No, I’m sure he didn’t. But he did entertain the idea that after four years of Bush, the Democrats would realize they needed to appeal to the Nader constituency to win future elections. Didn’t happen.
And if he affected those issues at all, it was probably by moving them backward.
He planted no seeds. “Burned bridges” would be a better metaphor.
How is that? What bridges were burned? He is too old for another run. He knows the corporatizing of America is a dangerous thing and points it out. Maybe some people are listening and learning.
Eight years ago, Nader was generally respected as a public watchdog - viewed with suspicion by some conservatives but mostly thought of as a guy who worked for safety. Today he’s regarded as a crank who runs for president and who cost Gore the election, setting the stage for eight years of Bush. People on the right still don’t like him, and now everybody except the far left hates him too.
Nader got about 2.9 million votes in 2000. The Green Party candidates this year got 146,500 votes. Nader’s total in 2008 was about the same as his 1996 total as a Green candidate. So he didn’t help build a sustainable Green Party, which was supposedly his goal in 2000 when he wanted to reach the federal matching funds threshhold. If anything he probably helped ruin it while “raising its profile.” So he burned his bridges with the left, arguably undid a lot of his own career work, didn’t further the cause of environmentalism at all, and ended up helping to strangle the Green Party in its infancy.
I’d like to think that the people who thought they were smart for supporting Libertarianism saw the results of the recent financial crisis and realized that unrestricted markets – the cornerstone of Libertarian belief – are a really, REALLY god awfully bad idea. Of course I’d like to think everyone would have already known that just from seeing the world in general and reading history to see what businesses used to get away with, so I guess anyone who supported it before wouldn’t let anything like clear evidence showing the entire basis of their belief structure is totally flawed get in the way of his or her vote.
Nader has his name attached to more legislation than any other non-elected official in the history of this country.