Nader still defiant on eve of US election

1.00pm

NEW YORK - Ralph Nader admits he hasn't a prayer of winning the White House but remained defiant to the end, saying there was no way he was pulling out of the US presidential race.

Vilified by Democrats as a spoiler in 2000 for drawing votes from Democrat Al Gore and helping Republican George W Bush to victory, Nader closed his campaign with a noisy rally on Wall Street.

With the New York Stock Exchange as his backdrop, the independent candidate said voters should demand something better than a choice between "terrible" and "horrible." He said the Democrats can blame themselves if they don't win.

"They're scapegoating, they're so decadent they're looking to blame anyone else instead of their own inability to beat the Republicans," Nader said.

With polls showing Bush and Democrat challenger Sen John Kerry neck-and-neck on the eve of Election Day, Nader said "anybody would be a better president than Bush."

However, he brushed off suggestions he should pull out of the race to help oust Bush. "It's more likely that Kerry or Bush would drop out," he told Reuters in an interview.

A Reuters/Zogby poll released on Monday showed Nader supported by 1.2 per cent of voters.

Nader compared his campaign to the struggles for women's right to vote and the abolition of slavery.

"They never won a national election, they never came close to winning a national election, but their agenda won," he told a few hundred supporters and curious Wall Street onlookers.

Nader said the two main parties were "proxies of giant corporations who have turned Washington into corporate-occupied territory controlling every department and agency."

He urged voters not to settle for the "least worst" option, and criticized the Democrats for what he called "political bigotry" for efforts to keep him off ballots in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

He called Bush a "Messianic militarist," but denied suggestions he would take more votes from Kerry than the Republican president.

"If you were confronted with a choice between a terrible teacher and a horrible teacher, you wouldn't say, 'I'm going to take the terrible teacher,"' he said. "You'd say 'I don't want either of them, I want something better."'

Nader said he came to Wall Street because it was a symbol of his fight against the growing disparities between rich and poor and corporate scandals of recent years.

However, his speech indicated a more pragmatic reason for closing his campaign in the Democratic stronghold. "Here in New York, John Kerry is going to landslide the state," he told the crowd. "That means New Yorkers are free to vote with conscience."

- NZPA