Today’s winner is the Palm Beach Post editorial board. They get the award for the vindictive, bitter editorial they ran this morning titled ‘Nader: Wrong in 2000, and delusional in 2008’. Maybe the low point of the Post’s diatribe comes when they write-
Mr. Nader says one reason he’s running now is that Democrats have not forced President Bush to end the war in Iraq. In fact, if Mr. Nader had not run in 2000, America would not now be bogged down in Iraq – the wrong war in the wrong place. Mr. Nader, demonstrating either that he is out of touch with reality or does not care about the truth, denies any responsibility for the Democrats’ loss in 2000 and thus any responsibility for the thousands killed and wounded and the hundreds of billions wasted.
Blame Nader, Blame Teresa Lapore, Blame the US Supreme Court, blame the voters in 2000 that don’t have the Post’s ‘wisdom’. I feel a tad bit sorry for Randy Schultz and company that they still can’t get over the election. Maybe this will help them get over it, I name the Palm Beach Post editorial board today’s Knucklehead of the Day.
The entire editorial is below the fold. You may want have eyewash handy for afterwards.
Forty-five years after making his reputation as a consumer advocate, Ralph Nader is as deceitful and arrogant as the corporate titans he used to expose.
Mr. Nader is selling politics rather than cars, but Americans learned after 2000 that his brand of false advertising can have fatal consequences. That year, Mr. Nader ran for president as the Green Party candidate. He drew nearly 97,000 votes in Florida, most of them siphoned from Democrat Al Gore. If Mr. Nader had not participated, Florida’s electoral votes and the presidency would have gone to Mr. Gore, who would have won the state without controversy. The butterfly ballot would be mostly forgotten.
In 2000, Mr. Nader’s main campaign theme was that there was no real difference between the Democratic and Republican candidates. In retrospect, that statement sounds as ludicrous as the denials by the auto executives in the 1960s that they couldn’t make the safety changes Mr. Nader advocated without making cars prohibitively expensive. Unfazed as only someone blinded by ego can be, Mr. Nader ran again in 2004. On Sunday, he announced that he will try yet again. Barack Obama had the most appropriate comment: “Eight years later,” Sen. Obama said, “people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about.”
Mr. Nader says one reason he’s running now is that Democrats have not forced President Bush to end the war in Iraq. In fact, if Mr. Nader had not run in 2000, America would not now be bogged down in Iraq – the wrong war in the wrong place. Mr. Nader, demonstrating either that he is out of touch with reality or does not care about the truth, denies any responsibility for the Democrats’ loss in 2000 and thus any responsibility for the thousands killed and wounded and the hundreds of billions wasted.
Announcing his candidacy, Mr. Nader also chided Democrats for failing to enact “decent” energy policy. That criticism simply reminds voters that they could have had a president leading the fight against global warming rather than a president who spent most of his two terms denying the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2000, Mr. Nader received 2.7 percent of the vote. In 2004, he received just 0.3 percent. Mr. Nader blames the steep decline on Democratic legal maneuvering that kept him off the ballot in several key states. In 2004, though, Republicans – especially in Florida – also worked to get Mr. Nader on the ballot. The more important reason for the dropoff in support was Mr. Nader revealing that he has become a self-important fool. The Nader brand used to mean something. These days, there’s nothing new inside the box.
