"The Rant" by Tom Degan: Oh, Ralph, you've done it again!

"The Rant" by Tom Degan: Oh, Ralph, you've done it again!

A rather good counter argument to the idea that Ralph will once again play the "spoiler."

In 2000 Al Gore won the political lottery. As luck would have it, the Republicans that year nominated a hideous, half-witted little frat boy named George W. Bush. Casting a vote for Ralph Nader didn't seem like too much of a gamble in New York - a state that Gore was expected to (and did) win easily. Who would have thought that so huge a segment of the American electorate would actually be foolish enough to vote for a corrupt, mentally unbalanced little piece of shit from Crawford, Texas? Who would have even dreamed in a million years that the Bush Mob would have been able to steal the state of Florida by illegally removing 57,000 African Americans from the list of eligible voters? Who among us could have possibly imagined that so thoughtful and intelligent a man as Al Gore would run one of the dumbest campaigns in American political history?

It would be easy to blame Mr. Nader for the Democrats' defeat eight years ago - easy but unfair. Ralph Nader didn't lose the election for Al Gore. Al Gore did that all by himself. The former vice-president, to his credit, has admitted as much.

When he ran again in 2004, the Nader campaign was not a factor in the results. John Kerry, like Al Gore before him, ran a jaw-droppingly stupid campaign. He would have lost with or without Ralph in the running. Which brings us to the sixty-four dollar question: Will a Ralph Nader candidacy mean certain defeat for the Democrats in 2008? Maybe yes. Maybe no. That all depends on whom the eventual nominee is.

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