Childhood Denied: The Roots of Ralph Nader’s Righteousness

Ralph Nader failed to accomplish the ostensive goals of his Presidential bid in the 2000 election -- to stop the shift to the right in American politics that began with Ronald Reagan in 1980 and to gain the five percent of the national popular vote required to qualify the Green Party for Federal matching funds in 2004. Still, his campaign could be considered the most consequential crusade of his public life. In retrospect, Nader may well have played a “spoiler” role that handed the Presidency to Republican nominee George W. Bush. That is the opinion of many political commentators, and of several political scientists in a forthcoming issue of the journal, American Politics Research, who cite “the Nader factor” for the failure of their statistical election-outcome forecasting models, which predicted a convincing win for Democratic nominee Al Gore.