the election campaign. Obama said about Nader's criticism, "He's become a perennial political candidate. At this point, he's somebody who's trying to get attention, whose campaign hasn't gotten any traction." On September 10, 2008, Nader appeared with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul as well as several other third party candidates for a press conference at the National Press Club to present the four key principles that they all agreed were the most important of the election. Later that day, Nader and Paul appeared on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer to briefly lay out these principles. On November 4, 2008, Ralph Nader issued an open letter to Barack Obama, wherein he stated, "Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys." Result On Election night, Nader received 738,475 votes for 0.56 percent of the popular vote in the 2008 United States presidential election, finishing in 3rd place. Controversial statements Nader came under fire during and after the campaign for some comments made regarding the candidacy of Barack Obama. In June 2008, Nader commented in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News that he hasn't heard Obama "have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white?" Nader then implies Obama's strategy would be: He wants to show that he is not (...) another politically threatening African-American politician. He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up. Obama campaign spokeswoman Shannon Gilson responded, "We are obviously disappointed with these very backward-looking remarks." On election night, as results were coming in and it was becoming clear that Obama has won the presidency, Nader said about Barack Obama in a live TV interview with Fox News anchor Shepard Smith: To put it very simply, he is our first African-American president, or he will be. And we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he is going to be Uncle Sam for this country or Uncle Tom for