Nader’s In. Oh, And The Sun Rose This Morning, Too.

In case you haven’t heard, Ralph Nader announced he's running on today's Meet The Press.

Let’s face it, we all saw this one coming. Personally, I could care less, and unless something really amazing happens, I plan to ignore Ralph Nader. But I’m sure the rest of the media won’t. I can already tell that this will be treated as the hottest news story since the invention of the bread slicer.

This completely defies logic. Let's see, Nader got 0.38% of the popular vote in 2004, a decline from the "whopping" 2.73% of the popular vote he got in 2000. But I'm sure the media will still treat him like he's relevant, offering all sorts of front-page stories and other Meet The Press appearances.

I'm trying to remember when any third-party candidate has performed so poorly in the general election and yet received so much national media attention. The same people who wrote off Ross Perot as a miserable failure after his second attempt in 1996 netted 8.40% of the popular vote are going to be treating Nader as some kind of player this time around. Go figure.

Will this hurt the Democratic nominee? Nah. Anyone voting for Ralph Nader these days isn't going to vote for HIllary Clinton or Barack Obama anyway, no matter what they tell you. If anything, this is good news for Democrats, seeing how a Nader candidacy will likely be a magnet for GOP money, like last time. I'm not sure the Republicans have this kind of money to throw away, though; their fundraising has been weak compared to that of the Democrats, and their low primary turnout doesn't bode well for the general election either.

Anyway, this hopefully is the last blog post I'll be doing on Ralph Nader.

(Figures are from Dave Leip’s Election Atlas, one of my favorite online resources.)