ABSTRACT
Getting into the hotel elevator at 7:00 A.M. on the morning of Election Day, November 7, 2000, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader looked a little more tired than usual. He had just finished a sixteen-hour run of last-minute get-out-the-vote rallies starting with a meeting with the Reverend Al Sharpton in Harlem at 3:00 the previous afternoon, continuing with a flight up the coast to Boston University, where he addressed thirty-five hundred college students at a rally organized on two days' notice, followed by a late-night drive to speak to seven hundred up at the University of New Hampshire in Durham (outdrawing Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, who visited the school three hours earlier) and ending with a 1:30 A.M. Maine rally at the University of South Portland with three hundred semidelirious students and older folks crammed into a sweltering and smelly lecture hall. He and his small entourage of advance men and reporters had rolled into the Hampton Inn in South Portland at 3:00 in the morning. The Roman legion drumbeat that Nader playfully taught a group of drummers at the last rally-"Boom-boom-buh-buh-buh-buh" — was still ringing in my ears as Nader ambled beside me in the elevator. We had a plane to catch at 7:45 A.M.
