Ralph Nader Running for President

Leslie Hoffecker has written an article for the Los Angeles Times entitled "Nader, spoiling for a fight, says he'll run yet again". The LA Times has a history of being a liberally biased newspaper, and it also has a history of being influenced by advertisers [1]. While it may seem that the Green party is more liberal than the Democratic party, the Democratic party is the main party that liberals align themselves with in the United States. I think that the author of that article has aligned herself with the Democratic party, which is expressed in her demeaning word choice of "spoiling for a fight." She was fair in some regards though, since she did quote Nader's position and defenses. It is also interesting to consider what the Democratic candidates, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, had to say about this. As candidates, they had to make themselves look good and point out things they didn't like about Nader, while not sounding too rude in order to keep good public standing. They both seemed to look down at Nader in a way.

The author of the article doesn't give much of a verbal argument, but her position is hinted at by her word choice, and her emphasis on the quotes from the Democratic candidates. The title chosen suggests childishness, and Hoffecker both begins and ends with quotes from the Democrats, the opening Democratic citations being bold. The argument that the Democratic candidates are trying to offer seems to be that Nader did have a negative effect in 2000, but will not have one this year. The candidates are trying to influence voters, and by simply saying that Nader won't have much of an impact could influence voters to agree, and therefore vote Democratic.

As far as evidence goes, there are some statistics provided about the number of times Nader has ran for president in the past and the number of votes that he got. He did receive many less votes in 2004 than in 2000, but no statistics were provided about his current number of supporters.

The conclusion of the article seemed interesting to me. The conclusion was an opinionated quote from Hilary Clinton speaking poorly of Ralph Nader. This reinforced my thoughts that the author had sided with the Democrats. It does follow with the “argument” of “vote Democratic”, but there doesn't seem to be much substance to it.

One of the main conflicts in this article was whether or not Ralph Nader cause Al Gore to lose the 2000 election, and I think that since Democrats don't want to lose to Republicans, especially this year, they're trying to sway voters away from Nader already. The main political implication here was influencing people to vote for Democrats. This further demonstrates how much influence the media has on how people vote.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LA_Times