Opinion: Ralph Nader predicts a second term for Barack Obama
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Ralph Nader, the third-party spoiler to some, threw a wet blanket on Republicans on Wednesday without even mentioning anyone’s birth certificate.
In an opinion piece for Bloomberg, the consumer advocate calls the potential GOP presidential hopefuls a ‘field of Republican weaklings’ and warns that conservative governors are turning off swing voters with their hardline stands against unions.
‘Imagine the voter reaction if millions of workers lose their right to collective bargaining, and the impact that cuts in benefits and wages will have on their lives,’ Nader, 78, wrote in the op-ed titled titled ‘Why Obama Will Get Second Term in White House.’
The four-time presidential candidate (twice with the Green Party and twice as an Independent) said that with no real challengers from the liberal ranks or from any strong third parties, Obama’s only serious opponents in 2012 will be from the right. But what will the right run on?
The liberal senator has become a president who is more than friendly to big business. Nader notes that Obama bailed out GE Capital and named its CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, to the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, all while allowing him to keep his day job.
A GOP challenger is going to pick a fight over that? What about all the other ways Obama has acted more like a Republican? ‘By 2014, Obamacare will deliver some 30 million subsidized customers to health-insurance companies,’ Nader continued in his list of big businesses who should have a warm feeling for the incumbent. ‘The auto industry is forever grateful for its bailout. Obama hasn’t moved on corporate-tax reform, tax shelters for the wealthy, or the preferential capital-gains tax treatment on the 20% service fees of hedge fund managers.’
Bullet points that frustrate the most liberal of Democrats, true, but reasons, Nader suggests, that Obama will be able to have ‘four more years in 2012.’
Always the wild card, Nader might predict a second term for Obama but that doesn’t mean he’ll be supporting him.
‘I’d never vote for him,’ Nader told Politico on Wednesday. ‘I will never vote for anybody who has a terrible record like that, who’s done what he’s done for Wall Street and turned his back on the people who need him.’
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-- Tony Pierce
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