Nader has announced he is running…this time as an independent, and not as the Green Party candidate.

I’ve heard enough people who I know voted for Nader in 2000 say they wouldn’t vote for him this time around, that I am not too concerned about his affect on the election.

Third-party candidacies are often about protest votes. Bush was enough of an unknown that enough people who were upset with the moderate-conservative policies of the Clinton presidency were willing to make a protest vote for Nader. Bush is no longer an unknown. There will be no need to look for a protest vote from the Left. (Nader might get some 2000-Bushies to vote for him though.)

At least, that’s what I hope.

(Oh, sure, there are other newspapers I could have linked to, but I thought that was a fun one. Nader claims that both parties look the same…it might be an “Ivy League” mentality thing. Since Nader graduated from Princeton, he might think everyone from Yale is the same. And now that it looks like Kerry might get the nomination, he decided to step into the race. Come to think of it, that might be why he entered the race in 2000. Gore graduated from Harvard. It might be an Ivy League rivalry thing)