Mr Spoiler...Um, I mean Nader, throws his hat in the ring
 

Here we go again.

This circus gets better and better.

"Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, speaking shortly before Nader’s announcement, said Nader’s past runs have shown that he usually pulls votes from the Democratic nominee. “So naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race,” the former Arkansas governor said on CNN."

Dr Phil for president?
 

Dr. Phil for president!!! Nadar can be the vp! cindy

This will be as useless as '04...if Obama wins the Dem nomination.

I wonder what McCain promised him...? In truth, though, I think with the number of people who regret the way the 2000 election turned out, he won't have an impact.

Give that man a Corvair.

The more that I develop this alternate life here in the Philippines the less I get all pissed off and bothered about the coming election.

Knowing that Nader is running just makes me laugh at this point.

Nader has saved thousands of lives with his consumer advocacy over the years.

It's amazing that he's made a joke out of himself like this.

I think he fancies himself being a real difference maker...and you know what? He would be a big difference maker...so big that he would never become president unless the collective conscience of this country shifted hard.

Run, Nader, run! Keep running every 4 years!

As long as they take votes from Hitlery, I'm good.

But Obama will win the primary. What then?

Who? Names, I want names. ;)

I know you're probably just kidding, but my sister's life was probably saved by Ralph Nader. If any one human being can be considered responsible for the widespread addition of seat belts and other safety devices in cars, it's Nader. My sister was hit head on by a guy who crossed over the line on a windy mountain road. Nothing she could have done to avoid it. She was hospitalized, but her seat belt, the padded dash, and the collapsible steering column made her injuries much less severe. Nader didn't invent any of those things, but his consumer advocacy made them standard in modern cars.

I still wouldn't vote for him. He's a professional pain in the ass.

Do you think someone pays him to do this? Why else would he?

I don't know Nader personally but his motivation might be that he has been around long enough to know that obama/hillary/mccain are all cut from the same cloth and not much will be different regardless of who wins. I don't think he has any delusions of winning, but he can certainly ask some questions that might otherwise be ignored.

Someone has to stand up and call the current system out on it's faults. If the worst thing that could happen is that you slightly skew the chances of one shitty candidate versus an almost identical shitty candidate, then the stakes aren't really that high, in reality. A voice of dissent is there to push topics of discussion into the forefront, to force people not to just sweep difficult issues under the rug. It's almost like people don't want to hear about certain things because they've completely given up, and figure "oh well, that's the way it is, that's the way it will always be" ...

Um Nader, do you think as president you have a plan to solve: the immigrant problem? Chinese food chain and toy problems? Big oil tankers spilling oil and other toxic waste in the Danube and other waterways? A way to appease the Palestinians without destroying Israel in the process? The broken-down Indian railroads? The broken down American roads? The constant amount of tsunamis swirling through Bangladesh during monsoon season? Guess you can't do much about the tsunamis, but what about the rest?

See, people say that it's impossible to tell the candidates apart these days, but I don't think that means that they actually are as similar as their pandering-to-mainstream-poll-results would seem to indicate. Can you really say that the end results of, say, Bill Clinton's administration versus George Bush's administration were at all similar? They may sound "almost identical" in campaign speeches, but I think ultimately each candidate would deliver radically different futures for the country. The only problem is we never really know until it's too late who the best choice really was.

There are some things that are the same about any candidate who has a possibility of getting elected, and although they are the least talked-about issues, they are probably some of the most important, as far as shaping our future in the long run, not just cosmetic differences in four-year chunks. Only someone who has no chance of getting elected will be able to broach these subjects. But, like I said, somebody has to.

There is a lot of truth to that. Good post.

Thanks.

Like what?

For example, it's a given that any viable candidate must declare themselves to be a Christian. But there's a huge difference between someone who pays lip service to their "faith" during the campaign, and someone who tries to overturn Roe v. Wade and get intelligent design added to the school curriculum. The candidates in this example are not really the same at all, and the results are hardly cosmetic.

In the most generic of senses, I suppose you could say that anyone electable would have to be willing to indebt themselves to a certain number of lobby groups, but even then, there is such a wide variety to choose from that it is not only possible but likely that the long-term outcomes will be dramatically different.

Seriously, I'd like to know what you consider to be inevitable in the long-run, given our current methods of electing candidates?

Like, selling our government out to the highest corporate bidder. Everybody does it, but nobody talks about it. It's a non-issue in politics, considered the stuff of fringe conspiracy nuts. Everyone plays along, and reinforces the idea in people's heads that "it has to be that way" ...so it takes an un-electable person to say NO IT GODDAMN WELL DOESN'T.