DEARBORN — Presidential candidate Ralph Nader visited the University of Michigan-Dearborn on Friday afternoon of last week in an attempt to connect with local voters before the presidential election.

A photo of Ralph Nader in The Michigan Journal sits in an empty section of a room as University of Michigan-Dearborn students, mostly Barack Obama supporters, watch for results Tuesday night during a post-election party on campus. PHOTO: Tarik Abdal Wahid/TAAN

Nader, who is Lebanese, brought a crowd of about 80 people and took the time to speak out on the injustices of America’s current “two-party dictatorship funded by corporate America.”
At approximately 7 p.m. on Election Day this past Tuesday, Nader conceded the election and predicted a win for Barack Obama, but that didn’t stop him from topping his 2004 numbers at the polls.

Nader and his running mate Matt Gonzalez received about 663,000 votes for about .54% of the popular vote in America, according to his campaign, up from 465,650 and .38% from 2004, a year in which many Democrats said his votes took away from John Kerry’s total and possibly ended up costing him the election.

The campaign’s goal was to get 5% of the popular vote but the campaign’s Web site, www.votenader.org, posted that “We prevailed” on its blog, citing that Nader was able to “shift the power agenda” by getting his name on ballots in 45 states, the most he’s ever been on. He did this while using a budget of $4 million, approximately what President-elect Barack Obama made each day leading up to the election, according to Nader.

Nader’s campaign ran under the National Law Party with the intent of gaining enough support to have third-party candidates included in future debates. Nader said at UM-Dearborn that in every major national poll taken since 2000, respondents voted that they would like to see him included in the presidential debates.

Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader, who ran for US President as an independent, speaks to a crowd at the University of Michigan-Dearborn on Oct. 31. PHOTO: Nick Meyer/TAAN

Nader roundly criticized both presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama during his speech. One of his main criticisms of both candidates was their handling of the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
“AIPAC (The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) has taken a hard-line stance of brutalizing, invading, occupying, and blockading the Gaza Strip, which are international war crimes by all accounts,” he said.

He called Obama “a coward” for bowing to political pressure from Jewish organizations and said that McCain and Obama’s support for AIPAC will never solve the conflict.

Eighteen-year old UM-Dearborn student Laura Neme was impressed with Nader’s speech.

“It was a great presentation, he made a bunch of good points, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she said.

“You don’t see a lot of candidates talk about it let alone to say what he said.”

Nader also took the time to lash out at the passing of the recent $700-billion economic buyout and said that it guaranteed protection against “reckless speculation” by large companies.

If America continued down its current path, Nader argued, bad things will be on the horizon.

“The bulk of the people in this country are going downhill,” he said. “People are sinking into a pit of death,” he added, while also saying that of all full-time workers in America, 1/3 of them are on “Wal-Mart wages.”

Nader was able to secure donations totaling over $1,000 from the gathered crowd and urged them to vote on principle as opposed to what others were doing.

“Our votes are pioneer votes,” he said.

Following the election, Nader drew controversy by criticizing Obama in a Fox News radio interview by using the racially-charged term “Uncle Tom.”

“To put it very simply, he is our first African-American president; or he will be,” he said. “And we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he’s going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or an Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.”