By Noah R. Bombard

Ralph Nader  is running for president. If you didn’t know that, don’t feel bad - you’re not alone.

Nader, 73, who ran a 21-stop campaign marathon across Massachusetts Saturday has remained relatively off the radar this election season, despite having launched his campaign in February.

But as Nader worked a fever pitch of coffee shops, college campuses and cafes Saturday — including his stop at Clark University here in Worcester — he had his sights set clearly on rallying politically dissatisfied Americans into what he repeatedly called a “third political force.”

Those looking to check something other than “Republican” or “Democrat” on their ballot were listening.

A little more than a week before the election, Nader would not outright concede his chances in the election were nil - although he told supporters in Cambridge that Sen. Barack Obama would surly “landslide McCain” in Massachusetts and referred several times to “the Obama presidency.” But while the country looks to the Nov. 4 election, Nader was clearly looking beyond it. 

“The more votes you get before Nov. 4 the more you can build a force after Nov. 4,” Nader said by phone Saturday night on his way to Stockbridge after completing 19 of the scheduled 21 stops for the day stretching clear across the state.

The aggressive campaign push itself was part of Nader’s message. Small gatherings scattered throughout communities rather than big fundraising events is how presidential candidates should be addressing voters, he said. And it’s not entirely coincidental he packed so many into one day. Nader is trying to nab the record for most campaign stops in a state in one day - campaign workers whisked him from one location to the next from 8 a.m. to midnight. As the campaign neared its end Saturday, Nader said pending confirmation from Guinness World Records, the record should be his.

But campaign stops and world records aside, Nader appeared to be on a mission Saturday - a mission beyond the White House in ‘08 . Nader continually voiced the need for a new force that would put pressure on the two major parties, which Nader has for years accused of being beholden to big business and special interest groups. Is Nader looking to form a new political party? That depends largely on the public he’s spending time shaking hands with.

“If there’s enough groundswell,” Nader said.

All along the campaign trail Saturday, Nader told supporters that the majority of Americans aren’t represented by the two main parties. A former Green Party candidate in 2000, Nader said, the Green Party has some great ideals, but that it can’t seem to organize or raise money effectively. Instead, Nader referred to the 2012 election and building a force that could realistically challenge the Republican and Democratic parties.

Related story: Third parties and the presidency

A longtime political activist, Nader is campaigning on a host of reform policies such as taxing Wall Street securities speculators, adopting a single-payer national health plan, shifting the nation’s energies to solar power and reversing U.S. policy in the Middle East.

“Over the shoulders of the Obama administration will be a growing grass-roots political force,” Nader said while speaking to supporters at ZuZu’s restaurant in Cambridge around noon. He referred to a vote for Obama as a vote for the “least of the worst.”

This new political force, he said, will be a “watchdog and a hammer and a constant rising political eminence of the kind that the two parties understand.” What those parties understand, he said, “is losing votes to a third political force.”

That comment may hit a sour note with Democrats, many of whom attribute Nader’s more than 97,000 votes in Florida during the 2000 presidential election as having contributed to George W. Bush’s narrow win over Al Gore in that state.  It’s an argument Nader scoffs at.

In May he told the Wall Street Journal, “If the premise is that we have an equal right to run for election, no one’s a ’spoiler’ - unless we’re all ’spoilers’ of one another. So when they say, ‘You cost Gore the election,’ I say, ‘I thought Bush took more votes from Gore.’”

Nader received 2,882,955 votes in the 2000 election. In 2004, running as an independent, he pulled 463,653 votes.

Nader said this time around he’s had difficulty getting media coverage of his campaign and complained of the two-party monopoly.

“Once you’re excluded by the two party system, you can’t get coverage,” Nader said.

He said he feels the system can be cracked by a “large group of national citizens.”

“We need a second American political revolution,” he said.

By 10:35 p.m. Saturday, after 14 ½ hours of speeches and shaking hands, Nader was still going as the campaign left Northampton and continued on to Stockbridge and then the final stop: a campaign party in Sheffield.

He still had his voice.

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