What has Nader done over the past 10 or so years to help the progressive cause other than steal votes ?

Question

from the Democrats?

Answer 1

Nothing.  And though Nader is a good man, in my view, he has failed to undertand one key fact:  you cannot start a political party or movement from the top down.  You don't START by running for president.  You start at ground level, building grassroots support, getting local, county, city and state people elected and building an infrastructure for your party.  Then you work your way up to running a presidential candidate.

Answer 2

Product safety

Nader has done more to improve the quality of life in America than anyone.

Most modern inventions would not exist if it wasn't for Nader's work to improve the Health and Safety in the work place.

Answer 3

I love Ralph Nader.  He is an idiot, who only pulls a few votes, but you are right...at least 90% of those are from dems.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, RALPH!

dadvice...um...socialism is to the LEFT of the democratic party.  Obama is WAY LEFT!  His stance on Iraq is due to circumstances.  Nobody in their right mind would pull troops out of Iraq at this point.  The surge has been so successful that Obama looks like an idiot trying to avoid questions about it.  Pulling troops out right now would lose elections for dems for the next 20 years based on that stupid action alone.

tipps...you are why dems do not win presidential elections.  You keep looking for someone further out on the left wing.  Well, you will find trouble finding someone farther left than Obama.  He is going to lose because Americans will not accept socialism, but he dems will probably find someone farther left for 2012.  It is called habit insanity.  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

As for your claim that the republicans cheated in the elections...you are aware that the only proven voter fraud was in Washington State where a bunch of dead registered dems voted for the democrat governor.

Answer 4

Look it sounds to me like you're treating Nader and his supporters just like your treating the people who support Senator Clinton.  Don't be mad because your party was disorganized to begin with and now it's starting to become a liability.  Let the people vote however they want you tyrant.

Answer 5

I think Nader is a ego maniac whack job who needs to exit politics.  The United States can thank Ralph Nader for setting up the crisis that led to illegal appointing of Junior in 2000.    

Answer 6

Nothing at all, really. He should get back to what he did really well, consumer advocacy.

Answer 7

He's been great to Democrats.

He is why McCain is up in Colorado.

Answer 8

"Stealing votes" I love it!  

The repubs cheat their azzes off in 2000 and 2004 but no, Nader is the election thief.  Good one!

Anyhow here is your answer, if you actually really wanted to ask that question:

McCain represents the right.

Obama represents the middle.

Somebody has to represent the left, that main person right now is Nader.  But our country is too right wing right now to have any interest in left/progressive parties.

Answer 9

If Nadar doesn't press the issues who will?

The Dems have left their platform of peace and moved to the right. Obama's Iraq policy in Afghanistan and Iraq now match that of McCain.

The Dems fight against drilling for oil has moved to the right to match that of McCain.

Answer 10

stealing votes from so-called "democrats" such as the likes of Gore, Kerry, Obama and Biden is all Nader could do to help America's elections. Nader works hard to protect us from criminal corporations and capitalist, which is the same corporations and capitalist that the Dems embrace

Answer 11

Quite a lot actually and he didn't steal anything. The word stealing assumes possession, those votes don't belong to the Democratic party but exclusively to the American people and they have every right to vote the way they want including third party

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb200...

In my view the Democratic party doesn't deserve better, I'm really surprised by your additional details. To think the Democratic party can ever be a progressive alternative is naive and your statements about "stealing "votes highly reactionairy. Those votes belong to the people, not to a party that sells them out every single time.

"The Democratic Party successfully exploited the political vulnerabilities of a population subjected to decades of right-wing propaganda, media disinformation and the absence of any genuine opposition to political reaction within either of the two parties.

In this cynical and reactionary operation, it was rendered indispensable assistance by the milieu of middle-class protest groups, ex-radicals and left liberals who single-mindedly worked to channel the antiwar movement behind the Democratic Party, insisting that no struggle against the war was permissible or legitimate outside the orbit of the two-party system.

Outfits such as United for Peace and Justice and the Nation magazine opposed any struggle that sought to mobilize mass antiwar sentiment independently of the capitalist parties and link it to a socialist program to unite the working class against attacks on social conditions and democratic rights. By virtue of their boundless political ignorance and opportunism, they undermined the very movement they purported to lead.

Now, many of these “left” groups are wringing their hands and expressing dismay over the Democratic candidate’s war-mongering statements. Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the Nation writes, “it is troubling that as he shows sound thinking on Iraq, Obama also continues to talk about escalating the US military presence in Afghanistan.” She pleads with the Democratic candidate to “think long and hard” about “extricating the US from one disastrous war and heading into another.”

This statement combines self-delusion with deceit and outright reaction. As Obama himself has insisted, he has been calling for military escalation in Afghanistan for more than a year. Moreover, commending Obama’s policy in Iraq as “sound” constitutes support for an ongoing US military presence and the permanent reduction of the country to the status of a US protectorate.

Such appeals to the Democratic candidate only serve to encourage illusions that he can be shifted by pressure from below to adopt a less militaristic course, and that the Democratic Party or a section of it can serve as a vehicle for peace.

Hostile to Marxism, these elements are incapable of making a class analysis of the Democratic Party, one of the oldest capitalist parties in the world.

It is necessary to draw the lessons of these critical experiences. The Democratic Party has long been the burial ground of movements of popular protest and opposition, from the Populist movement of the 1890s, to the industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be ended, and future wars prevented, only through a decisive and irreparable break with the Democratic Party and the independent mobilization of the American and international working class in a struggle against war and the capitalist system that is its root cause.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul200...

Answer 12

The reason you don't know is that it isn't reported, and you haven't bothered to find out.