Oh boy! The Dems are gonna be pissed!

But I wonder how many people will actually vote for Nader... Either way, this will be a close election for sure!

Ughhhh not AGAIN. Grrr.

I hate Ralph Nader.

He must be secretly be forming alliances with John McCain ... and now all the hippies will vote for him... great.

Hippies smoke too much pot to remember to vote...

This makes me so angry.

Hopefully people will have learned their lessons from the last election though and cast a Dem vote instead of wasting it on Nader. I hate saying these things but I can't think of an alternative. Maybe Ron Paul or Bloomberg will come in and steal some Republican votes.

I don't think people take him seriously. I don't know if the democrats will be upset out this, he is really a non-issue.

He's persistent, you have to give him that.

I doubt he'll get many votes, except perhaps "protest" votes.
For anyone to be a successful spoiler, there have to be unaddressed issues with which the party is not dealing. Hopefully, his run will force some more in-depth discussions.

If anything, popgoestheworld, Ron Paul is taking more Democratic votes than Republican. The right wing is NOT fond of Ron Paul. He is too different from them.

While I am somewhat uneasy about Nader running and possibly increasing the chances of McCain taking the presidency - unhappy day! - I think that he has every right to run and we shouldn't discourage anybody from trying. Our two-party system is too restrictive and we need fresh voices and faces to stir up our stagnant lesser-of-two-evils political status quo.

I want to strangle Ralph Nader - now is not the time for a "protest" candidacy, buddy! This country has serious problems to address, and we need EVERY SINGLE VOTE we can get on the left to make sure the next president is a Democrat. The fewer candidates we have diluting the vote, the better!

Clarient - you're a Ron Paul fan right? What is it about him that you like?

just wondering!

Yeah, Nader! :clap:

My theory is that Karl Rove is pulling some Mission Impossible face-swapping sh*t.

oh dear lord, not this again.

philleif

I've been waiting for this to happen. Well, he's not changing my vote, that's for sure.

Haha. Again? I love the tenacity.

Clarient, I agree that Ron Paul would take from both parties, but I still feel he would take more Republican votes. He's economically conversative, in favor of reducing big government, and very pro life.

I don't have any polls or stats to back my opinion up though.

If both parties would put up better choices, there would be no third-party candidates.

GO AWAY, RALPHIE! He has all these "cool" ideas, I saw him on Meet the Press, but why does he only emerge at election time? He is a big selfish baby, a spoiler. He is the reason we are in Iraq.

Why in the hell is the Green Party selecting him as their guy? This is so aggravating.

He is such a pain. I love how he disappears as soon as elections are over and done with. >.

I don't even know the guy, but this is a slogan I thought of on the top of my head:

Don't be a hater, vote for Ralph Nader!

It rhymes, haha :]

The current Republican party cannot stand Ron Paul. The other republican candidates took great pleasure in snickering behind his back and ridiculing his responses at every debate. They did their best to make him appear foolish and delusional.

Ron Paul, in reality, is an amazing candidate, a stalwart Constitutionalist, and a statesman of great integrity, and it's a shame nobody will take him seriously.

He has been against the war in Iraq from it's inception - (watch this video of his protests against the war in Iraq in 2002: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLV7zDhKzDY. It is disturbing how right he turned out to be.)

Here is a lot of information on where he stands on many of the big issues (and a lot of the smaller ones as well). http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/

Ron Paul has been around for a long time. He is the most knowledgeable candidate by far - he has been through and experienced more than any of the other candidates. He knows more about foreign policy and economics than either Obama or Hillary. McCain talks a big game about reducing spending, but he will have a hard time achieving that while pursuing Osama for the next hundred years.

Paul understands that an economy heading into a recession is going to destroy the middle class and that we have to take steps to prevent that. He is against the IRS and not a fan of the Federal Reserve, which is a prime culprit in the inflation of the dollar thanks to over printing paper money with nothing of real value to back it up.

Here is a great article from the New York Times on Ron Paul: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22Paul-t.html?ex=1343016000&e...

And a really inspiring video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG2PUZoukfA

Everytime I read something or watch something about Ron Paul I connect. With nearly everything he says, nearly everything he does, it makes me incredibly HOPEFUL that some people in this country really understand where we've gone wrong and what we need to do to fix it. Candidates like McCain fill me with absolutely dread. Hillary and Obama I have very little against, but I find them to be varying degress of the same thing. Obama runs on a platform of 'change', but I find it doubtful that he could or would change anything significant if he were President.

I know that Ron Paul won't become President. It would be incredible if he could do that. But the biggest reason he is running, and continuing to run, is to spread the message of freedom as much as possible. To speak as loudly as possible to get people to notice that they shouldn't tolerate a government that plays world police and spends itself further and further into debt. To hopefully reach as many people as possible - the ones that are frustrated and hopeless about doing anything to change the direction this country is headed in.

I'm voting for him. Yes, it is a protest vote. And no, I don't care. This so-called "democracy" we live in only displays TWO parties publicly, and it has got to stop. In a real democracy, we have OPTIONS - we have more than two people to choose from - why do I have to worry about offending Democrats by voting for the guy who IS running to make a point, and who IS addressing issues that neither party will talk about? Sorry if you guys disagree with me about this, but it has to be done... America will never be a true democracy if we only have the media lauding two or three candidates from two parties. This isn't right, and I feel, as an American, I have the opportunity to support a mandate to government and the media that says I WANT to have more choices, I WANT to be able to be heard, and any good president that is elected will consider the votes that went to Nader and say, "hmm... Americans want this, maybe I should address this."

im all for third parties, i crave it but i find annoying and insulting that nader chooses towards the end of primary to announce his candidacy. if he were doing this because he wanted to be president he would of started from the beginning. this is just a publicity stunt and intelligent voters will see right through it

I think it'll be refreshing because if Obama v. McCain....someone has to pull the curtain off of Obama to really test him because so many people have him up on a pedestal. McCain might not want to do it because it will piss people off or make him look bad. Nader might just do that for him. So maybe we'll get more than just inspiring words, we'll get the nitty gritty things we need to elect our leader.

Another view is, who is to say that Democrats are the right vote...maybe Nader really is the voice of the people.. If more people vote for Nader it will bring about the change that Obama even supports...or says he supports (Not saying I agree with Nader at all)

p.s. I have a lot of friends who are grass-root social change workers and advocates and to assume they are pot smoking hippies is a little immature. Might be true for the majority, but still a little judgemental Be nice.

Hehe, there were some arguments about this over brunch yesterday, ha.

I think the more candidates the better and support Nader's bid completely. Ron Paul still has my vote, though,

i would be in favor of nader running b/c i saw him on meet the press and actually agree with a lot of his politics, but i don't really feel he has a chance at winning the election and will lead to mccain winning it all, like he did for gore in 2000.

as for the "landslide," comment, i don't really think it's fair to say that when he primarily takes votes away from the democratic party (on meet the press, they said that if he hadn't run in 2000, gore would have picked up 2 to 1 of his votes in florida and would have won). in texas' last gubernatorial election, we had 4 candidates: the republican incumbent who had less than a 35 percent approval rating, a democrat and two independents who were slightly left of the center (meaning more liberal than conservative). the two independents split the democratic vote and the incumbent (whom even many republicans had grown tired of) won. sound familiar?

"So maybe we'll get more than just inspiring words, we'll get the nitty gritty things we need to elect our leader".

There is 60 pages of "nitty gritty" on Obama's website that clearly lays out his plans. He has also discussed many of his policy ideas during his speeches...but you have to see the whole speech not just the little clip the news channels will play back for you.

THe specifics have been there for quite a while now.

I don't understand his suggestion that there is "dissent". Maybe on the Republican side, but democrats have overwhelmingly shown that they are very happy with the 2 candidates they already have. In fact, they are turning out in record numbers.

I used to kind of like Nader, but now he seems like someone who desperately wants to be relevant.

minaminamina, do you think George Bush took time to "think about the votes that went to Nader?" That just doesn't sound realistic.

I would vote for Nader. It really depends on who gets the nomination for both the Democratic and Republican parties. I am glad that there is a 3rd choice out there.

Jill, he absolutely did not - but nor do the Democrats pay mind to what a considerable portion of the American people want when they vote for Nader, or some other third-party candidate that represents an ideal that American's want to be paid mind. The problem here is that you're thinking only what Republicans or Democrats want - I belong to neither party, because neither represents me as an American, they only represent what lobby groups cater to them (not just in financial ways, either) - not the American people. If people don't have a problem with that, then I worry about the future of this country.

Damn you Ralph Nader!!! Gotta love it when people flush votes down the toilet

"The problem here is that you're thinking only what Republicans or Democrats want"

No, but nice of you to tell me what I think. In your previous post it sounded like you thought that Nader's run will wake people up to the flaws of the 2 party system. If Nader could make that happen, he already would have. His time has passed, and it is because of him we got Bush in the first place. If anything, people resent him for that. I think he will get even less votes than he did the last time he ran.

There have been large numbers of independants voting for Obama, so I don't think you can say that the elections so far only reflect what the parties want versus what the people want. The people ARE speaking. They are voting in record numbers and crossing party lines for Obama.

If you want more choices, voting for Nader won't help. Just as it didn't help when thousands of people voted for him in the last elections. A vote for him is a vote wasted. You only end up electing the candidate you like the least.

i am one of those independents who has voted for obama. i'm neither republican nor democrat, but i really like what obama has said in terms of health care and other issues.

nader picked up about 97,000 votes in florida. if gore had received 2 to 1 of those votes, that would have given him about 2/3 of that number, which would have easily made up for the 500 votes short he was and, again, bush would have lost.

also, one of the things obama boasts (it's also on his web site) is that he doesn't take money from PACs. i don't know what hillary's stats are on campaign fundraising and PACs, but obama has received almost 1 million donations without PAC donations, just to show that it is indeed the american people supporting him.

If I believed that our electoral system really operated on direct democracy, I wouldn't vote for Nader, no. But since it does not, and since the sad realities of our very limited voting system does not equate a proper democracy in the first place, I'd rather put my imaginary vote towards a man who understands that imaginary votes are how this country runs. In all my years working towards a doctorate, I've found democracy occurs in odd situations, and the illusion of democracy tends to prevail in a structure built on the very antitheses of democracy - capitalism, classism, racism, etc.

And I certainly did not mean to imply you were thinking something you were not, Jill.

Jen - look at Obama's record. One issue specifically, since I have the information on hand, is in regards to Palestine. Obama was fervently against the occupation of Palestinian lands and the construction of the Israeli's "Security Fence". When he announced his campaign, however, he did not receive money from AIPAC, but attended many functions they held subsequent to his switching his position to absolutely supporting Israel's political goals in regard to Palestine. Why? Because even associating with a certain group can lend support to a campaign - no president has ever won an election since AIPAC was formed without AIPAC's support. They may not take funds from lobby groups, but politicians know what they have to in order to cater to the people whom these lobby groups are representing - such a drastic shift of position within a 2-year period is extremely suspicious, and it's one way in which lobbyists have control over elections completely outside of the voter turnout.