Mother Jones

Please, Ralph, Not This Year

Seven reasons why progressives shouldn't support the candidacy of a progressive hero.

By Micah Sifry

. . . "[Ralph Nader] is not even in a two-way conversation with the public I've long picked up signs that Nader didn't really "get" the Internet; confirmation came recently when he was quoted in the New York Times as not caring that he had fewer than 800 people signed up for him on Meetup.com, compared to 45,000 for Kerry or 23,000 for Kucinich. "I really don't deal with the Web," he said. "There isn't enough time in the day to go into virtual reality." You could practically hear him sneer. As writer Matt Stoller says on The Blogging of the President, "the conversation [Nader] wants to have with the country is on the web, but he is not." Nader's website is all output from him and no input from us. That's a model that used to work, but no longer.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/02/02_202.html