The Democrats may have greeted Ralph Nader’s candidacy with nearly universal disdain, but the bloggers have an entirely different reaction: apathy.
Calpundit, who thankfully resists the inevitable Nader/Nadir puns, wants everyone to just ignore the candidate: “He’s not even worth criticizing or mocking anymore, and we’ve got more important things to do than giving him the attention he craves.”
Atrios clearly agrees: “Ralph’s in,” he says succinctly, “and I don’t care.”
Josh Marshall cedes the heavy lifting to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, agreeing with Richardson’s assertion that “I don’t think he’ll have a sizable impact, but it’s terrible if he goes ahead because it’s about him. It’s about his ego. It’s about his vanity and not about a movement that supposedly he headed for many years very effectively.”
(Perhaps part of the reason they’re so unenthusiastic: as Instapundit points out, Nader doesn’t even have a blog!)
Some bloggers do have a little more to say: Ryan Lizza over at TNR defies the conventional wisdom, arguing that Nader’s candidacy might actually help the Democrats: “In the end, Nader might have the same effect on the race as Howard Dean: he will rally some on the left with angry attacks on Bush, and then those voters will cool down and pull the lever for Kerry or Edwards.”
Tom Tomorrow is sympathetic to Nader’s message, but he says the first priority in 2004 has to be getting rid of Bush, not building a movement. “…the body politic is…suffering from multiple wounds and blunt force trauma, we’re in the emergency room and it’s a damn mess and there’s blood everywhere and the doctors are working furiously but it’s anybody’s guess how things are gonna turn out. We are in triage, and we have to deal with the immediate problems, or the long-term ones won’t matter anyway.”
And Kos is calling for the anti-Nader: “…if we’re lucky,” he says, “Nader will be offset by Judge Moore on the Right.”
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.