for other fringier candidates in NH) thinks OBAMA doesn’t have the right stuff? Yeah. As usual, the Professional EmoProg Left plays victim in lieu of admitting “Hey, you know, we really don’t know how to locate our asses with both hands when it comes to winning elections and passing legislation. Then again, with our heads so firmly lodged up inside them, it’s not easy to see which way we’re headed.”
The term for that is “acute cranio-rectitis” and sadly, I don’t think there’s a treatment for it.
ABL, Excellent piece as usual. So many wonderful comments above. All of them great. thx.
It’s no loss. And thanks for refreshing my memory. I almost forgot about the Uncle Tom comment. Nader is a has-been, anyway.