What Does Nader Want?

With just five weeks until the election, Ralph Nader is running something that bears a remarkable resemblance to a real presidential campaign.

The Green Party candidate is on the road almost every day, preaching the gospel of the progressive left to its adoring, worshipful masses. He has transformed a humble Washington, D.C., brownstone into his campaign headquarters, and filled it with an industrious young staff representing jobs vacated and fall semesters abandoned all over the country.

He has raised over $3.5 million dollars, largely plunked down in individual $5 and $10 contributions, and has attracted what his campaign says are the largest paying crowds of any candidate, including over 10,000 in Portland and Boston and 12,000 in Minneapolis. He has met with the editorial boards of local newspapers, shaken the hands of many breathless supporters and adhered to a micro-managed itinerary worthy of any political candidate ("5:00-5:05 PM: Live interview with WISC-TV.")

Some things about Nader's campaign aren't so typical, of course. He flies coach class from one engagement to the next, often sardined between business travelers who don't recognize the celebrity in their midst. He doesn't wear make-up onstage, doesn't have speechwriters or coaches and lets himself be seen weary and drained at the end of a 16-hour day.

The reporters who follow him in irregular spurts complain they're not fed as well or treated as royally as their colleagues covering the Bush and Gore campaigns. He doesn't kiss babies, and though he'll stand amiably in photos, he certainly doesn't pose for them.

But perhaps the most conspicuous difference between Nader and his rivals is that he freely admits he has no expectation of winning. Instead, he says he is running to plant a political seed, throwing a spotlight of visibility on the Green Party to help it elect local candidates and become a viable Third Party.

"Most of us are in a rut because we're operating in a winner-take-all, two-party system, and most Third Parties come in with a single issue, get a few votes, lose and then fade away," Nader said between stops on a Midwest campaign swing last month. "The Green Party is not going to fade away, it has too broad of an agenda. That's why the press doesn't get this campaign. They give me this forlorn look, 'You stand in the polls at three or four or five percent, is it all over? Aren't you wasting your time?'

"Am I known for wasting my time? Am I known for worrying about being an underdog?" Nader asks. "Ask General Motors and twenty-five other big companies."

Too Big a Tent?

The Green Party indeed has as broad an agenda as Nader asserts, but for a presidential run it may be too broad; talking with state coordinators and organizers for the campaign reveals a vast and contradictory set of goals.

Like Nader, many see the campaign as a first step in building a strong national party reinforced by local elected officeholders. Others are more focused on snaring five percent of the popular vote in order to procure federal matching funds for another presidential run in 2004 -- a goal for which Nader says he has never expressed support. Some Greens say they are trying to pull the Democratic Party leftwards, while others cling to the extreme longshot of Nader winning the election. As his campaign churns toward November, it sometimes seems entangled in a web of confusion throttling its own momentum.

On one end of the spectrum are wild optimists like Colorado state coordinator Nancy Harvey, who works close to the fiery hearth of Nader support. A typically enthusiastic Green diehard, Harvey is a middle-aged progressive who has been involved in the party for thirteen years and helped build the Boulder Green Alliance. Intelligent, articulate and well-informed, she nevertheless admits to a fantasy of Nader winning in a November shocker.