Ah, the year 2000. It was a new millennium and anything seemed possible, even the nation electing a third party consumer protection wonk as president. Ralph Nader flew the flag of the Green Party and pushed hard for votes, touting his environmental and worker-friendly bona fides. And we were right there with him, endorsing him in our 2000 election issue.
Even if he was a long shot, it seemed to be Nader’s moment — he had national attention and a burgeoning, active campaign espousing his progressive ideals. In the days before the election, he packed the University of Cincinnati’s 800-seat Zimmer Auditorium and made the front page of The Cincinnati Enquirer, though the story mostly focused on Nader’s potential to spoil the race for Al Gore.
“Vote for your hopes and not against your fears Tuesday,” our endorsement read. “Vote for Nader.”
Well, see, about that though. Problem was, Nader was successful enough to pull votes away from Democratic candidate Gore, but not nearly successful enough to get elected. Oops. The Unsafe at Any Speed author and his running mate Winona LaDuke (amazing name, bee-tee-dubs) got almost 2.9 million punches at the ballot box. That’s a lot, until you consider George W. Bush got 50 million and Gore got 51 million. What’s worse, due to the way those votes were dispersed, Dubya won in enough states to take the electoral college and become president.
And, well, you know what happened next. There were some wars, eventually a botched response to a massive hurricane and all sorts of unpleasantness from Bush Jr.’s truly awful two-term presidency. A lot of progressives turned some of their ire at losing the election toward Nader, but it’s unclear he’s the one at fault. He says he turned out voters who would have otherwise stayed home and didn’t steal from Gore’s base.
Either way, the next eight years were a bummer and we take no responsibility for them. Nader eventually left the Green Party, running again as an independent in 2004 and 2008, but his moment had passed and he never again cracked a million votes.
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2014.
