Oh, I forgot to mention this yesterday. McCain, on his signature issue of campaign finance reform, is just as manipulative and unprincipled as he is on torture:

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tappe...politics#104506



But, he's promised there will be no new taxes, so it's all good, I suppose...

We're gonna be okay, folks. Ralph Nader has come to save the day.

I watched Nader on Meet the Press. I could not find anything he said that I could disagree with.

Sure, but there are probably a million other people out there who would agree with you and Ralph on those same issues. Do you want them all running for President, too?

I detest the two party system, and would love to see better choices than what we have now. But, is throwing votes at Ralph Nader every time he decides to bite the apple and stoke his ego with a doomed presidential run really the right way to do it? Real change has to come from the bottom up, and I don't think Nader brings about any positive change with these presidential runs. He's definitely been an agent of change in other arenas, but when he runs for President, all he does is change the vote totals. He doesn't push candidates in any particular direction, he doesn't build a permanent coalition of people interested in improving the system, and he certainly doesn't have a shot of winning the election himself. Even if he did, he doesn't seem to pay too much attention to what he'd do if he got there.

Nader is the perfect candidate for a low-information voter who doesn't know anything other than that they hate the two major parties. He uses this to his advantage, erroneously suggesting both major parties bear equal responsibility for the myriad messes we're in. The Democrats do bear much responsibility, but to suggest the responsibility is equally distributed is irresponsible and factually incorrect.

On the other hand, if the Democratic nominee can't get past McCain and Nader after eight years of disastrous Bush policies, I have no sympathy whatsoever.

If they are smarter than Ralph and maybe would make a better President. Now if I remember right, you were pleased that Clinton didn't get bumped off in New Hampshire, so more of us got to vote in primaries that could be meaningful. Just think of it, if we had a 5-way race, we could keep the suspense going until November.


Maybe not, but no sign of Barry Commoner, and Eugene McCarthy is dead.


All six of Ralph's campaign staff would take issue with most of this, but I, personally, think you have some good points vis-a-vis the reality of a President nader.

But wait, I think that, in this case, I think Ralph has done the Dems a huge favor, and I do *not* think that his timing -- in the lead-up to Texas and Ohio -- is any accident.

Of the two Democratic candidates, Clinton is much more representative of special interests. Her election would be a step backward, but it also happens that she would be the weaker candidate against McCain. Now nobody knows if Obama is that much more progressive or not, but his ability to campaign in relatively general terms, leave some hope that he might break a bit from the recent lame Democratic mold.

So, I think at this point Democrats have to be concerned about what number of votes they would lose to Nader if Clinton were nominated versus Obama. Many more in the former than the latter caae IMO.

So, I'm thinking that Nader's announcement right before Texas/Ohio could do something to cement support for Obama among ambivalent Democrats.


The existing two-party system is diseased. You say you don't like the two-party system, but you seem more willing to cut the Democrats slack through a period when they did pretty much everything they could to renounce a progressive heritage of smarter, fairer, better Democrats like George McGovern and we wound up with a bunch of pathetic "Me, Too!" war hounds like Clinton. We could debate proportional responsibility, and there are still some good, long-suffering Democrats in office, but what is it going to take to make them get their act together?

Voting for Hillary would be sending exactly the wrong message, I think.

It's not like Obama is knocking my socks off with something like a heath care plan that is actually better or different, but I could vote for him. I think Ralph knows that.


Yep.

So, I'll only vote for Ralph if Hillary gets the nod or if Obama picks a running mate who voted for Iraq funding in 2002 (like some other Senator like .... Hillary?).

I'm hoping that my chances of a Ralph vote are low. Maybe getting lower every minute if Hillary continues to decompensate and her supporters keel wailing about the "latte-sipping, Prius-driving" Obama people.