What I see in this candidacy is the perfect becoming the enemy of the good. The reason I chose not to run as a third party myself, which took me about five seconds to think about - after I had really endured the slings and arrows of having been the front runner in the democratic nomination - is in the long run it's not important that Howard Dean be president of that Ralph Nader be president. In the long run this is about American people who can't defend themselves against the type of administration that George Bush has. And that's why I wish you were on our team Ralph - because we really need you.


Howard Dean and Ralph Nader were on Justice Talking on NPR on Friday. I thought their informal debate was fantastic. In the past I've been a big fan of Nader, but hearing him debate Dean just seemed like he'd gone off the deep end a little bit. I think he's crossed the line from a poignant liberal voice into zealot territory.

Then you have Howard Dean, who was a crazy phenomenon during the democratic primary this year. I loved Dean, and the more I hear him talk the more I like him. He's a realist, which resonates with me, where Nader is clearly no longer a realist.

I think the two party system causes a lot of problems, and I think there's a lot of places to improve on what we have. I think adding more choices is a good start to that. But one of the beauties of our government is that change is slow and hard to come by (and it's failing is the main tragedy of Bush's current presidency.) Nader doesn't seem to respect this, and that's the reason his message doesn't hit home with lots of people. You have to be very, very liberal to agree with him on all his points - and he has this attitude that if you don't agree with him on something you're wrong. Dean never came across like that to me.

You can read more about it and listen to it yourself at the show's website. I highly recommend it, it's very interesting - and makes me hope that Dean remains on the national political stage for a long time.

(Unfortunately while the main NPR stream is in a reasonable format, the Justice Talking stream is only in Real Player, the bane of the online media world.)

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