The point is not just to broadcast information, but to give it proper gravitas. The web is not the rights venue to do the latter, to say the least. A bona fide candidate expressing a policy postion as a part of his platform gives it more gravitas than a thousand bloggers can even dream of.
My beef with Mr. Nader is twofold - that he is not bona fide and that the ideas he publicly espouses smack more of muckraking than serious policy proposals. In other words, not only does his candidacy fail to provide proper gravitas but there is very little in his campaigning to give that gravitas to.
By contrast, Mr. Dean's candidacy gave the gravitas to the idea of Bush bashing - in fact, so much gravitas that now every Democratic contender espouses that idea. That was Mr. Dean's contribution to the political discourse, albeit I doubt it will be enough to win him the Democratic nomination.
In my opinion, the best way give gravitas to social democratic ideals is to vote for Mr. Kucinich in the primaries. While it is unlikely that Mr. Kucinich will get the nomination, let alone bash Bush, he is a bona fide candidate with a decent social democratic platform. Therefore, the more votes he receives in the primaries, the greater the gravitas that platform will receive, and thus the more seriously will be taken by the candidate who will receive the nomination (my guess is it will be Kerry/Edwards team).
Having said that, however, I still maintain that the actual implementation of these social democratic ideals depends on the constellation of political-economic forces, which do not seem very conducive for social democracy at this time, regardless who gets the nomination and presidency.
Wojtek