By GEORGE BENNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE — Ralph Nader, making another minor-party bid for the presidency, slammed America's "two-party dictatorship" today and said nothing will change as long as "tactical voters" limit their choices to Republican and Democratic candidates.
Nader spent more than two hours talking to about 60 people who showed up at an independent movie theater for a mid-afternoon rally that was put together on short notice. The 2000 nominee of the Green Party and the 2004 Reform Party standard-bearer said he plans to run this year as an Ecology Party candidate.
"Big business really runs this country," Nader told his audience. He said both the Democratic and Republican parties are controlled by corporate interests and won't change as long as voters support the "least worst" candidates offered by the two parties.
"When we go least-worst between Democrat and Republican, you know what that signifies to the least worst? That they can take your vote for granted because you are so horrified by the worst that you'll go for the least worst....You're not about to rock the boat and make demands on your least-worst candidate," Nader said.
Nader said voters in 2004 who adopted the "least-worst" philosophy were too timid to press Democrat John Kerry to take a strong stance against the war in Iraq.
Nader said he doesn't expect to win in 2008, but said his candidacy will build for the future and send a message to the major parties. He likened modern third-party efforts to the anti-slavery and women's rights movements of the 19th century.
Nader, 74, is a longtime champion of consumer, environmental and liberal causes. But many liberals blame Nader for the conservative Republican presidency of George W. Bush. Bush won Florida, and the presidency, by 537 votes in 2000 over Democrat Al Gore. Nader won 97,488 votes from Floridians in that race.
Nader emphatically rejected the idea that his candidacies have played a "spoiler" role.
"How can you spoil a system that's spoiled to the core?" Nader said.
In a talk with reporters before the campaign event, Nader said he was tired of "this constant, constant nagging" about his role in the 2000 election.
"The only reason people are entitled to raise the 2000 election is if they believe this country is owned by two corrupt major parties and the rest of us should just shut up and stand in line and be observers," Nader said.
Nader said Democrats have themselves to blame for losing in 2000 because the party no longer fields candidates in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Harry Truman.
"The Democratic Party is a scapegoat party. It doesn't look itself in the mirror," Nader said. "Can you imagine what FDR and Harry Truman would have done to George W. Bush?" Nader's view of the two-party system is shared by Fort Lauderdale resident Cara Campbell, who said Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are "like different flavors of vanilla."
Said Campbell: "I believe in the issues that (Nader) espouses. I don't see those issues being espoused by any of the other candidates — universal health care, corporate abuse, ending the war. They aren't going to end the war."
