Ralph Nader must believe that the fifth time is the charm.
The third-party advocate announced Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would once again enter the presidential race.
Note to John McCain: Sorry, Senator, you can no longer claim the title of the oldest candidate in the presidential race. At 74 (as of Wednesday), Nader’s got about year and a half on you.
Nader has run in the past four elections: in 1992 as a write-in for several Democratic and Republican primaries; in 1996 and 2000 as the Green Party nominee; and in 2004 as an independent, but also Reform Party-endorsed.
On Wednesday in a news conference he announced his choice of former San Francisco official Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.
In the announcement, Nader took NBC anchor Tim Russert’s simple yes-or-no question on whether he would run and basically turned it into a three-minute-long first speech of his campaign before stating, in the last seven seconds of the answer, that yes, he is running for president.
“When you see the paralysis of the government, when you see Washington, D.C., be corporate-occupied territory … turning the government against its own people, one feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways, to try to get better ballot access, to respect dissent in America in terms of third parties and independent candidates … ” Nader rambled before affirming the rumor.
However, he made an interesting point in his speech — that only 24 percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country according to a Gallup poll.
In fact, a recent poll on Gallup.com, conducted Feb. 11-14, showed that only 20 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time, while 78 percent were dissatisfied and the other 2 percent were undecided.
This was down from the previous month’s data, in which 24 percent were satisfied, 73 percent were dissatisfied and the other 3 percent were undecided.
He also said that “60 percent think both major parties are failing.” I’m not sure where he got the statistics for this one, but it may not be quite as accurate.
A Gallup poll from January found a 49 percent unfavorable view of the Republican Party, and a 42 percent favorable rating. Views on the Democratic Party fared better: 55 percent with a favorable view and 36 percent unfavorable. The remaining percentages registered “no opinion.”
A poll on the same site conducted in January found that 38 percent of Americans consider themselves as Independents, while 34 percent consider themselves Democrats and 28 percent Republicans.
If this is the case, though, one would think Nader has a pretty decent chance at winning, right? Wrong.
He won 2.7 percent of the vote in 2000, but only 0.3 percent in 2004 after appearing on ballots in only 34 states.
Also, Democratic proponents have accused him of “election spoiling” in the 2000 election, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in the Florida election by a paltry 537 votes.