Nader Steps Up Campaign, Slams Gore
Oct. 25 -- Ralph Nader, unswayed by mounting criticism he could harm Al Gore’s presidential hopes, launched another sharp attack on the Democratic candidate today.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, Nader blasted Gore’s record on a series of environmental issues, concluding, “The best case Al Gore has made for being an environmentalist in the campaign is that he is not George W. Bush.”
And the Green Party nominee said he was unruffled by the attention now being given his candidacy by Gore and other prominent Democrats.
“We welcome the new and enhanced attention that the Democratic Party has been paying to the Green Party,” Nader said. “That just informs more voters.”
Nader also shrugged off suggestions that he was siphoning away voters who would otherwise cast Democratic votes.
“We’re drawing from the Ross Perot voters, the independent voters, and people who have never voted before,” Nader added.
The latest prominent Democrat to take Nader to task is Gore’s running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.
“A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush,” Lieberman said in a television interview this morning.
Citing environmental issues, consumer protection, and campaign-finance reform, Lieberman added, “Al Gore and I are clearly much closer to Ralph Nader than George Bush is, so I don’t think people should throw away their vote or even worse, help elect somebody that is diametrically opposed to what they are for.”
But Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, the most prominent third-party candidate in the 1998 election, defended Nader today against the charge that his supporters would be voting for a lost cause.
“Wasting your vote is not voting your heart and not voting your conscience,” Ventura said on ABC’s Good Morning America today. “That’s a wasted vote.”
And Nader claimed that Gore should not point fingers if he loses in November, joking “As David Letterman said, ‘Only Al Gore can beat Al Gore.’ And he’s doing a pretty good job of it.”
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