Wall Street Journal - October 24, 2000
Nader Hopes Wounds to Gore Will Shift Democrats to the Left
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
SAN ANTONIO -- Ralph Nader isn't going to win this year's presidential race. But he could change the outcome -- this year and in elections beyond.
And he would consider that victory enough.
The Green Party candidate and lifelong consumer advocate, who hovers around 5% in national polls, thinks he can hurt Vice President Al Gore in such tossup states as Michigan, Florida, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and New Mexico. That would inflict potentially fatal wounds to the Democrat's effort to defeat Texas GOP Gov. George W. Bush.
"What do you think will happen if we're the difference in six key states and we cost the Democrats the election?" Mr. Nader asks rhetorically. The answer, he hopes, is that the Democrats will shift left, away from the Clinton administration's centrist New Democrat policies. In short, he foresees a "progressive convulsion" by the Democrats. The thought appeals to him enormously, and he gives the impression in discussions that, much as he may dislike Mr. Bush, he would be happy to cause a Gore defeat.
Mr. Gore was busy Monday trying to fight off just such a scenario. Campaigning in the Pacific Northwest, the closest thing there is to a Nader base, the vice president avoided attacking Mr. Nader frontally, but was compelled to address the Nader factor.
"I don't want to use the argument that a vote for him [Nader] is a vote for Bush," Mr. Gore told an NBC-TV affiliate in Oregon. "A lot of people say that, but I prefer to do my best to encourage people to support me enthusiastically -- with their hearts."
Later, he was confronted again with the Nader problem, when he was asked about charges from Green Party backers that he makes too many compromises on the environment. "Well, look, I have never backed down or given up on the environment in my career, and I never will," Mr. Gore said. "I feel very strongly about it, it's a passion for me." Mr. Gore also was put on the defensive by his unwillingness to take a stand on whether to protect salmon by breaching four Snake River dams, a step Mr. Nader and the Green Party support.
Even as he and Mr. Gore jockey over the coming election, Mr. Nader has a second, longer-term agenda in mind as well. He wants to scoop up enough votes nationwide to clear 5%, thereby securing a federal financial benefit under federal election law for the Greens. If he succeeds, the party will get both federal money to cover bills from this election, and advanced public funding for the 2004 vote.
That's why Mr. Nader brought his economy-class campaign here to Texas a few days ago. He knows that some Democrats and left-leaning independents around the country are concerned that the Greens will end up putting Mr. Bush in office. But here in Texas, where Mr. Bush is a shoo-in, Mr. Nader can credibly assure supporters that casting a ballot for the Greens will help him reach 5% without helping the Republicans.
"You're in Texas, so Al Gore isn't a factor," Mr. Nader told one anti-Bush questioner at a rally at San Antonio College.
Mr. Nader is about to get some help making that argument nationally. A New York direct-sales mogul, Greg MacArthur, plans to launch a $322,000 newspaper ad campaign in Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and California aimed at convincing Nader sympathizers in those nonbattleground states that their Green vote won't hurt Mr. Gore. "Vote for Ralph Nader," the ads say. "And don't worry, a vote for Nader is not a vote for Bush."
Nationwide, polls over the weekend continued to show a tight race, with Mr. Gore recovering a bit from a bad stretch last week but Mr. Nader still looming as a problem for him. A tracking poll by Reuters and MSNBC, for example, showed Mr. Bush at 44%, Mr. Gore at 42% and Mr. Nader at 5%. But regionally, Mr. Nader does better, getting the support of 8% of likely voters in the West and Northeast in the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Some Nader voters might not come out of Mr. Gore's ranks, of course, but may be people who wouldn't show up at the polls at all if the Green Party option weren't available. Moreover, Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who co-directs the Journal/NBC News poll, suspects many liberal voters say they will support Mr. Nader simply because they're annoyed with the vice president.
But, Mr. Hart says, if Mr. Gore's appeal finally reaches them, or their dislike of Mr. Bush grows, they're likely to abandon the Greens in the voting booth.
Certainly the possibility of helping Mr. Bush troubles some Nader backers. Mr. Nader is "an advocate for the little man -- that's what really got me on his side," says Jeffrey Ivery, a 39-year-old Cincinnati steelworker who voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. But Mr. Ivery is still unsure how he will vote because he definitely doesn't want Mr. Bush in the White House.
"If Gore doesn't win, I'm going to be really upset," Mr. Ivery says. "He does at least try to look out for us."
The Nader team also exhibits some ambivalence about the possibility of helping Mr. Bush defeat Mr. Gore. When asked about their effect on the race, Nader aides hurriedly argue that many Green voters wouldn't turn out for the other two candidates. Many supporters, they say, are either too young or disaffected to have voted in past elections.
Many in Mr. Nader's audiences are young, but others are old enough to remember his battle with General Motors over car safety in the 1960s. "I wouldn't even vote in this election if he weren't running," says Mark Waller, a 34-year-old computer programmer who showed up at a $100-a-head Nader fund-raiser in Houston.
On the road, Mr. Nader is greeted like a rock star -- 1,000 people at San Antonio College rally in the afternoon, twice that many at the University of Houston the same night, and 15,000 at Madison Square Garden in New York earlier this month.
His Mr. Clean reputation and his central message sell especially well at universities. He argues, in short, that corporations use campaign contributions to buy politicians, who pay business back by ignoring the general public's views on an array of issues, from the environment and poverty to fluoridation and labor abuse in the developing world.
At fund-raisers, press conferences and rallies, he tells voters that in the second debate, Messrs. Gore and Bush agreed with each other dozens of times, showing that there's no real difference between the two. At the University of Houston, the audience erupts into cheers when Mr. Nader accidentally melds his opponents into "George Gore."
In San Antonio, 19-year-old Marcus Denton stands up to assure Mr. Nader: "We know that a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil."