You may not have noticed that Ralph Nader (Unsafe At Any Speed) is running for president of the United States - for the third time. Like the other times he has absolutely no chance of winning, but he could damage Al Gore enough to let George Bush become the next president.
That would seem a strange thing for Nader to do. As a Green Party candidate he is campaigning for a cleaner environment among other things and Gore's environmental credentials are streets ahead of those of Governor Bush in Texas, which has the most polluted air in the country.
Gore is also the author of a book, Earth In The Balance, in which he warned in 1992 against the manmade threats to the environment and called for the end of the internal combustion engine. But Nader and some of the Greens believe that Gore has since sold out to the wealthy corporations on ecological issues and needs their funding to get to the White House.
Nader now calls Gore the "consummate political coward", who "speaks with chattering teeth and forked tongue". Nader's more radical proposals to save the environment have strong appeal in nature-loving California and other western states like Oregon and Washington, where he is polling around 9 per cent. The pundits believe those votes would otherwise go to Gore, who must win California to stave off the Bush challenge.
The powerful Auto Workers' Union and the Teamsters are angry at Gore's support for the normalisation of trade relations with China which they opposed. The AWU boss, Stephen Yokich, unsettled the Gore campaign when he said: "It's time to forget about party labels and instead focus on supporting candidates such as Ralph Nader who will take a stand based on what is right, not what big money dictates."
This threat could leave Gore struggling in the industrialised "swing states" of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois, which usually vote Democrat.
Helping to snatch the White House from the Democrats appeals to Nader even if it means victory for Bush, the champion of the big corporations which Nader detests. "The truth is you can't lose," Nader told the New Republic. "You bring thousands of people into the progressive political community. That's a win . . . You cost the Democrats a few states. They'll never be the same again."
Nader says the Democrats have grown arrogant and have lost their progressive roots. They are becoming more like the Republicans and ignore the issues of key constituencies like organised labour. It's time for the party to have "a cold shower".
As consumers we all owe Nader a lot. He pretty much started the consumer movement back in 1965 with his bestseller attack on the car industry, Unsafe At Any Speed, for producing dangerous and air-polluting vehicles. He ensured the demise of the Chevrolet Corvair, which he described as "one of the nastiest-handling cars ever built".
General Motors was not amused and investigated the private life of the austere-living Nader. He sued and with the money funded the consumer-orientated Centre for Study of Responsive Law in 1969. From here hundreds of students and lawyers, nicknamed "Nader's Raiders", compiled critical reports on the meat-packing industry, banks and the government bureaucracy. They compiled valuable data on problems such as care of the elderly, job safety and the abuse of natural resources.
So for many Americans over 50 Nader is still an icon, someone who had the guts to take on big business and faceless bureaucrats for the sake of the little people. But in recent years he has become a somewhat mysterious figure, who surfaced briefly in the last two presidential campaigns and then seemed to fade.
He promises that this campaign will be different. In 1996 he did not really campaign, spent less than $5,000 and got less than 1 per cent of the vote.
This time he hopes to be on the ballot in all 50 states, which is unlikely, and raise at least $5 million. If he wins more than 5 per cent of the vote, the Greens will qualify for matching federal funds in the next election.
He does not find campaigning easy and can be an off-putting figure to those unaware of his achievements. One reporter describes him on the stump as "irrepressibly dour and hauntingly hungry-looking".
First Nader has to win the Green Party nomination at its convention in Denver later this month. He is being opposed by Jello Biafra, former leader of the punk-rock band, The Dead Kennedys, who wants to lower the voting age to five and abolish the military. Another opponent is Stephen Gaskin, co-founder of The Farm Community, one of the largest hippie communities in the world, and in favour of legalising cannabis.
The Greens in the US are not a very cohesive or well-organised political group, but say that "Nader's campaign in 2000 presents the Greens with a historic opportunity to solidify the first serious political alternative to corporate rule in the United States since the People's and Socialist parties of a century ago."
But some of Nader's left-wing critics are not impressed. Katha Pollit, writing in the Nation about this "doomed project", commented: "If working on Nader's campaign is the best way progressives can spend the next eight months, it's time to hire a hearse and lie down in it."