Memo to Democrats: STAY FROSTY.

Yes, Ralph Nader just announced he's running for President. Again. I know. It's very traumatic. But try not to go all Hudson on us, OK? We'll last seventeen days. It's not game over.And to help you through this incredibly trying time, I've prepared yet another set of YAD Talking Points on the Ralph Nader presidential run.

• Who gives a shit?
• No, really, who gives a shit?
• When I said "who gives a shit", I was not being ironic. Seriously, who gives a shit?
• You are allowed to retain your irrational grudge against Ralph Nader for "spoiling" the 2000 election, even though Nader was demonstrably less culpable for the Bush presidency than five members of the US Supreme Court, the millions of Floridians who voted for Bush, the thousands of Floridians who voted by accident for Pat Buchanan, and oh, those fine Americans who gave 29 other states to Dumbass McBombsalot. I will graciously allow you to keep that grudge anyway, because it seems to comfort you like a well-sucked blanket.
• Ralph Nader ran in 2004, you know. And nobody, not even crazy people, argue that he cost John Kerry the election. So really, even the Irrational Nader Grudgies can't blame him for more than four years of Bush without going through some very complicated alternate universe woulda shoulda calculations about the temporal shifting effects of a Gore presidency.
• Ralph Nader is a crazy fucking dickhead.
• But he's an unimportant crazy fucking dickhead. He's no more relevant to the process than the hundreds of other quixotic third-party candidates on the ballot all over the country. The only reason he gets any attention at all is because you've spent the last eight years screaming bloody murder about him. You made him into the boogeyman, so now you have to live with the fact that the press cares when the boogeyman jumps out of the closet again.
• Nader's not actually wrong on the issues. Single-payer health care? Good thing. Rampant corporate power? Bad thing. And, you know, while I wouldn't go so far as to say that Obama, Clinton, and McCain are all wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporate America, I do think they've all bought into, and are beholden to, a broken system. To varying degrees. Whereas Ralph Nader can't even get himself invited to the broken system's parties.

• When Nader IS wrong, he's really really wrong. And that'd be the part where his views actually attract the support of a majority of the American people; that his third-party run is part of a vital third-party tradition of enabling progress; and that his presidential run will even remotely pull either Democrat to the left. Nader, please.
• When Nader is right, he's really really right. "If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they oughta just wrap up, close down. Emerge in a different form." Damn straight. The Democrats -should- have had this shit wrapped up four years ago. Nader didn't fuck that up, and he won't be fucking this up.
• He can't, even if he wants to. Think about it. Who is Ralph Nader's constituency? People who are completely and utterly wrong when they think they're voting for someone different, someone who'll really bring vitally-needed change to the system. And this year, those people will all be voting for Obama and McCain.

So seriously, my fellow lefties. Let this be the last time the word "Nader" is spoken between now and November. And if you think THAT'S gonna happen, I know a third-party candidate with a used bridge to sell. Barely used. A little old man only drove over it once every four years to his campaign office.