Talk:Ralph Nader

Template:Potuspov Should we change or move the phrase about arab americans liking nader? it seems out of place with no source.

A LOT of this article is lifted from britannica.

Dinopup

I deleted the link from "consumer" in the phrase "consumer rights activist". The link was pointing to a not-yet-existant entry for "consumerism". Why? Well, first, although Ralph Nader may not be a big fan of "consumerism", this is not an important fact in the first sentence you learn about him. More importantly, I think a link would be better made to a page on "consumer rights activism", a phrase which may not be intuitively obvious to everyone. I have not made such a link, because I don't think such an article exists yet, and I don't want to write it at this time. -Ryguasu

DanKeshet: that sentence you separated into two did look less than ideal. Semicolons don't always imply a run-on, though. In particular, if two sentences are related - e.g. if the second provides evidence to support the claim made by the first -, then a semi-colon can be a reasonable way of connecting them. -Ryguasu

I change the word "America" ,as sugested in the United Sates page,to a more proper name of United States Cuye

Does anybody want to do anything with that dangling link corporatizing the dictionary or should we just delete it? 15 October 2003

This page is suffering from a massive case of External Link-itis. RickK 05:35, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I am so mad at Ralph Nader! If by chance I add anything to this article, revert it immediately because it will be steeped in POV. Kingturtle 19:50, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Not running on Green ticket

Has any reasoning been presented, by Nader or others, for why he is choosing to run indepedently instead of for the Greens?

Because the Green Party refuses to back his candidacy. To quote an AP story:

Even the Green Party, whose banner Nader carried four years ago, chose to focus on its own priorities.

"Our midterm goal is the creation of a multiparty political system and the participation of a strong Green Party in that system," said Ben Manski, the party's co-chairman."

Sincerely, Kingturtle 23:31, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Nader is not running on the Green ticket because they are not choosing a candidate (or even if they will run one) until their national convention in June. This would be too late in Nader's opinion to run a serious campaign in part because it would mean missing some ballot access petition deadlines. SonofRage

Photo is out of date, arguably POV

The photo in this entry is much more flattering to Nader than he actually looks, thereby giving the impression that he is a rational, intelligent person and not the egomaniacal, cadaverous shell that he is. The photo below is about as flattering of a recent photo as I could find, and you'll see that even it is many times less attractive than the airbrushed one that exists in this entry now: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040222/photos_pl_afp/040222200007_st14n5qg_photo1

Can someone find a non-copyrighted photo of Nader that actually represents the way he really looks today?

Moncrief, 00:03, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

While the above seems like a crank comment, he actually makes a valid point. (Full disclosure - I'm the one who posted the current photo). Nadar recently came to our campus. A friend of mine, one of the members of the campus greens, described him as looking like "Death warmed over". →Raul654 00:08, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Your friend flatters Nader. Moncrief 00:10, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A quick google image search for "Ralph nader gov" didn't find any really good (IE, large closeups) of Nader. Would you like to suggest anything? →Raul654 00:14, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

I'll do some searching, but not on a full stomach. Moncrief 00:30, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Would photos from his campaign website be fair use? RickK 01:20, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Under the new fair use guidelines as required by Jimbo, we would have to search for free alternatives first, request permission from all possible sources etc.—Eloquence

Its not like kerry or bush ever appear anywhere "un-airbrushed"

Dear friends, what flatters me is a discussion about how to search for a picture that shows the person like "Death warmed over", or similar, "the egomaniacal, cadaverous shell that he is" in the name of NPOV !!!!

We will use a photo of Ronald Reagan in his hospital bed with alzaimer? or a photo of Mae West when she was 85? Milton 14:47, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

On a related note, Martha Stewart looked a lot more dog-earred after the court case than she does in our article. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:38, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Photos: A modest proposal

All Wikipedia biographical pages should have an associated image gallery, such as Ralph Nader(images). In the case of the image pages for males, I suggest that Wikipedia develop a new Reality TV show in which the the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is televised while they discuss the available uploaded images and decide which one is most flattering for each biographical page in Wikipedia....that "most flattering" image would be placed on the main page for each person in Wikipedia.

Oh further consideration, I oppose changing the image on the grounds that its flattering. Unless someone comes up with a better reason, I think the pic should stay. →Raul654 19:30, Mar 23, 2004 (UTC)

2000 Election

Does anyone feel that the statement "Gore would have won the election if the Nader voters had all shown up (unlikely without Nader) and voted for Gore (less unlikely)" is slightly misleading? It basically says that Gore would have needed all (or nearly all) of Nader's votes to win, which certainly would be an unlikely scenario, when, in fact, Gore would have needed only 1% of Nader's 97,488 votes in Florida to win, using the current counts. That's a big difference, and far from being "unlikely" I would tend to think of it as extremely likely that he would have gotten that 1% of Nader's support. And keep in mind I am not talking about 1% of THE vote, but 1% of Nader's 1.63% of the vote. (Of course, this would assume that in a Naderless race Bush would get 0% of votes that would have otherwise gone to Nader, which I would think rather likely.) Any comments?

Actually, some Nader voters were expressing their disgust with the Democratic Party and would indeed have voted for Bush in Nader's absence. Nevertheless, you don't need to assume that Bush would get 0%, only that the amount Gore would have gained from a Nader withdrawal (Gore's share of the Nader vote minus Bush's share) would have exceeded Bush's margin over Gore. I've included a quotation from Nader's own website that gives the key number (Gore share minus Bush share) as 13%, which would be enough to swing Florida but not New Hampshire. Of course, the exact share would probably vary somewhat from state to state, but only about 1% would be needed to swing Florida. With the national average at 13%, I can't imagine that Florida was below 1%. JamesMLane 10:28, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Most political analysts and experts believe that Nader threw the election to Bush - this paragraph makes it sound like he entered the election in order to make sure that Bush won it. "Throwing the election" has the feel of losing on purpose. I'm deleting that sentence until somebody can come up with other wording. RickK | Talk 05:43, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, arguments about a GOP president energizing progressives to the contrary...I'll change it to "caused Bush to win the election". Meelar 05:45, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"When challenged with complaints that he was taking away votes from Al Gore, Nader argued at times that he was trying to save the Democratic Party, and at other times, that he wanted to destroy it."

The only quote in Lexis Nexis in which Ralph Nader uses the word Democratic and destroy is this one:

"I don't think that's going to happen. The two Republican Justices, O'Connor and Souter, three times in the last 10 years had a chance to add to a majority reversal of Roe versus Wade and they declined. I just think this is settled policy in this country and Democratic politicians are scaring the women's movement on that issue. I've heard from so many Republican operatives who say to me privately: If the Republican Party is ever responsible for reversing Roe versus Wade, it would destroy the party. And I believe it would." --Dvogel 16:27, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the statement "Nader caused Bush to win the election." can be quantitatively substantiated, as it can be substantially argued that if Florida was not in violation of election laws and a disproportionate number of democratic voters were not disenfranchised, Gore would have won, and thus, in a legitimate i.e. fair count of votes, Gore actually did win, even with the loss of votes to Nader, controversial judicial rulings that "because florida was in violation of the equal protection (constitutional) ammendment, the count should be accepted as legitimate." notwithstanding. Kevin Baas | talk 16:50, 2004 Sep 25 (UTC)

External links

The extlinks are currently unbalanced. The two pro- sites are official, whereas there are five (necessarily unofficial) anti- sites. Would it not be fairer to add one or two unofficial pro- sites, if they exist? Pcb21| Pete 08:51, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ballot access

The issue of whether Nader gets on the ballot in each state certainly merits discussion here, but to give so much detail about Florida seems inappropriate. There's no particular reason to believe that Florida will be particularly important in 2004, as compared with other states considered to be "in play". (Of course, it's more important than states like New York and Texas, where Nader can't possibly swing the election.) Is there any reason to discuss how the court interpreted Florida's ballot access law? Won't the article get cluttered if we try to do that for every state where Nader's ballot status is litigated? JamesMLane 03:47, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is more deserving of discusssion because of the historically-persistent controversial nature of florida election processes and florida state government. (it dates much further back than the 2000 election). Kevin Baas | talk 20:48, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

In 1992 Nader was not on the ballot in NH and he did campaign there, as a write-in candidate. Pimpalicious 7 October 2004 5:22 (UCT)

The ballot access discussion in this article is weak, still reflecting the sporadic way it was assembled (although also, to be fair, reflecting the constant turmoil of court decisions and appeals). After the election we can go back and report how many ballots he was on. JamesMLane 04:17, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nader's Republican allies

An anonymous editor deleted a lot of information that reflects badly on Nader, such as his abandonment by his former running mate Winona LaDuke. I've restored it. It's certainly notable.

After the discussion about Republicans actively petitioning to get Nader on the ballot, the anon added this assertion:

The Nader campaign, however, has consistantly refused to accept all such organized help, [1] and Nader decries such strategies as "barnacle politics."

The cited link to Nader's campaign website doesn't support any claim that Nader has rejected petitioning help. It refers only to financial contributions, not petitioning. In fact, here's what really happened in one hotly contested swing state, Michigan:

Nader campaign spokesman Kevin Zeese initially took a principled stand, telling Associated Press last week that the campaign would not accept the GOP's help: "We won't take any signatures from them." But within hours he flip-flopped, AP reported, saying the campaign might accept the Republican signatures if state officials did not certify Nader as the nominee of the Reform Party in Michigan, which is split into two factions.

Yesterday, team Nader made it official: They'll accept the "independent" ballot line provided by the Republican signatures in case they fail to get the Reform Party nomination: "We have to get on the ballot somehow," said Zeese. [2]

Accordingly, I've deleted the claim that Nader's campaign consistently refused to accept Republican petitioning help. JamesMLane 04:17, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

JamesMLane, I am not convinced. Please supply more proof. 216.153.214.94 03:59, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nader and "coordinated" Republican petitioning help in Michigan

As I understand the 2004 Michigan ballot access story concerning Ralph Nader, the Michigan Secretary of State refused to accept Nader's nomination by the Reform Party. A federal court lawsuit ensued, with Democratic Party lawyers working to make sure Nader's name would not appear on the ballot.

At one point, a group of Republicans organized to gather petition signatures for Nader. Nader's campaign declined to coordinate with any organized Republican efforts, but Nader eventually accepted these signatures when it became clear that this was the only possible way to gain ballot access.

Ironically (in light of the Democratic Party's accusation that Nader was "in league" with the Republicans), the Democratic Party lawyers then sought to disqualify the Nader petitions in a Michigan state court, on the interesting ground that Nader's campaign had not in fact coordinated with the Republican effort.

If this information is accurate (and the note below from Ballot Acsess News seems to verify it), it puts a more complete light on the whole fuss about the inaccurately alleged Republican conspiracy with the Nader campaign.

From Ballot Access News: "Michigan: on September 3, the State Court of Appeals ruled that Nader’s independent petition is valid. Deleeuw v Canvassers Bd, 257501. All agreed that it had enough valid signatures. But the Democrats sued, arguing that since Republicans collected most of the signatures independently of Nader, the petition is invalid. The court said nothing in the law requires the circulators to coordinate with the candidate."--------

Making the article NPOV

Here are my disagreements with the set of edits made by an anonymous user at 16:20, 24 Nov 2004:

For Republican help, changing “several states” to “Michigan” is inaccurate if it implies that Michigan was unique in this respect. The Common Dreams article itself discusses Oregon. There were other examples, too. I think the general “several states” is better than burdening the reader with a blow-by-blow catalog, but if you won’t accept “several states”, then I’ll just list every one I can find, rather than leave a false implication that Michigan was an isolated event.
Characterizing Democratic opposition to Nader as an attempt to “discredit” him is POV. We already include the charge that the Democrats were attempting to “smear” Nader, but that quotation is properly attributed to Nader’s campaign. Having quoted his press release verbatim, we don’t need to amplify the point, let alone endorse it.
Changing “[the campaign] accepted contributions from donors who were....” to “[the campaign] accepted campaign contributions from several individual donors who were” seems to add a few words to no purpose. Obviously contributions to a campaign were campaign contributions. The additions aren’t inaccurate, but isn’t the shorter version just as clear?
SBVT: This edit said that Nader’s campaign had accepted “a donation from one individual” also backing SBVT. Stating or implying that there was only one is inaccurate. The “Up for Victory” site says that FEC reports show eight such donors. [3]
Organization: The way the article presented the information about Nader’s effect on the major-party candidates (the subject of this section) was to describe what the Bush supporters said and did, then what the Kerry supporters said and did, then what the Nader campaign said and did. The new edit disrupts that logical structure by interpolating one Democratic group (Up for Victory) after some of the material about Bush supporters, then immediately giving Nader’s POV, before returning to the subject of the Bush supporters. The logic is broken up. In addition, the Nader campaign’s main talking point, about Kerry having accepted donations from donors to Republicans, is now in the article twice. The former version cited the same contribution statistics cited by Nader and even quoted his press release, so I don’t think that version was unfair to him.
This edit is very POV with regard to the Nader campaign’s sanctimonious (my POV!) claim of not accepting right-wing help. The edit reports the claim uncritically. It omits Camejo’s initial reaction of “We don’t want that money” and the subsequent reversal. In Michigan, the Nader campaign made similar pronouncements, then flip-flopped. [4] The edit falls all over itself to justify Nader’s collaboration with the Republicans in Michigan. Can any instances be cited, anywhere in the country, in which the Nader campaign went beyond lip service, and actually turned down Republican help that would have been of real benefit? If the campaign already had enough signatures of its own to qualify for some state’s ballot, then turning down Republican signatures is a meaningless gesture. I thought it made more sense to omit the subject, but if we're going to report the Nader campaign's claim on the point, then we'll have to go into detail on the other side as well.
While I’m venting: A previous anon edit also seemed to reflect a pro-Nader POV with regard to the O’Hara quotation. The edit changed “voted for Bush in 2000 and has said....” to “voted for Bush in 2000 and was quoted as saying....” This phrasing isn’t used for other quotations in this article or in Wikipedia generally. Its only purpose seems to be to cast doubt on the accuracy (maybe he didn’t really make this comment that Naderites find embarrassing). The quotation is from an established newspaper, the source is given, and people can click on the link and confirm it. I didn’t bother correcting this change before but there’s a lot of other pro-Nader POV that will have to be cleaned out of this article, so that passage might as well be restored.

In sum, I think the article as it stood was factual and NPOV. The changes criticized above made it worse, not better.

In an unrelated point, I previously added some of the data about Nader's vote total in 2004. As more votes are being counted, Nader has done a little better, so that passage will need to be changed. In the lead section, my inclination is that it should be re-ordered to put Nader in context as to who he is -- activist attorney, presidential candidate -- before summarizing his views. The main reason is that some readers, especially non-Americans, won’t really know who Nader is. They’re being told the opinions of some random guy before they’ve been given the full picture about why his opinions are worth reporting. JamesMLane 19:41, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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In hope of advancing the dialogue, I want to address some of the points noted above by James M. Lane:

I think it would be helpful if James M. Lane (or someone) would make good on the offer to list each of the states where Nader's campaign is supposed to have accepted organized Republican assistance in 2004, or in any other election year, together with a detailed explanation of the exact type of assistance that was involved.

It's important to distinguish between (1) "organized Republican assistance" (which Nader's campaign said it was making a point of eschewing, except regarding petitioning help for ballot access in the case of Michigan----and there may be other exceptions that Jame L. Lane will list), versus other types of activity, such as the following: (2) individual registered Republican voters voting for (or endorsing) Nader; (3) individual campaign contributions given by voters who were registered as Republicans; (4) the Nader campaign hiring a ballot access lawyer in Florida whose practice usually represented Republicans in election law cases; (5) other types of "help from Republicans" that are not properly characterized as "organized Republican Party help."

For example, with regard to item (4) listed above, Kerry campaign spokepersons repeatedly accused Nader of "accepting Republican help" when the Nader campaign hired an election law attorney in Florida who normally represented Republicans. Taken out of context, the accusation ("a top Republican lawyer helped Nader in Florida!") would perhaps appear to support the thesis of Republican help for Nader, but if one understands the nature of legal representation (the lawyer in question was evidently paid by the Nader campaign at the market rate), and if one understands the specialized nature of ballot access law and also understands that the expert election lawyers who typically represent Democratic Party candidates were unavailable because they were under pressure (including professional "conflict of interest" pressure) either to help the Democratic Party's efforts to block Nader's ballot access, or in any case not to represent Nader, then a truer picture emerges and the Nader campaign's hiring of that lawyer is seen not to support an "N-R conspiracy" theory.

Several so-called "big Republican donors" to Nader seem to have been individuals who have had longstanding relationships with Nader that transcend politics (e.g., classmates at Princeton or at Harvard Law School), and, when interviewed, some donors explained that they thought it was important to support the opportunity for certain of Ralph Nader's views to be part of the political dialogue, such as his views on the Middle East, or on environmental protection, etc. Peter Tanous apparently hosted a house party for Nader, but he seems genuinely to have been supportive of Nader's views on foreign policy, Nader's fiscally conservative critique of fraud, waste, and abuse, etc. One can question whether, for example, Ben Stein was being candid when he said that he supports many of Nader's views, but it unfairly bolsters an anti-Nader POV, to say only enough to create the impression that the Republican Party was behind Nader's campaign and/or that Nader was seeking to help elect Bush.

I think Wikipedia should be especially careful about inadvertently joining a partisan effort to associate Nader with the obnoxious "Swift Boat" group. First, information concerning the individual donors should be taken from the publically accessible FEC reports themselves, not from a story on Buzzflash.com, which in turn took its report from Up With Victory (a group created by the Democratic Party for the express purpose of opposing Nader). Nader actually criticized the ugly "Swift Boat" ads, and did so much more strongly than John Kerry did. It is misleading to imply that Nader was supporting flak against critique of the Vietnam War. Nader remains staunchly critical of U.S. military action in Vietnam (and he strongly opposes the invasion and ongoing war in Iraq), whereas John Kerry for purposes of the campaign in 2004 distanced himself from his own antiwar views and actions.

Likewise, very little credibilty should be given uncritically to the article by anti-Nader activist Jeff Cohen on the Common Dreams website. Mr. Cohen was one of the main ogranizers of the effort to discredit Nader by associating Nader with the Right. Even Mr. Cohen's article alludes to the Democratic Party's organized and successful effort to sabotage Nader's efforts to achieve ballot access in Oregon in 2004. As you probably know, organizations like Jeff Cohen's group (with funding from the Democratic Party) succeeded in keeping Nader off the Oregon ballot in 2004.

If readers are given enough information to understand the reasons "Republican help" was needed for Nader to exercise the right to ballot access in Michigan (namely, the Democratic Party's team of lawyers first succeeding in removing Nader's name as the Reform Party nominee, and then the same Democratic Party lawyering team's further challenges to the subsequent indepedendent petition drive on the ground that Nader "had failed to coordinate with the Republicans" during that petition drive, readers may see more of the overall context and may perhaps be less likely to assume a nefarious Nader-Republican conspiracy. It is especially interesting that the Democratic Party's argument in court (trying to knock Nader off the ballot the second time in Michigan) was precisely that Nader's campaign had NOT coordinated with the petition drive organized by Republicans. The court acknowledged the fact that Nader's campaign had not coordinated with the Republican petition circulators but ruled in Nader's favor, on the fundamental right to ballot access in Michigan. I don't know whether this background amounts to a "justification" for accepting help in Michigan, but it strikes me as misleading to mention "Republican help in Michigan" without a fuller explanation.

People in the Democratic Party, especially who worked to stop Nader, freely admit that they sought to "discredit" Nader as an "insane egomaniac," a "Republican dupe," a "selfish spoiler," etc. The websites of the big anti-Nader groups make no bones about this being their main strategic aim (in addition to their efforts to knock, or to keep, Nader off ballots wherever possible, by whatever means).

To clarify my own POV: It happens that I did not vote for Ralph Nader in 2004. The fact that I am not anti-Nader does not necessarily mean that my POV is pro-Nader. Moreover, I am not unsympathetic to the concerns of many Democrats who were worried that Nader's presence might help the election of George W. Bush (for whom I cannot imagine voting). But it seems to me that the concerted (and often misleading) Democratic Party attacks on Nader in 2000 and 2004 are an important story. Without including information about the organized nature of the attacks against Nader, it would be misleading simply to repeat as true the gist of the anti-Nader attacks (even if a partial rebuttal or denial by the Nader campaign is included a few paragraphs later).

If it can be shown that Nader's campaign in 2004 systematically accepted organized Republican Party help, I believe this would be a relevant and important point to be brought out, but such information should be brought out accurately and should be accompanied by sufficient explanation and context, including contextual information from the FEC about the funding of Democratic Party candidates from some of the same "Republican" individuals the anti-Nader groups pointed to as having donated to Nader's campaign, as well as the Republican and Democratic parties' dependence on various corporate donors.

The quote from Reform Party Chair Mr. O'Hara appears to have been taken out of context, to build the case that the Reform Party's support for Nader was essentially from the right, and, in particular, was at its heart anti-Kerry. This isn't an accurate picture. Likewise, the reference to the 2000 nomination of Pat Buchanan seems designed to make it appear that it was right-wingers within the Reform Party in 2004 who nominated Ralph Nader. This is not at all what happened at the 2004 Reform Party convention. The Reform Party underwent a huge organizational upheaval in 1998-2000, with Ross Perot supporters (and Jesse Ventura supporters) losing control of the organizational apparatus to a pro-Buchanan group (that apparently included some supporters from the New Alliance Party). The Reform Party, which had at one time stood for a variety of reforms ("fiscal conservatism" plus some important progressive electoral reforms), in essence had become by 2000 little more than a vehicle for ballot access, and even then only in certain states, with a small pot of FEC-awarded money in disupte. After Buchanan's dismal showing in 2000, the Reform Party returned in most states to the status of being more or less an empty shell (not a bastion of right-wing ideology). The Reform Party's relevance was not based on a platform or ideology but instead on the fact that it had available ballot lines in certain states. The existing article suggests (inaccurately) that Nader made ideological compromises to collaborate with right-wing bigots, in order to win the Reform Party nomination. There is no evidence that anything like this happened.

I do not think Wikipedia should be used to try to help build the case that Nader's campaign "flip-flopped" on the issue of contributions from Republicans, unless we are willing to do the work of examining each facet of each such allegation closely and offering Nader's campaign an opportunity to be heard.

I also don't think we should rely on Buzzflash or on anti-Nader activist Jeff Cohen's Common Dreams article as "neutral" news sources, to attack Nader's credibility. Now that the election is over, one hopes that it might be easier for a truer picture of what happened to emerge, at a less breathless pace of attack, denial, and self-righteousness. If Nader's spokesman sanctimoniously contradicted himself or misspoke himself or said something that was outright false, such a false statement might be a relevant fact, but one hopes we will have a chance to be fair about this and to do more detailed fact-checking, now that most people are no longer in campaign-spin mode.

I do agree with the evaluation that the organization of the article could be improved, but I don't think it would improve the article or its organization, simply to revert to a largely anti-Nader presentation in this section.

I hope we continue these discussions, in an effort to make this article more accurate.

The main thing you should note is that the information isn't adduced to show that Nader is a sleazeball. The point of it is to shed light on the question of Nader's effect on the major-party candidates. (That's the section it's in.) There's no way to know for sure whether Nader pulled more votes from Bush or from Kerry, or whether his presence on the ballot was important to their race in other ways (e.g. if his criticisms of Kerry caused some left-leaning voters to conclude that there was no significant difference between Kerry and Bush, and therefore to stay home). Because we can't know that for sure, the article presented information along the lines of "experienced politicians who weren't affiliated with the Nader campaign showed by their actions that they thought Nader would hurt Kerry and help Bush".

In that context, I think that the simple phrase "Republican organizations in several states worked to gather petition signatures to place Nader on the ballot" is fine. Going state-by-state is more detail than is needed. If they worked to gather the signatures, that shows their assessment of Nader's effect. If you think that mentioning this fact will lead some readers to think ill of Nader unjustifiably, and you want to add factual information about some action taken by the Nader campaign, that would be one thing, but just quoting Nader's self-serving statement that they weren't accepting such help is misleading unless the full information is presented. That's why I thought it was better to present the facts about what the Republicans did and not get into presenting the pros and cons of Nader's response. (Republicans helped him, so that shows he's a sleazeball, but he said he wouldn't accept the help, so he's not a sleazeball, but he did accept it in Michigan, so he is a sleazeball, but he accepted it only because otherwise he wouldn't have gotten on the ballot, so he's not a sleazeball, and by the way it was some Democrats who persuaded the court that the Reform Party hadn't met the legal requirements for a ballot line in Michigan, and they made inconsistent arguments, so it's really the Democrats who are the sleazeballs... I just think this whole back-and-forth should be eliminated.)

I suggest that this section of the article be returned to this version (as of 13:39, 19 Nov 2004). Nothing in that text is unfair to Nader. For example, it doesn't even mention the alleged flip-flopping on standards for accepting campaign contributions. I agree with you that we shouldn't give one side of that argument without giving all sides, but omitting it is also fair. JamesMLane 20:42, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Responding to James M Lane: Let's present well-checked, documented facts, rather than "facts" originated and supplied either by pro-Nader, or by anti-Nader, sources. The version to which you suggest reversion contains quite a bit that is objectionable as inacccurate and misleading.

I think it's factually important to distinguish different kinds of "Republican help" that could be alleged.

The point about the Democratic Party's argument in the Michigan courts was not to show that they're "sleazeballs," but instead to point to an important inconsistency and an important fact: the gist of the anti-Nader attacks were that Nader was "collaborating" or "coordinating" with the Republicans (and the one admitted example has been the drive for ballot access in Michigan); but, by the Democratic Party's own admission (and the court's findings), Nader's campaign carefully avoided any direct involvement in that Michigan petitioning effort. Doesn't this fact seem significant in light of the UPforVictory allegations that Nader was "working with right-wing Republicans to elect Bush"?

If anyone can point to any circumstances, apart from ballot access petitions in Michigan, where the Nader campaign accepted organized Republican Party support, then please do bring this up and document it. I want to know and I want the Wikipedia article to be accurate. So far, the information I have suggests that these accusations against the Nader campaign are false.

With regard to ballot access in Michigan, if you are willing to study the full story of Nader's initially being denied ballot access in Michigan, it would be difficult to read your preferred edits as other than showing anti-Nader POV. The Democratic Party's attacks on Nader, including their intense efforts to keep Nader off the ballot in Michigan, do seem relevant to the topic of how Nader's expected effect was perceived by others (under the rubric "effects on major part candidates"). But simply to repeat (and to credit) those attacks by suggesting a Nader-Right collaboration (beyond what is warranted by the facts) is not accurate.

The discussion of the Reform Party's nomination in 2004 likewise tends to be considerably misleading, as noted above in this Talk section. Worse still, trying to pin "Swift Boat" stuff on Nader seems a rather Willie-Hortonesque device; this line of attack was originated by the anti-Nader groups, and (especially because of Nader's actual antiwar views) it seems not unworthy of Karl Rove himself. If you believe that this sort of stuff is important to include, you really need to check the facts carefully and document them (and not just by relying on UPforVictory), including providing an opportunity for the Nader campaign to be heard.

The point of going state by state is that this method could well bear out (or disprove) my information that there was virtually no organized Republican support for Nader's campaign. Instead, it appears that most of the information about supposed Republican support was circulated, misleadingly, by dedicated anti-Nader groups, for immediate political gain. To repeat generalized allegations (in the nature of attack ads) seems highly inaccurate and partisan. But if the details are there to bear it out, then that would be a different story.

Despite your protestations that the point of your preferred edits is not to smear Nader as a "sleazeball," the discussion has been framed in such a way as to invite exactly that reading.

Let's take thee time to gather actual FACTS, and not simply recite political attack material. I'm willing to work with you on this. The first place to start, would be to determine where the Nader campaign did accept organized Republican help, and what the circumstances were.

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