Just disappear. Fade into Bolivian.

...and take your sanctimonious attitude with you, you f-ing curmudgeon.

Oh one more thing: thanks for Iraq.

Why did you wait until now to make this claim? What possible reason could YOU, Mr. High Ethics and Reformer Extraordinaire, have for failing to say something about it in 2004 when it happened, or in the months immediately following the election?

Could it be because it didn't happen exactly as described, or perhaps even at all?

Ralph should realize that his bid for public office is nothing more than an ego trip. the Greater Good is best served with Mr. Nader sitting on the sidelines.

For anyone with consistent democratic values, it is immaterial whether or not Nader influenced the outcome of the 2000 race.

The matter here is simply one candidate offering money to another to rig the election results (again, regardless of whether you believe the "rigging" favored progressives).

Clearly the blind assumption that Nader is the bad guy (or off-base guy) infects Koppelman. There is a big ethical difference between Republicans giving money to Nader's campaign through the legal donation process (whatever their motive) and an individual channeling donations under an explicit quid pro quo to which the recipient candidate must adhere.

You get the idea that if Obama beat Nader to death for looking at him funny, many self-described "progressives" would find it perfectly legal, and somehow Nader's fault.

sounds like Ralphie is attention-starved.

to the Libertarians. They simply wait until just before the election and then challenge the signatures that the LP has collected and there's no time to prove that the signatures are good and the LP is off the ballot. The real crime here is the state law that forces small parties to get signatures to get on the ballot. The net effect is to keep power in the hands of those who already have it and we see little or no change.

But, of course, nobody mentions that.

How dare McAuliffe secretly try to bribe Raloh Nader to get off the ballot?! He should have gone public and asked for donations!

Ralph, you gave us eight years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Please just slink away and stay away, you egomaniacal S.O.B.

Cuts one in the dark.

And it is hardly heard...a prelude to Ralph's new turd.

Ralph used to be a hero of mine. Now I think he's delusional, a megalomaniac and a liar. I hold Nader responsible for the disastrous Bush Presidency with its "gifts" of Iraq, the further destruction of the environment, torture, erosion of civil liberties and the horror of the aftermath of Katrina. I'd hate to have your karma, Ralph! No one is paying attention to him these days, so I'll take his charges against the DNC with a barrel of salt. Ralph seems to have an insatiable need for attention. I believe he'd do anything to get it. What are a few lies to the man who was willing to risk giving us George W. Bush?

If the first past the post voting system was replaced with instant runoff voting, the system would take care of preventing spoiler candidates altogether.

These kinds of shady deals (whether it actually happened this way or not) are a direct consequence of a flawed voting system which freezes us into a two-party system by disenfranchising anyone who doesn't vote for one of the big two.

I was thinking the same thing as I read this - why talk about this now? Something's fishy . . . but I guess it would be foolish to think that Alex might do a little digging. That would be too much like, well, you know, . . . work. Nadar has always been an attention-whore and this little tid-bit smacks of "Hey honey - want a date tonight?"

And why do I keep confusing him with somebody named Harold E. Stassen?

This country is going nowhere as long as the Democrats or Republicans are in charge. Maybe if everyone who voted for Gore would've voted Nader instead, we could've seen the oligarchy end. But no, people are hung up on there being two and exactly two choices.

And of course this event is just more proof of how corrupt and power-mad the parties are. Disgusting.

Thanks, Ralph, for 8 years of hell.

he waited 5 years to tell us about it. Let me guess, Nader's got a new book in the works?

I take issue with this statement:

"The results and the method are different, but the principle seems to me to be the same: A major party using its connections to big-money donors to covertly affect the election through a third party. Nader had a problem with it when it meant he'd be off some ballots, but -- at least it seemed this way when he spoke with Salon's David Talbot in 2004 -- not when it meant helping him get on some."

Accepting money from Republicans doesn't put Nader on some kind of moral high ground, clearly. HOWEVER, representative democracy is a farce when the range of options is artificially narrowed by burdensome procedural requirements to get people's names on ballots. The difference is that the Republicans were increasing the number of viewpoints represented on the ballot, while McAuliffe was trying to decrease them (if the story is true).

People seem to recognize that narrowing the field of options is illegitimate when, for example, Obama fails to consult any advocates of single-payer healthcare, even though it's a proposal with a nontrivial amount of support among American voters. In the 2008 elections, Salon unabashedly supported Hillary Clinton, even though others felt it was in the best interest of Democrats that she drop out of the race. Nader spoke up in favor of her staying in the race, if you recall.

I voted for Ralph Nader last fall, and don't regret doing so. His positions on the issues represented my own much better than Barack Obama's. Obama is turning out to be complicit in all the same sorts of abuse and corruption that we hated Bush for. This is meticulously documented, in Glenn Greenwald's column on this very site, among other places.

Nader is not president right now, as much as I would have liked that outcome, because we had an election and he lost, fair and square. He likely would have lost even if the process of getting ballot access wasn't rigged, and I accept that. The fact that my views are unpopular is unfortunate, but the country gets the politicians it votes for. There are many problems that won't be solved unless American voters pull their heads out of their asses

It's offensive that the Democratic Party feels entitled to my vote. I'll vote for Democrats when they stop doing things like covering up human rights abuses in violation of international law and giving away my tax dollars to their friends at Goldman Sachs. When they do these things openly and continue to receive our votes, we're telling them that we'll wring our hands over these issues, but we're not serious about them. When we vote for these people and actively try to ensure that everyone else has fewer ballot choices, that's disgusting. On their way of thinking, it would have been better if all the other candidates had been bribed out of the race, and Obama was the ONLY ballot choice. That way, we wouldn't have to worry about the consequences of a McCain presidency at all! How great it would be if there were just one party, with our Dear Leader calling the shots!

Winning an election is a hollow victory if you sacrifice all your principles to do so.