Ralph Nader

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Ralph Nader (2007)

Ralph Nader [ ɹælf ˈneɪdɚ ] (born February 27, 1934 in Winsted , Litchfield County , Connecticut ) is an American consumer advocate and politician.

Education and consumer advocates

Nader was born the son of Lebanese immigrants. He first studied at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University , where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1955 . He then studied law at Harvard , where he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) in 1958. Since 1959 he worked as a lawyer in Hartford . From 1961 to 1963 he lectured at the University of Hartford , and from 1967 to 1968 at Princeton.

In 1965 he published his book Unsafe at Any Speed , in which he argued that many American automobiles (especially those from General Motors ) had design weaknesses. In particular, Nader criticized the lack of protection for passengers in overturning convertibles . The book resulted in hearings in Congress and a number of bills designed to improve the safety of motor vehicles. As a result of these laws, American convertibles were no longer manufactured for six years after 1976. Furthermore, as early as 1975, it was mandatory for newly registered cars that the bumpers of all vehicles had to touch each other at a certain height and were not allowed to deform in a collision of up to 5 mph. He also argued against the rear engine , which would have hit the VW Beetle hard, as well as the Porsche company with the Porsche 911 , whose largest sales market was the USA with a 75% share.

In 1971, Nader started his Public Citizen initiative , a consumer rights enforcement organization that relies primarily (some say: unfairly) on the work of volunteers and low paid workers.

He is considered a symbol of the left alternatives in the United States. As a consumer advocate , he fought against the software giant Microsoft in the late 1990s .

Presidential candidacies

Election 1996

Election campaign sticker for Nader 1996

In 1996, at a nomination convention in Los Angeles, several state associations of various green parties named Nader the "green" but formally independent presidential candidate for the same year election. In 22 states he reached the necessary quorum for candidacy . According to his own account, he only spent $ 5,000 on his election campaign. He received support for his few public appearances mainly from numerous local initiatives by environmental and consumer advocates. In the presidential election on November 5, he won a fourth place behind Ross Perot from the Reform Party with 685,297 or 0.71% of the valid votes cast .

Election 2000

Ralph Nader

In 2000 he ran for the first time as a presidential candidate for the American Green Party against George W. Bush and Al Gore of the Democratic Party and won 3 million votes (2.74%). His candidacy was heavily criticized by the Democratic Party, fearing that it would attract votes that would otherwise benefit Gore. Nader himself justified his candidacy, among other things, by pointing out that the differences between Bush and Gore were too small to justify his support for Gore. He was supported by Eddie Vedder , Ben Harper , Patti Smith and Michael Moore , among others . The latter set out his reasons for this in his book Stupid White Men .

In the election, Nader was, as predicted, the “ tip on the scales ”. In the state of Florida alone, 600 of the 97,488 Nader votes would have been enough for the Democratic candidate Gore to defeat Bush. In the event that Nader had not run, according to the election analysis, 25% of the voters would have voted Naders Bush, while 38% of his voters would have voted Gore. The rest would have gone to the non-voters. If these numbers are to be believed, Al Gore would have been elected president in 2000 without Nader's candidacy. However, this consideration applies in a similar way to candidates from other small, hopeless parties.

With such a close result predicted by the area code predictions, some of Gore's supporters tried to swap votes across states. In doing so, the electoral system of the USA ( majority voting ) should be outwitted, in which if there is a relative majority of a candidate in a state, all votes of that state go to the winner, whereby a single vote "counts" more in a state with a narrow election result ( swing state ) than in states with clear election results. Because of this, some Democrats in states with clear election results tried to swap their votes with Nader's supporters in swing states . Nader himself did not support such efforts and also competed in every state.

Election 2004

On February 22, 2004, Nader again announced his presidential candidacy. On June 21, 2004, he named the prominent Green politician Peter Camejo as his vice-presidential candidate. However, the American Greens decided on June 26, 2004 because of the tight election results in 2000 against again supporting Nader and his runner-up as an independent candidate team, and decided instead to nominate David Cobb as a presidential candidate. The Democratic Party had feared that Nader might weaken its own candidate again - this time John Kerry . This time, however, Nader's candidacy was not decisive because he received only 0.4% of all votes and in 2004 there was no state in which he could deprive the Democrats of victory. The main reason for his dramatic decline in votes was the so-called "anything-but-Bush" attitude of many Nader voters in 2000, who voted for Kerry in 2004 for this reason.

Nader caused a stir during the election campaign, among other things, with statements in which he described US President Bush and the members of Congress as "puppets of Israel ". Some Republican Party supporters supported Nader's candidacy by signing up on his supporter lists required to run in each state. They hoped that this would weaken the Democrat challenger Kerry.

2008 election

Ralph Nader (2007)

On January 30, 2008, Ralph Nader founded a committee to sound out the chances of a renewed candidacy. As a motivation, he cited the proximity of the Democratic candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton , to the political establishment and economic interest groups. His announcement followed John Edwards' departure from the running for the Democratic Party candidacy.

On February 24, 2008, Nader announced that he would run as an independent candidate in the 2008 presidential election. He received 0.5% of the vote and no elector , but was still third behind Obama and McCain .

Works

  • Unsafe at Any Speed , Grossman Publishers, 1965. (Numerous reprints, including ISBN 1-56129-050-5 ).
  • Crashing the Party - How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for President. St. Martin's Press, 2002, ISBN 0-312-28433-0 .

Web links

Commons : Ralph Nader  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Ralph Nader  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Porsche saga (minute 3:45)
  2. ↑ Cf. Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and the 3rd parties in the US election campaign 1996. Feature by Paul Nellen, DLRadio Berlin - "Weltzeit", Sept. 1996
personal data
SURNAME Nader, Ralph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American consumer advocate and politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Winsted , Litchfield County , Connecticut