I voted for Nader in 2000. I don't regret it. But then again, I live in Massachusetts, so I didn't figure my vote was going to give the state's electoral votes to Bush. In fact, where I live, on Martha's Vineyard, I believe that Bush came in third place last time. So it was clearly a "message" vote.
Now then, for whom am I going to vote in 2004? Am I going to send another "message"? Read the extended copy for answer! May we have a drum roll, please? And that's not all! Within you'll find the thrilling story of the time I actually shook Ralph's hand!
Well I'm going to vote for Kerry.
That's not very exciting, sorry. One of these days I might even get around to changing my party affiliation back from Green to Dem. (Or maybe I'll register Republican, just to confuse them and get them to spend $$ on me. . . I diress).
I voted for Nader because I liked a lot of what he had to say (and still says) about corporations and the threat they pose to democracy. I also voted for him because he was the Green Party candidate, and I believed at the time that the Green Party might make have a real and beneficial effect on the moribund two-party system.
I voted for Nader because Gore never gave me a reason to vote for him. He ran a crappy "Bush lite" campaign, and I really did see little difference between what he had on offer and what Bush had on offer.
Finally, I was really, really offended by the way Nader was kept out of the corporate-sponsored debates, at how he was intimidated and harrassed at the debate that took place in Boston, and at how my daughter was intimidated and harrassed ("free speech zone") style when she went to a pro-democracy rally at the debate site, and at how I was intimidated and harrassed (in a way that Bush and Gore supporters were not) when I went to pick up my daughter from the far parking lot that the into which the police had corralled her and the kids she was with. I really felt like I was in Belgrade or something. That night I decided that the two-party thing was a rigged game and that I wasn't going to play it.
Of course if Gore had made one Goddamn speech with 1/8 the passion of his speeches to MoveOn I probably would have gotten over my pique and voted for him. He never did. Just stupid "lock box" crap, day in, day out.
Obviously everything is different now. We're in a "fly-the-flag-upside-down" crisis, and I think it's unconscionable to do anything that will increase the odds of Bush getting elected. I think Nader supporters in 2004 are no friends of ours; I say the hell with them. Four years ago one could make the case that the differences between Bush and Gore weren't significant; I don't have a big quarrel with Nader voters from 2000, even in states like Florida. But anybody who says that there's no difference between Bush and Kerry is lying, stupid or nuts.
I shook hands briefly with Nader when when he gave a talk at the BioDevastation conference/rally at Northeastern University in late spring, 2000, right before the Green Party convention. Mainly, I wanted to put a copy of my book in his hands. I figured that it might turn into some publicity. So mainly I was pimping. But I also liked his talk, and so my handshake was genuine. His was cold --litteraly, his hand was like ice -- and he looked in another direction. He's like the Anti-Clinton. What a cold fish!
I've always thought the guy would make an absolutely horrible, disastrous president; as bad as or maybe even worse than Bush, if such a thing is conceivable. He's as weird and self-contained as Bush is, and I find them both creepy in similar ways. However, much of his political analysis is right on the money. So that's what I voted for.
I'm also going to vote for Kerry because I like Kerry. I like him more than Clinton or any other democratic candidate since McGovern. I think he's smart, experienced, subtle, hard working, willling to learn, articulate and pragmatic. And I also think he has steel balls.
So anyway, like many a Nader 2K person -- including some of his former closest aides -- I have officially renounced Nader, and after the damage he's already done this year I cannot imagine anything he could do to ever make me give him the time of day ever again. As a self-publisher, I'm really kind of appalled that Nader, of all people, has signed a book deal with Rupert Murdoch. What a fucking hypocrite. In the immortal words of Dick Cheney, he should go fuck himself.