by D. Cupples | Ralph Nader has a history of protecting ordinary consumers. He's also intelligent, and he understands presidential elections. Yet, Mr. Nader has up and decided to run for president again.
Election 2000 came down to Florida -- where Al Gore lost by 637 votes, and Mr. Nader got 97,488 votes (FEC). If Mr. Nader had not run and if only 1% of the Floridians who voted for Nader had instead voted for Gore, our nation likely would not have suffered 7 years under Mr. Bush.
We might have avoided the Iraq war, some of our troubles with Iran, our now-tanking economy, our health care crisis, our crumbling education system....
Nader is perceived as a progressive. If he makes it onto November's ballot, chances are that he'll take votes from the Democratic nominee (Clinton or Obama) -- not from let's-stay-in-Iraq-for-100-years McCain.
There is a possibility, of course, that the votes Nader would garner would be geographically distributed in such a way that his candidacy wouldn't change the election results. Then again, there's a possibility that the opposite would come true. Who expected Election 2000 to come down to 647 votes in Florida?
Being as intelligent as he is, Mr. Nader likely knows about these possibilities, and he knows that he has about as much chance of winning the presidency as I have of winning $10 million from Publisher's Clearing House -- yet, he's willing to risk our nation's future.
Frankly, I think Mr. Nader has a point about our two-party political system's being in need of modification, but before we tackle those sorts of problems, shouldn't we find a way out Iraq, fix our economy, solve our nation's health care crisis, repair our broken education system...?
Memeorandum has other bloggers' commentary: THE LIBERAL JOURNAL, Daily Kos, Yahoo! News, The Carpetbagger Report, Sister Toldjah, Taylor Marsh, The Mahatma X Files, WORLDMEETS.US, American Street, The Seminal, the talking dog, TBogg, Wake up America, The Political Inquirer, Macsmind and A Blog For All.
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