Yes, Ralph Nader ran again and you can place bets now that he’ll run in 2012 or beyond, even if he has to be wheeled from appearance to appearance. This year he received a sliver of the kind of support he previously got at the ballot box, which in itself would have been enough to decrease his shrinking legacy. But, on election night 2008, he seemed determined to reduce his legacy even more.
On election night — as even GOP strategist Karl Rove expressed awe at the historical moment and Obama’s achievement — Nader framed Obama’s choice in a way that raised eyebrows. Watch the video below showing Ralph Nader with Fox News’ Shepard Smith, one of the network’s most unpredictable and watchable anchors. Watch Smith frame Nader’s role in 2000 and this year in a way that many voters now feel — and watch his response to Nader’s comment about Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkoB4r9FSzY
PERSONAL NOTE: Watching Ralph Nader now is very painful for many of us who grew up in the 1960s. I can remember driving from my parent’s house in Woodbridge, CT back to Colgate University in Hamilton, New York in a brutal snowstorm, listening to a newscast detail the latest battle of a young crusading Connecticut lawyer named Ralph Nader. Many baby boomers wanted to be just like him. When Nader ran for President in 2000 — like him or not — it was all about content. Since then, Nader seems to be all about someone who craves attention.
His legacy was already diminished by Election Day. His comments here reduce it even more. And, yet, he doesn’t seem to realize the impact of the way he framed his question, and the inappropriateness of his language.
UPDATE: Here’s some other reaction.
Here’s an account of this as it appears in the San Francisco Chronicle:
As if Ralph Nader wasn’t a big enough tool already, he went on Fox News on election night – the very night Barack Obama broke the racial barrier on the presidency – and uttered the words “Uncle Tom.” Not only that, after being called out on the words (which he initially said in a radio interview) by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith – and given a point-blank chance to apologize and take them back, Nader said he wouldn’t. It’s a stunning bit of television and a lot of people missed it. (No doubt a good portion of the Bay Area, not exactly a bastion of Fox News watchers, did). Up until he spewed out the words, the biggest shocker in this scenario was A) That anybody still cared enough to talk to a washed-up political hack like Nader and B) That Nader could actually hear Smith call him on the offensive language. Nader rarely stops his mouth moving – he’s always so caught up in his monotonous blather and meritless belief that he’s making points people want to listen to.
Give Shep Smith a lot of credit here. “Really? Ralph Nader – what was that?” And then he just fried Nader. (I love the look on his face when Nader calls him a bully – it’s that same look people should be giving Nader right about now for completely not getting it.)
Dubious congratulations are in order: Ralph Nader became the first public figure to make an inflammatory public remark about our first African-American president, telling a Fox News affiliate that Barack Obama has to choose between being “Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.”
Grilled by Fox’s Shepard Smith early Wednesday morning, after the election was decided, Nader declined to back down from the remark, which he made in an earlier interview on Election Day.
During the campaign, Nader suggested that Obama was “acting white” by not barnstorming the country and talking about poverty or something. But the irony is that Nader’s one of the sorriest practitioners of ethnic politics out there. “Sorry” in the sense that it never works. He’s run for president four times and each time chosen a hilariously unqualified ethnic minority running mate: Winona LaDuke (American Indian), LaDuke again, Peter Camejo (Hispanic) and Matt Gonzalez (Hispanic).
Nader’s long nightmare is over, in a sense, because I don’t think liberals can stay mad at him when they’ve won the presidency in a rout and he couldn’t stop them. But his race obsession looks even worse compared to Bob Barr. “It just illustrates the tremendous demographic changes, generational changes in this country,” Barr told me last night, discussing Obama’s win. “This really is a very different country, in some ways much better country, than it was several years ago.”
He really does have some psychological attention-craving disorder, the end. The man has saved countless lives over the decades by advocating for safer automobiles, cleaner air, water, and food, worker safety regulations, and most importantly the election of George W. Bush. Now he’s just some crazy racist losing an argument to a relatively mild-mannered Fox News anchor.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.