It’s My Right to Run: “(Ralph Nader’s decision) marks a fundamental shift from an ethic of responsibility to one of damn the consequences, no matter how much populist precedent he tries to dress it up with.” —Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. AlterNet Nader’s assertion, as I heard in an interview with NPR yesterday, that he will draw more heavily from disaffected Republicans is self-serving and fatuous if not frankly delusional! In any case, some disenchanted Republicans are considering crossing over to defeat Bush this time.

Nader may, as his supporters claimed in 2000, not steal as many votes from the Democrats as claimed if he mostly draws on people who would othewise have boycotted the big-party contest. But that may be a vanishingly small number this time around, given the difficulty of getting on the ballot in a significant number of states and especially if the Green Party does not support his run, as indications suggest. I suspect (and hope) that, after four years of W, most of those who would “otherwise have stayed home in 2000” may have long since decided they have to hold their noses and go for Kerry or whomever the Democrats front this time. Although they may consider the two-party system an obscenity, it is the reality in the 2004 election. As I have said here before, I used to be holier-than-thou, proclaiming that the outcome of the Presidential contest could not make enough of a difference to justify the quadrennial passion it provokes. I was somewhat surprised and ashamed at the energy I spent thinking about the 2000 election. In 2004, while I am not sure the country can be governed well, it is desperately clear after the first Bush dysadministration how poorly it can be governed, to our collective detriment and jeopardy.