The funny thing is, I'm more inclined I think to support a Nader independent campaign than any clown the Greens now decide to put up (and I promise you, if any, they will be a clown). Although, this does make me a bit irritated with Nader. This, IMO, may be his own cowardly way of not running at all, and steping back for his buddy Dennis Kucinich (as if that gravy train is going anywhere....right, delegates get to write the party platform, blah blah).
Oh, and I can't stand Ben Manski.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Dec22.html
Nader Rejects Green Party Backing
Run for Presidency Still Possible as Independent Candidate
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 23, 2003; Page A05
Ralph Nader, whose 2000 campaign many Democrats believe cost former vice
president Al Gore the presidency, has decided not to run for president next
year as the candidate of the Green Party but is still contemplating a
presidential race as an independent, a Nader associate said yesterday.
Ross Mirkarimi, who ran Nader's presidential campaign in California, said
Nader recently called him to announce his intentions and is in the process
of informing national Green Party officials that he will not be their
standard-bearer in 2004.
"My understanding is that, if Nader runs, he does not want to run a mediocre
campaign, and he is trying to assess the political and resource variables on
how he would run the most serious campaign possible to unseat George Bush,"
Mirkarimi said. He said there appears to be "no consensus" within the Green
Party over its approach to the 2004 campaign.
Ben Manski, a co-chairman and spokesman for the Green Party, confirmed last
night that Nader will not seek the party's presidential nomination. Manski
said it was not clear to him why Nader had made that decision.
"What is clear is that the nomination of the Green Party was certainly
something he had an excellent chance of securing, and I think this is a
serious mistake on his part," he said. "If he does choose to run as an
independent, his candidacy will be seriously weakened from what it would
have been had he chosen to seek the Green Party nomination."
The divisions within the party were evident at a national meeting in July.
The meeting was closed to the news media, but participants said it centered
on party strategy in 2004.
Those present divided themselves into three groups: Those who wanted to run
the strongest possible campaign throughout the country, those who wanted to
run only in those areas where the Green Party candidate would not be a
threat to cost the Democratic Party nominee electoral votes in the contest
with Bush, and those who wanted to skip the 2004 campaign entirely and throw
Green Party support behind the Democratic nominee.
Participants said the overwhelming majority present favored running a strong
candidate nationally in 2004, but some in the party strongly disagree with
that view and believe the party's top priority next year should be the
defeat of Bush.
The division reflects, in part, the extraordinarily close outcome of the
2000 election. Nader, nationally known because of his work as a consumer
advocate, won almost 3 million votes as the Green Party candidate -- four
times as many as he received in 1996, when he first ran for president.
Many Democrats believe the bulk of Nader's voters would have supported Gore
if the Green Party candidate was not a third alternative, and that this cost
Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000, the electoral votes he needed to win
the White House. In Florida, which decided the election after the Supreme
Court halted a vote recount, Bush defeated Gore by 537 votes. Nader won
97,488 votes in Florida.
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