Nader To Dems: Look In Mirror

By David Paul Kuhn,
CBSNews.com Chief Political Writer

Democrats call Nader delusional. He thinks they're hypocrites. For the independent candidate, his long-term goals trump any short-term repercussions.

In a candid discussion with CBSNews.com, Nader says he will not pull himself off ballots in key states, like Florida, no matter what. When pressed, he asserts that even if the polls prior to Election Day indicate clearly that his candidacy reelects Mr. Bush, he will not step aside for the good of the team, in order to help larger liberal causes.

"That's not my team," Nader says. "All they have been doing is losing state legislators, state offices, local offices, congressional offices and the presidency to the worst of the Republican Party, the Gingrich-Tom Delay type."

Especially riled by state ballot confrontations this week with Democratic opponents, Nader says the Democrats "have the nerve to basically say to their supporters, 'Trust us again.' We are not going to trust you again. We are going to take apart the Bush administration and all kinds of ways that the Democrats are too cautious, too unimaginative or too indentured to the same commercial interests that fund the Republicans.

"If they want to pick up some of these issues, if they catch on," Nader continues, he will accept the loss of his liberal supporters. "That's fair play," he adds.

Ralph Nader is mad. He wants Democrats to earn his liberal backers. He refuses to give them away. And although he appreciates a willingness by Sen. John Kerry to reach out to him, the party itself has betrayed its political left for too long, in Nader's view.

He says that even if Kerry embraces liberal issues, "It's words not deeds. We've been around long enough to know the difference." For Nader, the Democratic Party is bankrupt on trust. His supporters, he admits, will make up their own minds.

Many already have. Nader knows this. It's the impetus for his belief that he will take more votes from President Bush – who he calls an "obsessive compulsive syndrome president" – than from Kerry.

"Liberal Democrats who supported us in 2000, a million of them, are deserting us in droves. We have tens of thousands of e-mails, the Nation magazine, etc. So," Nader asks, "why am I higher in the polls than I was in 2000 at this time, slightly?"

His answer: "There are a significant number of independents, liberal Republicans and even conservatives who voted for Bush in 2000, who are furious with him over the following subjects: the huge deficit, the taxpayer subsidies to corporations – they hate that, corporate welfare – the Patriot Act, the sovereignty shredding WTO and NAFTA, which is a big deal in conservative circles."

But just this week, some new polls challenged Nader's view and showed his candidacy harming Kerry. A Washington Post-ABC News nationwide poll had Kerry leading Mr. Bush 48 percent to 44 percent, with 6 percent supporting Nader. If Nader is off the ballot, Kerry's lead over Mr. Bush increases from four to eight points.

In the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, a Quinnipiac University poll shows Kerry ahead of Mr. Bush by a single point, 44 percent to 43, with Nader at 7 percent. With Nader out, Kerry's lead over the president jumps to six points, 49 percent to 43 percent.

Nader waves the polls off. Like most politicians, he believes only the polls he wants to believe. "I can show you a CNN poll four weeks ago where, when I'm in the mix, Kerry does better," he responds.

Vice President Al Gore would have won the 2000 election if Nader had been off the ballot in either Florida or New Hampshire. Nader earned 97,488 votes in Florida; George W. Bush won the state by 537. Nader earned 22,198 votes in New Hampshire; Mr. Bush won that state by 7,211 votes.

Voter News Service exit polling showed that 47 percent of Nader's supporters would have voted for Al Gore while 21 percent would have voted for Mr. Bush. And most polls this year show Nader could have the same impact again.

This is what infuriates Democrats about Nader. They shake their heads. They call him expletives. They think he is a political megalomaniac.

Ardent Democrats are angry because they believe Nader is bereft of any altruistic motives. To Democratic leaders, he is responsible for President Bush's conservative presidency: for the Bush tax cuts, the ballooning deficit, conservative bench appointees, the war in Iraq.

If Nader turns another election in Mr. Bush's favor, Democrats will view him as nothing short of a liberal Judas.

Sound extreme? Not really. At Nader's meeting Wednesday with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, yelling was heard outside the room. African American congressmen urged Nader to leave the race. One woman reportedly shouted, "You can't win!" Nader responded in kind. He refused to leave.

The vitriol between Nader and Democrats is only growing.

"Once again, Nader has put his own personal aspirations ahead of the country's desire for change... We spent three and a half years trying to convince Nader to not run again, any more time is fruitless," says Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000. "We have given Nader more energy, more attention than he disserves.

"A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush," she sternly adds. "It was true in 2000. It's true in 2004."

Republicans agree. Just this week, two conservative groups in Oregon – one of 20 swing states – phoned supporters urging them to attend Nader's convention Saturday in order to get him on the state's presidential ballot, which they feel would draw votes from Kerry and help Mr. Bush.

But Nader is vehement. He says the two major parties don't own American democracy. Nader, who will by most estimates be on at least 45 state ballots come Election Day, says he's fighting for a viable third-party option. His fight is "over decades," he emphasizes, not two election cycles.

This week, Nader announced longtime Green Party activist Peter Camejo as his running mate. As the Green Party was meeting in Milwaukee this weekend, Nader was seeking its backing. He has already earned the support of the largely conservative Reform Party, further evidence to Nader that his candidacy provides a rearguard political attack against Mr. Bush.

But the Greens nominated longtime party activist and Texas attorney David Cobb for president.

Nader made further headlines this week when he urged Kerry to choose John Edwards as his running mate, writing that the North Carolina senator spent years defending the right of Americans to sue corporations.

But in the interview, Nader emphasized that his letter was by no means an indication he would not challenge a Kerry-Edwards ticket. Nader says Edwards is "the carrier, the only carrier," of populist causes. He backs Edwards as a surrogate, not a candidate.

As Election Day nears, Nader is increasingly positioning himself as the only antiwar candidate. He is blunt on Iraq, where Kerry is nuanced. He hopes to gain conservative and liberal support on this issue. But left-leaning voters are far more enraged over the war in Iraq.

In spite of it all, Nader says Democrats should relax. "Bush is self-destructing," he insists.

"[President Bush] is going to self-destruct short of some October surprise," Nader says. "There is nowhere but down for him. There are going to be more casualties, more quagmires, more billions of dollars."

And if he's wrong, Nader asserts, it's the Democrats' own doing, a result of the party's cowardice to push liberal causes. His voice rising, he says, "If somebody did" what he is doing "20 or 30 years ago, maybe the Democrats would have shaped up."

By David Paul Kuhn