I can't do better than
this by Teacherken on the Nader "story" (and crazed charges of "bribery," etc.) so I'll just post it, with some bolding added by me for emphasis. Thanks as always to Teacherken - a Deeds supporter, by the way - for being a leading voice of sanity and fairness in the progressive blogosphere.
Republicans were paying to get Nader on the ballot, particularly in Pennsylvania, whose court called Nader's application about as corrupt as anything they had experienced in the same cycle, the Dem Party of Virginia worked to keep Nader off the ballot, and it turns out he apparently had not met the standard.
Remember, Nader's original purpose in 2000 was to get ballot access for the Greens. He had said he would not campaign in any state where it would make a difference. But somehow when he failed to get into the debates (not coming close to the thresholds set for participation) he blamed Gore and went out to take Gore down. One need only look at two states, either of which would have flipped the election, FL and NH.
McAuliffe was doing nothing more than protecting the Dem party, in this case AFTER Republicans were trying to help Nader as a means of hurting Dems. Kind of like Roger Stone helping run Al Sharpton's campaign. . .
And it is really no different than offering to pay off debts of a former competitor who supports you, which Howard Dean did for Braun, and which Hillary Clinton did for Vilsack.
This attack is thrown out there because Nader is trying to sell books. And it is being trumpeted largely by people strongly opposed to McAuliffe, many of whom are openly supporting Moran and who resent McAuliffe's entry into a race they thought they had locked up in a 2-way.
FWIW, I am not supporting McAuliffe, but rather Creigh Deeds. I will criticize Terry on some issues, for example, the way he is handling the payday lending bill in 2002. But this is a cheap shot. Some people want to throw as much as possible at Terry to try to paint the image that he is corrupt, when to date they have pointed at nothing illegal or immoral.
And to put it bluntly, associating him with the corruption around Murtha and the others associated with PMA is totally uncalled for. A Dem Congressman from Indiana is clearly in trouble. And there are whiffs around Jim Moran as well, but to date that has nothing to do with Brian.
What Terry did with respect to Nader was well within the bounds of normal political activity as it has been practiced for more than a few decades.
And quite frankly, I think it redounds to Terry's credit that he tried to prevent Nader from possibly messing up another presidential election.
Bravo!
