This is GREAT news:
Ralph Nader, still blamed by many Democrats for draining critical votes from Al Gore in the 2000 race for the presidency, says he is seriously considering running in 2004.
His decision has the potential to vex Democrats who worry that he would divert some of their supporters and delight Republicans who think the same thing.
Nader says he has moved closer to a repeat run as the Green Party nominee after concluding that Democrats have no one who can defeat President Bush.
Not counting the fact that he drains votes from Democrats, the most important thing Nader does is expose what most Democrats are really thinking, because his policy proposals are what most Dems are gunning for in the long run. I will try to find out where we can donate.
Moe Lane
If you want a good laugh, go check out TalkLeft’s entry on the subject – the post itself is pretty much just a quote*, but some of the comments are unintentionally hysterical.
Moe
*And Jeralyn is on my list of Pretty Sensible People I Read (If Not Agree With Often), anyway.
M. Scott Eiland
“If you want a good laugh, go check out TalkLeft’s entry on the subject – the post itself is pretty much just a quote*, but some of the comments are unintentionally hysterical.”
They sure don’t like ol’ Ralph much, do they? Naturally, one of the Sore Loser Brigade had to show up to claim that Nader just made it possible for Bush to steal the election. . .don’t these guys have anything to do besides whining and kissing Eric Alterman’s ass?
serenity
I can’t believe I’m allowed to have this much fun!
What’s funny is in my city, they are evenly divided between Green Party and the Dems. And, I predict, as with the 2000 Elections, they’ll think they were robbed and all my co-workers will blame me again! HA! (yes, that actually happened!)
“It’s people like you….” I can hardly wait!
Andrew Lazarus
Like Perot, Ralph is going to have much less impact the second time around. For one thing, his supporters in the brie-and-wine crowd (in which I travel) find that the “it has to get worse before it gets better” Leninist principles of Nader means it gets worse. They’re melting away.
Moe Lane
“They’re melting away.”
Fine by me, if it’s true: frankly, if I had to choose between Bush winning, at the price of the Greens becoming the dominant opposition party, and Bush losing, but the Democratic Party would still be run by the centrists / liberals (as opposed to the out-and-out left)… wellll, I like Bush a lot, but you’ve got to think of the country as a whole. We can survive Democratic administrations with nary a quiver: the Greens would run the nation into the guardrails in nothing flat.
That being said, I still think that the optimal result is for Bush to win and for the Democrats to keep their current status and power. Heck, they’ll win in ’08 anyway.