Consumer advocate Ralph Nader says he and Bernie Sanders, the socialist Vermont senator challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, probably would get along well.

But Nader says he’s had no luck reaching Sanders since at least 2000, when Nader scored nearly 3 percent of the national vote running as a Green Party presidential candidate, a feat many Democrats say handed victory to Republican George W. Bush.

“There’s a problem with getting good ideas to him and strategic changes and tactical advice,” Nader says, regretfully. “But that’s part of his charm: I haven’t had a call returned or a letter answered in 15 years.”

The man credited with the mandatory installation of seat belts in cars says he doesn’t give endorsements, for fear of regretting it and being constrained in his ability to criticize, but favors Sanders over Clinton, who he denounces as a “corporatist and militarist."



He's particularly upset that Clinton hasn't supported more aggressive hikes in the national minimum wage and that she helped orchestrate the overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, leading to a second civil war and jihadi footholds.

"She's been engaged in a rhetorical makeover in order to match, rhetorically, Bernie Sanders' deeds and Bernie Sanders' proposals, and tries to come across as Bernie-like," he says.

But the silent treatment from Sanders, Nader fears, may indicate a deeper problem with his campaign.

“He’s really a lone ranger, and that’s a drawback when you run for president because I’m not the only one he’s not returning calls to,” Nader says.



Though Nader doggedly ran for president in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008, he says he doesn’t see an opening for a third-party victory in 2016, even if bombastic billionaire Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination and the also-controversial Clinton leads the Democratic ticket.

“Third-party runs come up against massive barriers,” he says, including issues with ballot access, funding and prime-time debate time. “You cannot believe it, I’m talking as an expert. It’s never going to happen with Bernie. Never. Not even if Hillary insults him in daylight.”

The most he can see is minor, doomed candidacies filling small voter niches, such as Jill Stein’s second Green Party bid. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican while in office, announced Wednesday he again will seek the Libertarian nomination, but neither he nor Stein were competitive in 2012.



“If Trump’s the nominee, that’s an even stronger argument for the Democrats that people shouldn’t split off,” he says, predicting failure for any third-party candidate “unless they have huge name recognition and money, like [former New York Mayor Michael] Bloomberg – that’s the only partially open door.”