"[Ralph] Nader told us that his longtime favorite pens, Paper Mate Flair Felt Tip Pens Medium Point (0.7 mm), had started drying out too quickly."

"He wanted to know why. Nader needed answers. Well, we didn’t have any. And neither did Paper Mate—Nader said the company waved away his concerns with a standard corporate non-answer about standing behind the pens’ quality.... 'For years I’ve been using felt pens, mostly red and black but sometimes purple, to mark up The New York Times,' Nader told me in a phone interview last year. 'I go through every page of the Times, and I mark up different articles and send them to different people. And I do that with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.' When Nader says years, he means years. We found a black-and-white photo of him using what appears to be a Paper Mate Flair in 1972...."

From "We Sent Ralph Nader Some of Our Favorite Pens. He Dismissed Them All" (NYT).

1972! Why, I remember when Flair pens first came out. It was 1966. Before that, there were no felt-tipped writing pens. There were markers — specifically, the Marks-a-Lot — with thick points and permanent ink that were great for making posters on oak tag, but would bleed through writing paper and had a strong smell. So the Flairs, with their sharp points and dark but not overpowering ink, seemed miraculous. I felt very lucky to get my hands on a Flair back in 1966. And if you had multiple colors — purple! — you were a celebrity.

"I loved early Democratic Socialists of America leader Cornel West. I loved author of the 1993 book Race Matters West."

"I loved everything about West until he supported spoiler Ralph Nader against then–Vice President Al Gore in 2000. A lot of my political friends supported Ralph Nader back then. And a lot of them have since apologized. Even Michael Moore.... West never apologized. He didn’t see a third party playing a spoiler role to Democrats as bad—obviously, since he’s about to do it again. He did support Barack Obama in 2008, but he turned on him fairly quickly, making criticisms that went way beyond Obama’s political decisions. Then he supported Jill Stein in 2016. More recently, West has gone off the deep end. He promoted his 2024 candidacy, on the fringe People’s Party line, with an appearance on former comedian Russell Brand’s Web show, now frequented by right-wingers.... This is a downhill spiral even for West, who also spiraled downward after Obama’s victory.... [C]alling the president 'a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats' was awful. West went on to claim that Obama was afraid of 'free black men' thanks to his white ancestry and Ivy League education.... What does West bring to the [2024] race?"

Writes Joan Walsh in "Cornel West Should Not Be Running for President/He doesn’t see a third party playing a spoiler role to Democrats as bad—and that’s inevitable" (The Nation). 

West was on Russell Brand's show? Let's take a look:

"I talked with Nader about his role much later, and he basically said the outcome was Gore’s fault for being a bad candidate."

"This conversation took place when the country was bearing down on the 2016 election, and Nader vowed not to vote for either Trump or Clinton. 'They’re not alike,' he acknowledged, but added, 'they’re both terrible.' Think that was the last time I ever consulted Ralph Nader."

Writes Gail Collins in "Repulsed by Biden vs. Trump? Tough" (NYT).

I said it a week ago: All I can think of is rooting for Bobby and Vivek.

And:

It was bad enough to go through the 2020 campaign once and it's bad to go through any presidential campaign twice, but to go through the 2020 campaign twice is just such an outrage. Why aren't people kicking and screaming as we're dragged into this?!

Gail Collins belabors what, of course, I already knew was the answer to my question. Just put up with the disgusting reality that we've got 2 parties, they do their thing, and you obediently vote for the better of the 2, even though Ralph was right and they're both terrible. 

CORRECTION: This post originally had Ruth Marcus for Gail Collins. I need to think about why I'd merged these 2 writers!

Ralph Nader vs. Elon Musk.

Ralph Nader, you are lying – shame on you! I personally provided almost all Tesla funding, based on my proceeds from PayPal, from Series A in 2004 until Series C in 2007.

In late 2008, I gave Tesla the last money I had. It was that or the company would have died. We closed that… https://t.co/fi2GdWER0d

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 24, 2023

"The mere thought of tangling with the Trumpster’s foul, prevaricatory, sneering tweets offends Obama’s own sense of civil discourse between politicians."

"This revulsion is just another form of self-indulgence... It isn’t as if Barack Obama doesn’t realize what he is doing and what is happening in this self-enriching bubble he has shaped, post presidency.... He can’t seem to help himself."

Wrote Ralph Nader, quoted in "The far left’s attacks on moderate Democrats get old," by Paul Fanlund, editor of Madison's Capital Times.

Ralph Nader has some good (and bad) to say about Trump.

"He's questioned the trade agreements. He's done some challenging of Wall Street – I don't know how authentic that is. He said he's against the carried interest racket, for hedge funds. He's funded himself and therefore attacked special interest money, which is very important. But he's lowered the level of political debate to unheard-of depths of salacious, slanderous and vacuousness, garnished with massive self-boosterism and repetition."

Link.

"Inside the museum, Nader personally escorted bewildered townspeople through the exhibits."

"He stopped in front of the McDonald’s Coffee Cup Case exhibit. 'The lawyers didn’t tell people that McDonald’s kept their coffee that hot for commercial advantage. So it would stay hotter than Burger King’s as you drove along the highway. They’d already gotten seven hundred complaints about the burns.' Nader shook his head and looked at his guest, who nodded. He had changed one mind. He seemed satisfied."

From "Ralph Nader’s Tort Museum" (in The New Yorker), about the American Museum of Tort Law in Winsted, Connecticut.

ADDED: If you're like me, the first 3 words of the post title started a Bob Dylan song playing in your head: "Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial/Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while/But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues/You can tell by the way she smiles/See the primitive wallflower freeze/When the jelly-faced women all sneeze/Hear the one with the mustache say, 'Jeeze/I can’t find my knees'..."

If you can’t find your  knees/I'd say, jeeze/That's a tort that that someone did fease/Help me, Ralph Nader, please...

Can anybody explain Hillary's giant-gaping-collar costume?

It's like an old-fashioned satin blouse for a person with an insanely giant neck... perhaps the Incredible Hulk on a day when he's feeling girly and is tired of the color green.



And she's wearing a medal around her neck. Is this a costume for a cameo role in some sci-fi movie about a dystopian future America?

I don't know, but Drudge has chosen the goofball photo go with his headline: "NADER: MACHO HILLARY USED MILITARY TO 'OVERCOMPENSATE' FOR GENDER," which goes to PJ Media, where Ralph Nader is quoted saying :

"This is the problem of women trying to overcompensate in becoming more aggressive and macho so they are not accused of being soft on the need to kill and war, right? Instead of taking the tradition of women of peace, and turning into a muscular waging of peace of conflict and prevention, she [Clinton] did the reverse, and [Madeline] Albright did the reverse and Anne Marie Slaughter did the reverse and some of Obama’s advisers did the reverse."

So muscular, but not macho is how Ralph likes his women. Should we jump on Ralph for this stew of sexism? Or should we let loose and analyze all the teeming genderosity of everything political? Does Hillary have immunity from any criticism that purports to understand her psyche in terms of its essential femininity? We are currently soaking in a vat of cultural ferment in which there are female brains and male brains. Should we eschew it or can we talk about it? And don't tell me the answer is that you can do it if (and only if) you do it (like Ralph) from the left.

IN THE COMMENTS: So many great and hilarious answers to the question in the post title that I had to do a new post: here. 

"Detroit has Washington pretty greased."

Says Ralph Nader, interviewed by The Nation about the GM scandal.

The first is they knew years ago about a deadly defect that could cause death and injury. Then they got reports of the deaths and injuries, and did nothing. Under law they were supposed to inform the government about it, and they did not do so. Then more deaths and injuries occurred, and they still did nothing. [General Motors CEO] Mary Barra says that she didn't learn about it until January 31! And she's the CEO. So the best view of what happened inside GM is bureaucracy—committees passing the buck to one another, nobody responsible, stifling whistleblowers.

"Why all the attention now?" The Nation asks. Nader says:

I think Mary Barra is a factor. They’re fascinated by this new woman, and how she’s going to handle it. That’s part of it. 

What does that mean? Fascinated by a woman?!

 The second is that it’s such a simple thing to understand: don’t put anything on your keychain, otherwise you may lose your engine and your airbag will not deploy when you crash. It isn’t like it’s a complex handling problem or an engine problem or something like that. 

Wow.

"On issues related to the military and foreign policy, Obama’s worse than Bush, 'in the sense that he’s more aggressive, more illegal worldwide."

Said Ralph Nader, calling Obama a “war criminal."

“He’s gone beyond George W. Bush in drones, for example. He thinks the world is his plate, that national sovereignties mean nothing, drones can go anywhere. They can kill anybody that he suspects and every Tuesday he makes the call on who lives and who dies, supposed suspects in places like Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is a war crime and he ought to be held to account.”

Like Ralph Nader in 2000, Gary Johnson could throw the election.

Nader's 97,000 votes in Florida represented the difference between winning and losing Florida for Al Gore, and Gary Johnson could tip Arizona/Colorado/New Hampshire/New Mexico, where he's polling 9%/7%/7%/13% (if the pollsters are including him).

Unlike Nader, Johnson could hurt either of the 2 major-party candidates. It's more likely that he'll hurt Romney, but possibly not in Colorado and New Mexico. He could draw off erstwhile Obama supporters. If you're in a swing state, you have to want to make the point of giving no help to either of the 2 individuals who have an actual shot at winning. It's not enough to simply prefer Gary Johnson. (Take the I Side With test and see if you do align with him.)

Who are these people who not only want to say I prefer Johnson but also I decline to have any effect on the outcome? In 2000, the people who voted for Nader — did you know Meade was one? — perceived no significant difference between Al Gore and George Bush. Many of them went on to view that perception as quite inaccurate.

It's hard to believe the potential Johnson voters will think like that about Obama and Romney, which is why I think swing staters won't go third party this year. But I think the presence of Johnson in the race might affect how Obama and Romney fight in the swing states. Johnson is there as a refuge if the candidate we feel we're supposed to vote for offends us.

"[I]f Bush should have been impeached, Obama should be impeached."

Says Ralph Nader.

On the other hand, if you thought George Bush acted appropriately, then you should see that one benefit of the Obama presidency is that it has denied the Democrats the ability to stand at a distance and criticize, as if they were above that sort of thing. This was one of the reasons I voted for Obama: "When [the Democrats] can't whine and finger-point, what will they actually step up and do?"

"Ralph gets to luxuriate in the purity of his irrelevance."

Brilliant slam of Ralph Nader, by Barney Frank. Meanwhile, the internet is abuzz with that other quotable word-string: "We are trying on every front to increase the role of government."

Madison, Wisconsin. 6 p.m.

Class was over, it was getting dark, and I was hurrying to my car, but I had to stop at take a picture of this:



It was so Madison.

Later, I was in a second-floor restaurant, where they had chicken and dumplings on the menu. I've never seen chicken and dumplings on a restaurant menu. Chicken and dumplings! The one ancestral folk-food my mother cooked, the food of my father's lineage, the Pennsylvania Dutch. So, German. Let's have a brew. I chose Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre. This ale is made in Milton, Delaware, and it was in Delaware -- albeit not Milton -- that I ate the vast majority of the chicken and dumplings that I have eaten in my life.



And now I've had chicken and dumplings in Madison, not much like the way my mother made it. The dumplings weren't gummy enough. The truth is, my mother wasn't much good at making it... or any other sort of long-cooked food. She preferred to broil steaks and chops, so I never found out about how good braised and stewed things were until I left home. But tonight, I chose some semblance of home. The waiter said they'd put it on the menu as "comfort food."

That label says: "A deep mahogany ale brewed with Belgian beer sugars, green raisins & a sense of purpose."

"To my friends who supported Nader in 2000: have you discerned the subtle differences between Bush and Gore yet?"

From a post by (my son) Jac that's mainly about the band Polydream -- with some nice free downloads.

The drummer, Brit, along with Jac, wrote and performed the original theme for my old podcast, which you can still listen to here. I closed down the old "Audible Althouse" podcast and stopped paying for the website, but I see the RSS feed is still around, and you can still listen. I just discovered that. Strange...

Brit was also part of one of the bands that used to play in that space I photographed in "Mysteries of the Althouse house."

Also in that band was Jacob, whose band Jac blogged about last week (as part of his "musicians I know" series).

Did you know there's another debate tonight?

It's the third party debate, but only Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin are showing up. No Bob Barr or Cynthia McKinney. Quick, can you name all their parties? Anyway, it's on C-Span2 at 9 ET.

Maybe it's time to end this cruel neutrality... and to dress up like a panda...

... and vote for Ralph Nader.

(Via Bloggingheads.)

"Don’t listen to people when they tell you not to run anymore. That’s just political bigotry."

Listen to your own inner citizen First Amendment voice.

This is America.

Just like every other citizen, you have a right to run.

Whenever you like.

For as long as you like.

Sayeth Ralph Nader.

ADDED: He's talking to Hillary Clinton... not to himself. It seems...

Ralph!

Ralph Nader throws his funny hat in the ring.

Ralph Nader just wants a little attention, a little love.

Is that so wrong?