By Steven T. Jones
I’ve never apologized for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 — even as I criticized his decision to run this year and that of Matt Gonzalez to join him as his running mate (for which I was widely criticized by progressives) — but I’m tempted to do so now. While I have enormous respect for Nader’s accomplishments as a consumer activist and populist hero, I do regret helping to elevate him to a position where he can do such damage to the progressive movement with reckless, divisive, racially insensitive remarks like those he made on election night, when he equated Barack Obama with Uncle Tom.
When even Fox News thinks that you’re being a racist and callous jerk, it’s probably time to gracefully withdraw from public life, as I hope Nader now does. He got about 1 percent of the national vote, just under that in California and just over it in San Francisco, where his choice of Gonzalez should have made him do better if there was any productive role for his campaign to play in national politics. Electoral reform is still an important issue, and I believe in breaking the lock of the two-party system and its sponsorship by corporate America, but Nader as a candidate is clearly no longer the best vehicle for that message. In fact, he’s now undercutting it. Goodbye, Ralph, I’m sorry it had to end like this.