There was the black mother who had voted Democratic all her life realizing that it was Democrats who had taken away her income support and sent her son 200 miles away to a privatized gulag for a minor drug infraction. There was the liberal who had listened to Democrats tell him for eight years that Clinton was the best president their political party could ever hope for. And so he left the party. . . . We agreed with Mr. Nader, but believed 'he can't win.' . . . It needs to change and the change begins with us, so after all these years, we will vote the Green Party ticket.
Every journey begins with that first step.
Nader and the Green Party somewhat belatedly noticed that the crowd running ahead of them was their own campaign. They came to realize that it wasn't so much a better platform they had to offer, but a better way of thinking about and dealing with such things, a way that had once been a natural part of American democracy but which had been systematically destroyed by a politics maniacally devoted to creating anger, division, and demons. Americans didn't want just the right answers but a better way to discover them. Alone among the candidates, Nader had the courage, decency, honesty and imagination to help it happen . . . As the campaign went on, America slowly began rediscovering itself, feeling better about itself, and being less angry with others.