James K. Glassman at the American Enterprise Institute runs the numbers in "Nader: Now More Than Ever."
In 2000, Nader received 2.7 percent of the vote. The latest ABC News-Washington Post poll, released April 20, gives him 6 percent. The latest Gallup Poll, taken April 5-8, gives him 4 percent. A Newsweek poll of 18-to-29 year-olds found 12 percent backing Nader, "at the expense of John Kerry." And Democrats have to be worried about a survey in New Hampshire last month that found Nader with 8 percent.Posted by Vanderleun at April 21, 2004 10:16 AM | TrackBackBut they should worry more as they look at Iraq.
The war there is not going well. In the first 18 days of April, 99 U.S. soldiers were killed, and, at that rate, another 1,000 will die before the election.
But the beneficiary, ultimately, may be Bush. Kerry's position on the war is not much different from the President's--except that Kerry says he would manage it better and make it more international. Nader, by contrast, is fervently anti-war: "I have been against this war from the beginning. We must not waste lives in order to control and waste more oil." Nader even believes that Bush should be impeached because he "led the United States into an illegal, unconstitutional war in Iraq."
Nader calls Bush a "messianic militarist," and in a letter on his website, he writes that, just as during the conflict in Vietnam in 1968, when two pro-war candidates--Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey--were running for president, today we have, similarly, Bush and Kerry. Nader warns students that "machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place."
It is not far-fetched to imagine that, if the situation in Iraq does not improve this summer, a real anti-war movement will build in this country. So far, anti-war protesters have mainly been led by an unattractive old-left group called International ANSWER.
But imagine an anti-war movement centered on Ralph Nader, an untouchable, unpandering liberal hero for four decades. For Americans passionately opposed to the war in Iraq, a vote for Nader would not be a vote wasted. To the contrary, it would provide the only opportunity in November for registering a serious protest--one that could, in their minds, ultimately lead to the war's end.
In early April, Gallup found that 28 percent of those surveyed wanted all U.S. troops out of Iraq, compared with 16 percent in January. If the war deteriorates, the sentiment for pulling out can only rise, and Nader (that is, Bush) will be the beneficiary. He's the only anti-war game in town.
