The Obligatory View on Nader's Candidacy...

I think Ralph Nader should run for president if he wants to, not because he's Ralph Nader and I like him, because I rather don't, but because the one great thing about democracy is that he can run. He has a point that the democratic process is being hijacked by the two main parties. (That's paraphrasing. Click here to read the Reuters article that actually quotes him.). If the populace as a whole does not want Nader as president, they won't vote for him, but the entire point of this democracy we pretend we have and love is that we have options to which the voters can say "no."

I spent about a year and a half as an eligible voter in Oregon, one of the few states that allows issues to be put to a vote of the people both through the initiative process, where the voters request something be put to a vote, and through the referendum process, where the state legislature makes the request. In that time, I tended to put my signature on any petition for a ballot initiative that I was asked to sign, not because I agreed with all of them, but because I believed then and still believe now that disagreeing with something does not give one the right to take the issue off the table. It is perfectly legitimate to say one disagrees with what is under discussion and to later vote it down; it is not legitimate to say that because one disagrees with something, there will be no discussion.

It is one of the worst subversions of the democratic process--worse than these "activist judges" that have the Republican's knickers in a knot--that the Democrat's leadership would actually come out and say that Nader should not run because it would hurt the Democrat's nominee's chances at winning. They tend to argue that Nader's run took votes away from Al Gore in 2000, thus costing him the election, and the same would happen this year, dooming us to another 4 years with Bush. Looking at it from another perspective: the lack of options is the only thing that is keeping votes in the Democrat's camp. One would think they'd be more worried about that.