Commentary by H.G. Listiak

Tuesday 4/13/2004

Welcome to My World, where consumer crusader Ralph Nader is feeling the heat of his convictions that are now being politicized by the people he seems to agree with the most, the Democrats. Poor Ralph, who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the White House, is being squeezed hard by liberal soft money groups. Nader, an expert consumer advocate, who can tell you which cars, cameras, computers, and soap flakes will or will not work well, is not much of a politician, although he thinks he is, but he does command a certain following of citizens who do go to the polls faithfully. Nader, who ran as a Green Party candidate in 2000 is now an Independent and is blamed for taking votes from Al Gore, thus as the liberals say, giving the election to George Bush. Calling his candidacy destructive, they are all over Nader to abandon his quixotic presidential bid, warning that his presence in the race could ensure the reelection of President Bush. Fifteen very prominent liberal activists, including leaders of Americans for Democratic Action, and Livable World, have sent an almost poison pen letter to Nader, an epistle with an almost threatening tone, calling upon him to stop this destructive effort, the stakes are too high. Nader addresses the 2000 Gore issue by saying Al Gore slipped on about 18 banana peels and the Green Party was only one of them. Kevin Zeese, a Nader spokesman, says that Nader has totally rejected the liberal power play, adding that you have to stand for something, and he thinks these liberal groups with their anybody-but-Bush advocacy are going to get nothing in return. Now I assume that this type of guilt intimidation by these soft money political antagonists with their hidden agendi, dancing around our clean election laws, is legal, but is it ethical? Although I don't agree with Ralph Nader philosophically, I do defend his right as an American to run for office unimpeded by political zealots and paranoids, as I see it ... I'm H.G. Listiak.