By Samuel Rubenfeld
Ralph Nader announced he is running for President Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He has run for president in the last five election cycles, dating back to 1992.
“Dissent is the mother of ascent,” he said. ” And in that context, I have decided to run for president.”
Many Democrats blame Nader for spoiling their chances at the presidency in 2000, when then-Gov. George Bush beat Vice President Al Gore by only 537 votes in Florida. Nader ran in 2000 as the nominee for the Green Party, and he received nearly 98,000 votes in Florida, many of whom said they would have voted for Gore if Nader wasn’t running, according to exit polls take in 2000.
In 2004, Nader ran as an Independent, but he also received the endorsement of the Reform Party. He received 0.3 percent of the vote nationally in 2004.
“He wants a perfect candidate, which he assumes is him,” said Nicholas Bond, a junior and president of the College Democrats of Hofstra University. “[Nader’s] really doing it because he feels like he has been fundamentally irrelevant since he wrote ‘Unsafe at any Speed.'”
The Democratic candidates were quick to condemn Nader’s announcement. “”I remember when he ran before. It didn’t turn out very well for anybody — especially our country, ” said Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.).
Sen. Barack Obama criticized Nader when asked about his possible candidacy earlier in the weekend. “My sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don’t listen and adopt all of his policies, thinks you’re not substantive,” Obama told reporters.
Republican Mike Huckabee welcomed Nader to the race on Sunday in an interview on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “Well, I think it always would probably pull votes away from the Democrats, not the Republicans,” he said. “So naturally Republicans would welcome his entry into the race and hope that maybe a few more will join in.”
Nader, on “Meet the Press,” called Obama a “person of substance” who has “run a very good tactical campaign.” But Nader added: “His better instincts have been censored, I think, by himself.”