I admit I've disagreed with quite a few of your recent columns - given their extreme Pro-Hillary, Anti-Obama bent - but you're right on target here about Ralph Nadir.

Nadir's methods in his 2004 and now 2008 campaigns should dispel any illusions of this guy being progressive or liberal.

A true progressive does not sell his soul to Republicans just to feed a huge ego. I suspect any Green Party loyalists with a head on their shoulders would be disappointed and ashamed in Ralph's desperate, sycophantic alliance with the GOP...

It was true in 2000, and now it is true more than ever: a vote for Nadir is a vote from the Republicans.

This really, really needs to be told to any wide-eyed innocents who think they're making some grand stand for a more wonderful America by voting for Nader.

How do we do this?

And ridiculous. What the Democratic Party should do is support making our elections fair, as Farhad Manjoo's recent article outlined (http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/02/12/gaming_vote/index.html#). But they aren't doing that, so they have no right to complain about Nader hurting them by giving voters an alternative option. Less choice is not the answer.

I honestly believe that Mr. Nader has a serious disease. It is syphilis. Syphilis, if untreated, leads to a decline in mental powers and a grandiosity in vision.

Mr. Nader exhibits both of those symptoms. He certainly has exhibited a decline in mental powers. This was clearly exhibited as early as 2000, when he indicated that there was no difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Today, he has reiterated the error, by again indicating that there is no difference. Clearly, this guy is as nutty as a fruitcake.

The grandiosity (psychiatric terminology for a belief that you are a big shot, the God complex, etc) is clearly evident as well. I myself have a firm belief in my own importance. By godfrey, I'm a big deal! I will NOT, however, be running for President any time soon. Mr. Nader clearly believes that he is a Big Big Deal, and he is so Important and Vital that we cannot survive without him.

He's a sick sick man.

I didn't start reading Salon until after the last election season, so I have been surprised to find it such a slave of the Democratic spin cycle. I went to a Nader rally in San Francisco in 2004, and he directed his attacks at both sides equally. Outside, a group of Democratic picketers insulted people as they walked and all in all, acted like stormtroopers.

If you'll recall, our Democratic candidate in that race had not only voted for the war in Iraq, he had been calling for the invasion since 1998. In 2000, Nader was the Green Party candidate, a position I think unlikely if he had Republican backing. In 2004, the Green Party made an agreement with the Democrats to not run anyone seriously. The Democrats made headlines during that cycle by using influence and large coffers to keep the third party candidate off the voting sheets, though I saw no mention of that when Conason was mocking Nader for getting less than a percentage point of the vote. How could he have gotten more, when the Democrats circumvented the democratic process to stifle his candidacy.

One of the biggest criticisms G.W. Bush had of John Kerry, was that there was no difference in their platforms. Kerry offered no solution to the Iraq mess, except that he would ask Europe and NATO to get more involved.

The last two years show that the Democratic party has not changed its stripe. It is not the anti-war party, it is not the people's party-- it is the stay relevant at all costs party.

This article was partisan hackery.

is to ignore evidence.

The FACTS are that the Republican Party has, time and time and time and time and time again, funded the Green Party. Green Party buffoons (and that is all that there is, buffoons in that party) prefer to ignore this fact, but it is documented IRREFUTABLY.

The FACTS are that the Republican Party has, time and time and time and time and time again, collected signatures for the Green Party. This is not an opinion. This is a fact.

The Green Party is filled with people who are, quite frankly, not very bright. Nader is himself an idiot, and anyone who supports him is an idiot. That's not an opinion, that is a FACT.

Criticising someone for running for president on the grounds that all it does is take votes away from one of the "real" candidates gives explicit approval to the de-facto two party ruling class. It is obvious that all of the nuances of governing can't be neatly divided into us and them, but that's what we get.

It's time we remove the advantages that the two parties have given themselves; ballot access, federal money, etc. and level the playing field.

...he has opened the door, at long last, to the possibility that Ralph Nader is just a "portentious, sucking low-pressure zone", an insatiable ego with nothing to offer but a request that we give him the strokes he so desperately wants.

Sorry, dataguyx, while I kinda like your Syphillis theory, Nader would be way beyond the tertiary stage by now, unless he's already dead (which is a thought). He began the lunacy in the mid-1960s and seems to have plateaued now.

Conason's piece may well be partisan hackery (an arguemnt could be made, given the content, but I just don't want to believe that), but it is also a very clear analysis of an impotent megalomaniac-in-waiting. It's time to turn the whole page, not just fold it at the corner.

Ralph, the party never even started. No more ice. Unsafe at any age. See ya.

Oh boy, I look forward to another 6 months of Nader bashing by people who can't get over the 2000 election.

All the crap that we got from Bush was aided and abetted by most of our Democratic senators and congressmen, both before and after the 2006 election upheaval. We still have Democrats in both houses voting for the patriot act, to continue warantless wiretapping, support for torture, kissing the fleshy backside of Wall Street. You can claim that Bush is responsible for all of this but he couldn't do it without help from the Democrats, including the two presidential frontrunners. Does anyone really believe that if Obama or Hillary win that they are actually going to end the war? That they have any idea why our economy is in the toilet or how to get it out?

Regarding the 2000 election and the upcoming election. Not voting for Nader does not translate to voting for the Democrat. If Nader wasn't running in 2000, I still wouldn't vote for Gore and his dirtbag running mate Lieberman. I would have voted for the Green Party or the Worker's Socialist Party or even the Libertarian Party. Same thing this year: if Obama or Hillary don't give me a good reason to vote for them, I'm not going to do it.