In DR's view, Democrats need to get over the obvious fact that Nader's decision to run for president is morally irresponsible, egotistical, betrays the progressive principles he's based his life on, etc. and look the truth squarely in the eye. This guy is irrelevant. He might as well team up with Ramsey Clark and run on the Workers World Party ticket for all the votes he's going to get. He's not going to get 2.7 percent of the vote, as he did in 2000, or even .7 percent of the vote, as he did in 1996. I think we're talking more like .27 percent of the vote, which will put him firmly in the list of splinter party also-rans whose votes are counted but have no real effect on the election. He will join the distinguished company of the American Independent Party, the Citizens Party, the National Alliance Party and, of course, the Libertarian Party, which has averaged a solid .38 percent of the vote in the last three elections. Indeed, as Mark Schmitt points out in an excellent post in The Decembrist, the Libertarian candidate in this coming election will have a more natural constituency on the right, given the distress with Bush among fiscally conservative and libertarian conservatives, than Nader will have on the left and may well outpoll him.

Why is this? Because the fundamental rationale for his candidacy--no difference between the two major parties, so it doesn't matter which one occupies the White House--has no plausibility on the left to anyone outside of, well, the Workers World Party. That's why the left activists and intellectuals who supported him last time are deserting him en masse, from the Green Party to The Nation. Nader will have no organization, no big-name supporters, no money and precious few volunteers. He's likely to fail to get on the ballot in many states and, even where he does, he's unlikely to get more than a handful of votes.

So: be not afraid. Nader will fail and fail big-time. And tell Ralph that Workers World is waiting for his phone call.