Nader Announces New Bid for White House:

Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, [...] Nader also ran as a third-party candidate in 2000 and 2004, and many Democrats still accuse him of costing Al Gore the 2000 election.

Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation says it nicely in her editorial today:

Look around: no one, including former strong supporters, called on you to run this year. Doesn’t that deafening silence say something? In 2004, the last time you ran, in a year with the largest turnout of voters in recent history, you received only 0.3 percent of the nationwide vote –down from 2.7 percent in 2000. And this year, as a result of beyond-the-beltway progressives driving their issues to the forefront of the Democratic agenda, both candidates pledge to bring the troops home,to push for national health insurance, to reinvest in America, roll back tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations and use that money in the drive for new energy, affordable college, investment in education. The stakes in 2008 are clear.

Of course history can be twisted to whatever viewpoint you want, but it’s pretty easy to see that if Nader didn’t take 45,590 of Gore’s votes in Florida then the last seven years would have been remarkably different.

I’m hoping that the remarkable populist appeal of Barack Obama will keep Nader off the radar. Then he could be appointed chairman of the CPSC or perhaps the FEC, where he might do some real good.