Dear John Democrats,

Dear Democrats,
To everyone of you who blames Ralph Nader for the 2000 election, the least you can do is attack the right culprits. First, there may be a problem with democracy when one can win the popular vote and lose the election; maybe the Constitution needs to be updated to end the electoral college (and gerrymandering too). More importantly, thanks to the glorious Clinton years, almost a million registered Democrats voted Republican while barely any registered Republicans voted Democrat and it is estimated that over 30,000 Dems voted for Bush in Florida in 2000. It was not Nader's fault that Gore accepted voter fraud with barely a whimper. Furthermore, if you want to somehow blame Nader for the war in Iraq, remember it was he who tried to get secure cockpit doors required on commercial aircraft in the Reagan Administration.

It is simple, if you don't like Ralph Nader, don't vote for him. Don't restrict my decisions though. Make no mistake, when your party uses the word "spoiler", that word is a weapon to legitimize restrictive ballot access laws that do interfere with our only hope for real change. In Oklahoma, in the November 2004 election, voters who didn't want to vote for Bush or Kerry were not permitted to vote for president at all. No one else was on the ballot, and Oklahoma does not permit write-in votes. In 2004, Democrats filed twenty-three lawsuits against Nader to try and keep him off ballots and tie him up in court.

Anyone who is a political junkie knows that we have two parties with one playbook: who can pander most to corporate interests and sell it best to the taxpayers. Please let someone "spoil" this insanity. Anyone who goes into politics has an enormous ego, so get off screaming that Mr. Nader has one too. A wimp wouldn't stand a chance against a Bush or a Clinton machine and I like his recipe for saving this country. You silence anyone who speaks sense even within your own party. Of course, Nader does not believe he can win, but he knows that 52% of the voters are so sick of the duopoly that they don't even bother to vote.

As Nader says on his site, "Maybe the Democrats and Republicans will nominate Presidential candidates this year who will stand up against the war profiteers, the nuclear industry, the credit card industry, the corporate criminals, big oil, and the drug and health insurance industries. We’re not holding our breath."

Of course, there is this alternative: "Please don't vote for a Republican. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to scrawl Dennis Kucinich's name on the Diebold machine with a jumbo Sharpie pen and then set myself on fire." -vox clamantis (whoever that is).