Back in April, I blogged about Ralph Nader’s presidential run and wished him all the best. I also blogged about the Congressional Black Caucus’s frustration over their powerlessness when Republicans are in the White House. Lately I’ve been reading about the so-called Nader Effect, and it is my fervent wish that it grows to gigantic proportions. MSNBC says:
Democrats fear that Nader’s presence on the ballot in places such as Wisconsin might tilt the election to Bush — or at least might force Kerry to divert advertising, money and staff to states where he’d be comfortably ahead, were it not for Nader.In the final week of the campaign, for instance, Kerry might need to spend three days appealing to voters in Florida, but might be pulled away to shore up support in Wisconsin and Oregon, if polls showed Nader drawing anti-Bush voters there….
lthough exit poll data from 2000 is too scanty to prove that Nader cost Al Gore the election, Democrats believe that he did.
And Democrats’ anxiety over Nader reflects Kerry’s weakness as a candidate. With a stronger Democratic candidate in 1996, Nader was merely a curiosity, not a menace. That year, Nader running as Green Party presidential candidate won 685,000 votes, but Bill Clinton coasted to re-election.
This November, if Nader won only the same number of votes as he did in 1996, but if they were cast in the “wrong” states from Kerry’s point of view, it could cost Kerry.
Of course, no one knows how all this is going to turn out. I’m dismayed that most polls seem to show President Bush behind John Kerry. I just don’t understand why a man like Kerry is polling so closely. If I were the paranoid type, I’d think something was up.
Having John Kerry as president wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, I suppose. Hopefully the Nader Effect will have an enormous effect.
Perhaps America deserves to have a man like John Kerry as its leader. It will be a just punishment for allowing the mass slaughter of the unborn.
