Oh come on. You REALLY think Ralph Nader is secretly a Republican-loving, ego-boosting, purposeful spoiler? He's just a principled man, like he's always been. And he's done more good for this country than any politician I can think of.

I supported Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004 and hopefully I'll be supporting Obama in 2008, but I refuse to engage in any of this Nader-bashing. He has been consistently fighting on the side of the people since the 60's, and he's done a hell of a lot of good. When Democrats were less indentured to corporate interests, he supported Democrats (he worked closely with Carter) but when the Democrats moved more to the right during the Reagan era -- and watched as Dems didn't stand up against the Reaganites reversing all the consumer reforms he and Democratic friends had worked so hard to put in place, he understandably saw a problem there.

Neither Gore nor Kerry seemed to be principled and people didn't know what they stood for. I think Obama will be different. Nader running in this election won't make a lick of difference if Obama comes across as a strongly principled person to the voters, and I believe he will.

The Nader suckups, enablers and koolaid drinkers are out again. It reminds me that stupidity is not just a problem for Republicans, but progressives as well. Anyone who thinks that Nader is a principled person is stupid, I'm sorry to say.

Nader is not principled. He is an ego-driven wack job. His main interest is getting in the headlines, and continuing to suck up money to sustain himself from credulous dummies who cannot read past the words he writes.

Anyone in the world can say anything. That's freedom of speech. I have no problem with that.

Our problem is that we also have Freedom of reason. Reason means that you should consider the CONSEQUENCES of Nader's words. Of course, he never has, and neither have his followers, but I can hope. The CONSEQUENCES of Nader voters are the election of Republicans. The money he has gotten from people come increasingly from Republicans. In 2004, in time after time after time, contributions to Greens and Nader were Republican contributions. In time after time after time, the signature gatherers that put Nader and greens on the ballot are Republican.

Republicans are not as stupid as many progressives. They realize that the false hopes of Nader purity convince many of the stupider progressives that he offers something of value. The value that he offers is the SPLITTING of votes on the left. He will NEVER be elected to anything. He has NEVER in the past been elected, and he will NEVER in the future be elected.

So, who will vote for Nader? Well, as PT Barnum put it, "No one ever lost any money underestimating the intelligence of the American people." That's Nader's hope too - that the stupid people vote and give money as well.

So then have a look at the Democrats who broke their "obligation" by not voting for Gore. Some few thousand voted Nader. Some hundreds of thousands voted for Bush.

And yet your conclusion is to blame Nader.

Again, the cold, hard logic. "Blame" has nothing to do with it. Of course I "blame" direct voters for Bush even more; what I am talking about is the logical and foreseeable impact of what Nader did.

Bush gained power because of a matter of a few hundred counted votes in Florida. Nader took 97,000 votes. If even a fraction of those had gone to Gore, Bush could not have gained power.

Once again, very slowly, Nader controls Nader's actions. Nader's individual action took enough votes away from Gore to allow Bush to gain power. The fact that there were other votes that went against Gore is irrelevant from the perspective of what Nader is responsible for. Nader could not control those other votes directly. But he could control whether or not he campaigned against Gore.

Your analysis is akin to arguing that a bank robber should go free because others had independently robbed the same bank at a different time.

The logic is extraordinarily simple to follow - Nader is "responsible" for the direct and predictable results of Nader's independent and individual actions.

You seem like a genuinely nice, concerned person, but I must point out that, in the real world of politics, your prescriptions for action just don't work.

As I said in my previous post, I voted Dem for years. I also did activism for various Dem candidates. By 2000, I was fed up with the DLC and turned my back on the Democratic Party. It was a fascinating experience because it taught me that, even though I fancied that I had been as intellectually tough on Dems as I had been on Reps, as long as I was functionally a Dem, that just wasn't true. I had been giving them a lot of breaks without really being aware of doing so. Once I stepped outside the Dem Party, it became obvious that they are as deeply in hock to big money interests as the Reps are and govern accordingly. All the things that are not part of the public debate but should be became obvious too. When looking at politics in America, don't just think about what's going on and ask why, think about what's not going on and ask why not. When you do that, you realize just how narrow the range is of policies and discourse that are deemed appropriate by political elites. And "political elites" includes Dems.

In your last post you point out a couple of disasters of the Bush Administration, the Iraq War and the economy, and rightly say that you could add many more. But, h_lance, during all of the Bush Administration, the Dems were roughly half of the Congress. That gave them the power to stop everything Bush has done, from war funding to the Patriot Act to Kyl/Lieberman to bankruptcy "reform" to tax cuts for the wealthy to Supreme Court appointments, etc. But they didn't. And it is precisely my point that liberals are at fault for that failure because they doggedly follow the advice you give in the second half of your post. Until Dems learn that they will lose liberal support if they don't stand up to the likes of Bush, we give them no impetus to stand up to him. Why would they if there are no consequences to not doing so?

Look at the elections of 2006. The country overwhelmingly voted Reps out of - and Dems into - office. That was almost universally attributed to popular discontent with the Iraq War. So what did Dems do about that, given their enormous popular support? Not one damned thing. So now it's two years later and your advice is Vote Democratic!

Your first prescription is to encourage grass roots support for progressive policies. Look at the platform of the Green Party and you'll see that that's exactly what that is - grass roots support for progressive policies. But for some reason you deem every sort of support for progressive policies to be appropriate except electoral support. Nader and the Greens are actually progressive, which I believe you think you are as well, but you adamantly refuse to vote that way. I just can't buy that approach.

Your second prescription is to help the Dems win and then point out your contribution. I'm sorry h_lance, but that's naive. If you do that, as liberals have been doing all along, what you get from Dems is "Thank you very much. See you in two years." You don't get anyone in office to pay attention to you if they know that you will never penalize them for acting against your interests. It's Politics 101, and liberals haven't learned it. Again, the Christian Right is far smarter than liberals on this subject, which is why the Reps give them a lot more stroke than Dems give liberals.

Finally you say what Democrats say every single election year - "not this year!" Here's another election and Dems are telling liberals that, once again, we can't vote our principles. I've been hearing that from Dems every election year for the past 8 years. You say "for the time being," we must vote for Dems so that Reps don't win. The problem is that, by that logic, it's never time. According to that reasoning, the time is never right for liberals to vote liberal. And if you never vote liberal, what does that make you?