Why scapegoat Ralph Nader for the Democratic Party's own problem? Because excluding Nader from ballots and his program <http://www.votenader.org/issues/index.php> from political discourse helps the Democratic Party avoid important issues like the Iraq war and health care and evade popular solutions like withdrawing US troops and ending the occupation of Iraq and establishing single-payer universal health care. (The Democrats are ignoring other candidates on the left because they, unlike Nader, are too obscure to gain any national attention anyhow and can get on fewer ballots than Nader to begin with.) What I don't understand is why leftists like Doug, Tariq Ali, and a number of subscribers to LBO-talk have to help the Democratic Party avoid issues and evade solutions by offering depressingly dumb arguments like "Nader is a narcissist" (as if that mattered were it true and as if Kerry weren't a narcissist), "Nader is not a Marxist" (true, but so what!), "Republicans support Nader" (true in some cases, but far more Republicans support Kerry an incomparably bigger sum of money, and leftists ought to be more weary of big Democrats' money than marginal Republicans' money, as the former always comes with many strings attached), etc., rather than comparing Nader's and Kerry's programs. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>