Left Standing

"Nader people are totally treacherous. Look at the damage they've done - it's too brutal to even talk about. I'm so mad," says Clare Hill.

He has come along to Seattlet town hall to hear his nemesis speak. His passionate view is shared by many Democrat supporters around the country: Ralph Nader let George Bush into the White House, and the idea that he is standing again is too much to bear.

But the howls of anguish are not going to change Ralph Nader's mind. After years of stubbornly championing the rights of consumers against ravaging corporate America, he sees it as his duty and imperative to run.

"If they don't like Nader, they don't have to vote for him," is the simple retort from one of the organisers of Monday's rally, 25-year-old Philip Locker, who works fulltime for the Socialist Alternative group newspaper.

The Naderites are getting used to loud abuse emanating from the Democrat mainstream, but with his national opinion poll ratings averaging around 5%, it is clear that Ralph Nader will be a significant factor in this election that the anti-Bush coalition cannot ignore.

Seattle has long been a centre of progressive thinking and direct action. Political dialogue flows freely around the multiple coffee houses that dot the downtown district and, in 2000, Nader took 4% of the vote in Washington state.

The elegant town hall auditorium can accommodate around 1,200 people but on this bright spring morning it is only one-third full. On the steps of the building, Democrats who advocate uniting around John Kerry are making their case with placards and a quiet protest. "Bush-Nader 2004" says one. "Don't be a Republican tool" says another.

"We know it's not a popular position to take now but we are not going to do deals with Democrats," says Greg Beiter, another rally organiser from Socialist Alternative. He says supporting Nader now is about laying the foundation for a new political movement that will break a failed duopoly.

"It's about being right in the long term. If Kerry gets elected he will shatter people's illusions just as Clinton did. The Democrats don't represent a real alternative and the fact is that they failed in the past. Losing to Bush was their failure."

Socialist Alternative has an old-school Marxist rationale for backing Nader and believes that most people in the hall are probably to the left of him politically. This is brought home most clearly by their bright-yellow lapel stickers, which read: "End the occupation of Iraq - bring the troops home NOW!" In a question-and-answer session, Nader makes it clear that he sees that view as student agitprop and a recipe for bloody civil war.

Trying to focus his attacks from the lectern on the president, he denounces him as a "chicken-hawk ignoramus" but his contempt for the Washington-based politics of John Kerry bubble up to the surface often. Democrats on Capitol Hill failed to defend America from the Patriot Act, the Bush tax cuts and war in Iraq.

"Every four years, both parties get worse, on an accelerated track, where they turn over the United States to a handful of global corporations who control Washington, our state capitals, our elections, and our media," Nader says.

Whereas many of his hardcore supporters have given up altogether on liberal capitalism, Nader is nostalgic for the compassionate America of the New-Deal and Eisenhower eras. He is serious when he says that disgruntled conservatives - enraged by Bush's deficits and federal expansionism - can find solace in many of his policies, which are all about giving power "back to the people".

The Nader stump speech is in its early days but there are plenty of good one-liners that emphasise his gift for withering criticism: "The White House is a corporate prison. It's a nice place - for public housing." On the failure of education: "Computer literacy? I'd settle for literacy, by the way."

It is in his vision for a "different America" free from the conspiracy of the two-party system that things get woolly. He talks idealistically about cheap mass-transit systems that would allow people to sit next to each other and "chat" in the mornings instead of being imprisoned in cars.

The practical limitations on sustaining the seven-month campaign ahead are brought home starkly when, halfway through the rally, a Nader organiser from nearby Portland attempts to solicit funds from the stage by offering signed copies of one of Nader's books. Appeals for $500 (£272) donations are met with awkward silence, until the asking price is halved.

In order for its candidates to appear on the ballot in many states, the campaign is going to have to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures, a costly feat in itself in addition to keeping the candidate on the road.

Democrats are mad at Nader, because they see his candidacy as a clear act of defiance that will inevitably deny them votes when the constituencies of both main parties are so delicately balanced. Kirsten Brost, press secretary for the Washington State Democrats, is convinced that the support which progressive voters are declaring for him now will evaporate by polling day.

"His whole pitch in 2000 was to say that there was no difference between the two parties. George Bush has spent every day in office so far proving him wrong."

But do Democrats care so much about Nader if they believe he has no significant constituency this time around? They see him as an uncontrollable egomaniac - a potential problem of election arithmetic that could easily be solved, if only he stayed out.

Nader has an ideological soulmate who is still running for president - though largely ignored by the domestic media - within the Democratic fold. Among the various groups vying for attention on trestle tables outside the auditorium, the local Dennis Kucinich team are there, hoping to attract Nader supporters to help their man notch up a symbolic victory in the forthcoming Oregon primary.

Faeda Scholz sees the difference between the two men as merely a question of tactics, with Kucinich working to change the party from within - Nader from without. She has a view that should worry those Democratic managers who believe that the Naderites are going to be largely ignored as this bitter presidential election progresses.

"If Kerry doesn't change his tune on a whole lot of things, I'm not voting for him, and I will go with Nader along with a lot of other people who think like me," she says.