I was a subscriber to the Nation back when Nader ran in 1996, and as I recall it one of the discussions in the magazine along with some other leftist publications was the frustration they felt that Nader wasn't running much of a campaign if in fact he was campaigning at all in 1996. I very much wanted to vote for him because I was frustrated with Clinton's DLC version of the Democratic Party, but Nader didn't seem to care enough about his campaign to actually run so I figured why should I?
In 1996 Nader could have run a spirited enough campaign to have given the Green Party a chance at the 5% vote threshold they needed without throwing the election to the Republicans. 4 years later, in a very different election landscape, Nader decided to run a vigorous campaign, deliberately targeting key battleground states like Florida and Oregon. I can only think that Nader's goal was to make the Democrats lose the election.
One of the reasons why I am still deeply angry at Nader and many of his supporters is that they act as though there was only a possible positive outcome for his candidacy and there was no possible negative for his 2000 run. In this sense Nader and his followers resemble the pro-Iraq invasion crowd many of whom still continue to act as though whatever happens in Iraq can only happen within the parameters of their pre-invasion goals.
Nader was an admirable person who achieved a great deal, and will probably still be remembered 100 years from now for more than the 2000 election. But most lives and careers don't end well, and Nader's doesn't appear to be an exception. When Nader ran in 2000 he claimed he was doing so because he was trying to introduce issues that were being ignored by the big parties. But unlike some serious 3rd party runs in the past, such as Perot in 1992 or Thurmond in 1948 (they don't all have to be admirable), I really don't know what he stood for in 2000, what big issues he was introducing other than corporations and the 2 main parties are terrible. But his run in 2004 and his upcoming campaign seem to be designed either to pretend like he wasn't a spoiler in 2000 or as ego trips, possibly both since by 2004 anyone could see that there was a clear difference between the Democrats and the Republicans and the best thing in the short-term for progressives was to stop Bush. When Noam Chomsky comes out against you, that's a bad sign.
