Democrat Vote Fears As Nader Runs Again

Ralph Nader formally announced yesterday that he is to make his fifth run for the White House, renewing fears that he might again take votes from the Democrats in a tight race.

The consumer champion, who will turn 74 this week, rejected suggestions that he would damage the prospects of the Democratic candidate. "If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form," he said.

Nader has stood four times for the presidency since 1992. Many Democrats blame him for taking crucial votes from Al Gore in 2000, allowing George Bush to take the presidency, an assessment that Nader rejects. He stood in that campaign as the Green party candidate and took 2.7% of the vote. He stood again in 2004, as an independent, taking only 0.3%.

He will offer a platform to the left of the two Democratic runners, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Nader, who began hinting last year that he would run, blamed the Republicans for a series of issues, from the Iraq war to unnecessary tax cuts, and the Democrats for failing to stop them. "In that context, I have decided to run for president," he said on NBC's Meet the Press.

He is likely to be squeezed in November's presidential election, given the enthusiasm that Democrats have shown this year in primaries and caucuses for their candidates.

Mike Huckabee, who is clinging on in the contest for the Republican nomination despite John McCain's unassailable lead, said Nader usually pulled votes from the Democratic nominee. "So naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race," he told CNN.

Nader's participation offers him the chance to air to a wider audience his view on corporate power and what he sees as the failure of traditional Washington politics dominated by lobbyists. "You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized and disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."

Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, has hinted that he too might join the race, but the prospect of a McCain-Obama match-up makes that less likely.