The irony of the 2004 presidential election is that the Green Party's nomination of David Cobb and the Democratic Party's legal offensives against Ralph Nader have had an effect of keeping Nader off the ballots in many one-party states while failing to dislodge him from the ballots in most battleground states:
<blockquote>The [Democratic] party's limitation of Nader's ballot access has been most successful in non-battleground states. That keeps the independent candidate away from states where either President Bush or Sen. Kerry will win easily. Nader then is free to concentrate on closely contested states where he could take away enough votes from Kerry to carry them for Bush, conceivably giving him a second term.
The Democrats have been able to keep Nader out of Arizona, California, Illinois, Mississippi, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia (with only Arizona in the battleground category). Because Nader is not running to be elected but to preach a left-wing gospel that he feels Kerry neglects, he would have campaigned in all these states were he permitted on their ballots.
Until thrown off in Texas, Nader planned heavy campaigning against the president in his own state. In battleground Florida, the Nader campaign was taken by surprise in Tallahassee, without a lawyer to face 10 Democratic attorneys and a judge willing to accept all their arguments. Nevertheless, the odds are that Nader's name will end up on the Florida ballot.
Despite Democratic obstruction, Nader definitely will be drawing votes from Kerry in these contested states: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and West Virginia. Besides Florida, Nader expects also to get on the ballot in the battleground states of New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (Robert Novak, "Anti-Nader Crusade Could Backfire," Chicago Sun-Times, September 13, 2004, <<http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak13.html>http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak13.html>)</blockquote> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.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/>