Ralph Nader is Running for President

"This business of Ralph Nader being a spoiler — you know, in any three-way race, two of the three are going to be spoilers. Come on. Everybody's got a right to do it — you're not spoiling anything."

"If people want to vote for you, let them vote for you, and why shouldn't they?"

"I've just never understood why, just because you're a member of a party, you have special rights. That's not the civics that I learned in junior high school, and if Ralph Nader wants to run, good luck to him."
-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Ralph Nader

"I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage [points] of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference."
-Barack Obama on Ralph Nader

In case you hadn't heard, legendary consumer advocate Ralph Nader is running for president. He makes a great case for his candidacy on today's Talk of the Nation, speaking about how our system is rigged and how it was more open to third parties in the 19th century.

I'm thrilled that Ralph is running. He should be. His voice needs to be heard, especially since only Nader is willing to tackle the issues that have been "pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines":

Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget, adopting a single payer Canadian-style national health insurance system, impeaching Bush/Cheney, opposing nuclear power - among many others.

(The Wall Street Journal left out "impeaching Bush/Cheney" in their coverage, no surprise.)

I'm also sick and tired of hearing the same old tired lie about Nader costing Al Gore the 2000 election. Most people know that George Bush won Florida by just 537 votes, and that Nader received over 90,000 votes. What they don't know is that every third party candidate in Florida received much more than 537 votes, much more than Bush's margin of victory over Gore:

• Patrick Buchanan (Reform) - 17,484 votes
• Harry Browne (Libertarian) - 16,415 votes
• John Hagelin (Natural Law) - 2,281 votes
• Howard Phillips (Constitution) - 1,378 votes

Of course there were a lot of things that caused Gore to lose in 2000 -- running a tepid campaign without Bill Clinton on the trail, poor debate performances, losing his home state, not contesting rampant voter fraud in Florida, Supreme Court partisanship, etc -- but Nader's candidacy was not among them.

FISA Vote Speaks Volumes About Presidential Candidates

"The Senate has buckled. We are left with a very dangerous piece of legislation."
--Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)

Thirty years after its original passage, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was amended "last year to make clear the National Security Agency and other intelligence operations were legally empowered to tap into electronic communications when one or more of the targets is in a foreign location, without first obtaining permission from a FISA court." That amendment was set to expire this Friday, until yesterday, when the Senate voted to renew the amended FISA.

Not only did the amended act exchange civil liberties for expediency -- a Benjamin Franklin quote comes to mind -- it also provided retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that helped the government illegally eavesdrop on Americans in violation of FISA. A new amendment by Senators Dodd and Feingold would have stripped retroactive immunity, but the Senate voted against it 67-31. Now it goes back to the House, which voted today to extend debate for three weeks, against the wishes of President Bush.

Bush responded from the Oval Office:

"Time for debate is over. I will not accept any temporary extension. House members have had plenty of time to pass a good bill.

Urging swift adoption of permanent legislation, Bush charged Wednesday that the goal of the militants was "to bring destruction to our shores that will make September 11 pale by comparison.

"To carry out their plans, they must communicate with each other. They must recruit operatives. And they must share information. The lives of countless Americans depend on our ability to monitor these communications.

"It is time for Congress to ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted. It is time for Congress to pass a law that provides a long-term foundation to protect our country. They must do so immediately."

What Bush doesn't make clear, nor has he ever made clear, is why communications can't be monitored with FISA court approval, ie why we should abandon FISA to allow unregulated wiretapping.

Three of the five remaining presidential candidates (are Huckabee and Paul still running?) are sitting US Senators, and their votes on FISA tell us a lot about their potential presidencies.

Sen. McCain voted to preserve telecom immunity, siding with Bush. Despite his reputation for being a maverick and an independent, McCain is little more than Bush's toady on issues relating to national (in)security.

Sen. Obama voted against telecom immunity, siding with "30 fellow Democrats to allow the telecom companies to face lawsuits, which civil liberties groups consider a crucial chance to unearth information on the administration's programme of wiretapping without a court warrant." (Or did Obama not vote on FISA?! Do you believe a government website or the mainstream media?)

Sen. Clinton didn't bother to vote at all, effectively helping the 49 Republicans and 18 Democrats who supported Bush. What kept her away from Washington for the vote? Hillary is running for President, of course! Psst... Hillary, yesterday's primaries were in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. So please tell me again why you couldn't show up to vote against telecom immunity? My guess is that it has to do with something like this.

Superdelegates? What About Voters?

I've had several conversations with friends over the last few days about the role of so-called superdelegates in the Democratic Party's nominating process. More than once I've heard that they were created in response to the George McGovern campaign in 1972, to shift control away from party officials and into the hands of primary and caucus voters, but that's not quite right. They were actually created after the 1980 election as a response to the McGovern reforms. Superdelegates were meant to put the power back into the hands of the party elite. And look what the "reforms" gave Democrats, "the blandest, lamest, most uninspiring candidates... Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry."

Not many people knew much about superdelegates until Super Tuesday, but America is now getting a crash course on just how odd, esoteric and dysfunctional our "democracy" really is.

Richard Hasen writes in Slate ("One Person, One Vote"? Why the crazy caucus and primary rules are legal."):

In the Iowa Democratic caucuses last month, Democrats had no right to cast a secret ballot. In tonight's Super Tuesday primary, Republican Party rules dictate that the state of Georgia will send more delegates (72) than Illinois (70) to the party's presidential nominating convention. Illinois has a larger population than Georgia, but Georgia has more reliable Republican voters. In the Democratic Nevada caucuses, rural votes counted more than urban ones, and while Hillary Clinton got more popular votes in the state than Barack Obama, it appears Obama will capture 13 of Nevada's Democratic delegates compared to Clinton's 12. Orthodox Jews complained that they couldn't vote in the Saturday morning Nevada caucuses. In California tonight, if neither Clinton nor Obama gets more than 62 percent of the vote in a congressional district, the two are likely to split the district-based delegates evenly. On the Republican side in the California primary, Romney and McCain are targeting the few Republican voters in heavily Democratic districts, because some of California's Republican delegates are awarded based on the winner of each congressional district, not the statewide winner. And when the primaries are over, under the Democratic Party rules, "superdelegates" such as big-city mayors—who have not been chosen by voters—could hold the balance of power between Clinton and Obama in a brokered summer convention.

Falling in Love, Falling in Line

Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. Or so goes the saying. But just six weeks ago, it appeared that the Democrats were the ones falling in line while the Republicans were looking for love in all the wrong places.

What a difference a few weeks make. In what amounts to a national primary, today's Super Tuesday results could answer a lot of questions in the minds of pundits, voters and the candidates themselves.

Will we know who the nominees are? Not likely. The fact that no candidate will have enough delegates on either side to secure their party's nomination shouldn't keep the mainstream media from nudging the electorate a bit closer to what it has wanted all along: a two-candidate race. But which two candidates?

On the Republican side, don't expect today's results to narrow their gang of four. John McCain is the frontrunner, but his polling leads in California, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama are all within the margin of error. Mitt Romney is favored in Massachusetts and could pull off a surprise win in California. Mike Huckabee may be viewed as a spoiler by some, but he just won the West Virginia caucus. Ron Paul seems to have more money than he knows how to spend and stands to lose nothing by staying in the race as long as he cares to.

On the Democratic side, things are a bit more clear since John Edwards suspended his campaign. Clinton and Obama are now in a virtual deadheat in national polls. Obama leads in California polls after trailing up until a week ago, while others states are close enough to be considered anyone's to win. Add to this that the Democrats award delegates proportionately and that the states after Super Tuesday seem to favor Obama and one might conclude that Obama has momentum.

Despite the media's relentless drive to eliminate all but a few candidates even after just a small number of delegates had been awarded -- Clinton leads with 241 and needs 2,025 to win; McCain leads with 111 and needs 1,191 to win -- voters are finally making up their own minds and defying expectations. Polls begin to close in the next ten minutes. I'm looking forward to seeing plenty of surprises in the results and how they are reported.

Perhaps the fact that Democrats are falling in love with Barack Obama and Republicans are falling in line behind John McCain are signs that some order is being restored to the universe. Or maybe not.

Remember when Hillary Clinton was all but inevitable? Remember when John McCain was firing staff, running out of money and had been all but written off? What a difference a few weeks make.