I agree with you about Obama's appalling reversal on the FISA "compromise" -- I wish there was a good way to pressure him to stick to his original stance.

However, I can't find fault with him criticizing the recent Supreme Court ruling. There are many good reasons to categorically oppose the death penalty. However, the ruling turned on "evolving community standards", and, as such, almost demands attack from those who feel that their standards include treating no crime as more serious than child rape.

She would have been raked over the coals and then some. She would have been called a racist and fear-monger. She would have held to task for her words so quick it wouldn't have been funny. The Left would have been SCREAMING for her head. But no, it's Nader.

A "progressive" and a white man.

I think that says it all.

Please no one else post on this thread. Joan waslh deserves irrelevance with her candidate.

"So I don't have the answer about the most constructive way to pressure Obama -- and I welcome yours"

You still don't get it at all.

The democratic party will not become the republcains for all your clinton supproter attempts to destroy us. If it does you can have the party. New party 12'. I'd rather save what we got and work with what we got, than destroy both parties with clinton's meat puppet sabotuers.

Nobody else post, other than her employee's and freinds agreeign endlessly to wahtever she says. Soem people have earned irrelevance being propogandists for profit. to not give it to them does them no favors. joan belongs at fox. Don't give her what she desires. You

Sorry Ralph. I'll vote for whoever I please, namely Obama, and you can go straight to H-E Double toothpicks, along with your racism, whether veiled or overt.

What Nader is speaking to is an oddity in Obama's behavior. As someone who is of color, he is surprisingly aloof to their causes. As someone who has been exposed to Islamic culture, his campaign has been cowardly to Muslims.

You wrote:

"Nader is a dead-end for progressives. He can't win the presidency; he can't win seats in Congress; he can only cost a Democrat the presidency, as he did in 2000."

Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you want a progressives vote, then offer them something instead of the same old tired corporate triangulation.

If someone gets out of bed and makes the effort to go to a polling booth to vote for someone who isn't a major party candidate, then, trust me, the major party candidates didn't deserve that person's vote.

Part of the problem is that corporate democrats seem to feel entitled to every vote that is a little left of center. (And while we're at it, let me reassure you, even if Gore had won in 2000, the country post-9/11 with Lieberman as VP, would NOT have been better off. Gore would have been a one term President and the country would have clamored for W Bush's "reassuring" warhawk in 2004).

No vote for a third party is ever a waste because it documents something. That for all the money and all the exposure, there are people who were unconvinced by either option and wanted to make sure you knew it.

People don't hate liberalism. What they can't stand are politicians who don't have the courage of their convictions. The courage to stand against a FISA bill, the courage to stand for all religious and ethnic groups, the courage to stand for progressive causes without flinching.

It's hilarious to hear Barry even talk about Nader. Barry's seven years as senator have come to what exactly? Especially when compared to Nader's service? Who has actually done more to positively effect the day-to-day lives of every day Americans? Safe drinking water, freedom of information act, OSHA, EPA -- all have Nader's fingerprints on them.

What's Barry done??

Get over yourselves, corporate democrats. Enjoy your DLC-approved "democrat". He won't have my vote, but I wish him well. Maybe he'll even keep his word once or twice. But good luck on him getting our sons and daughters out of Iraq.

In 2000 if not before. He is the platonic ideal of a concern troll, and just as useful.

As for the rest of it, the need to keep pressure on a centrist nominee: Of which Democratic nominee would that not have been true.

@damnthatXanadu: Of course Hillary Clinton is a victim even in hypothetical situations, and it is very rational and highly productive for you to drag her into this discussion out of left field.

The problem is that his past actions have given him enough credibility that people who should know better (as well as most who don't) take him seriously about everything he says, even though at least half of it is nonsense. A lot has changed since Nader was at his peak, but he hasn't. He clings to the 70's as if they are the only thing attaching him to reality. The rules that applied in the 70's don't apply any more. Black people are not considered race traitors if they dress in suits and don't talk "jive". Yes... there was a time when that happened, or so I've been assured by black friends who traveled in white circles.

One think I disagree on is the idea that people should not have an obligation to other's in their gender/ethnic group. Obviously, these obligations cannot be paramount, but we all have an obligation to do what we can to move society forward, and women have more authority to speak for women and black people have more authority to speak for black people than people who are in other groups. We have a responsibility to pay back the people who gave us the ability to be what we are by paying forward to the young people who will follow us. Loyalty to a group identity should never be all consuming, but it is an important aspect of progress.

Learn to read. Walsh is complaining that Obama is acting too much like a conservative. She isn't trying to turn the Democratic Party into the Republican Party - she's wishing that the Democratic Party would stop turning itself into the Republican Party.