teacherken's musings on everything

About electability:

Ralph Nader told the Wall Street Journal on friday that if dean were the Democratic nominee, he would probably not run.

Now, I wold not expect Nader to run as well in 2004 and he did 2000 - far too many progressives are aware of the damage that did -- he had promised not run seriously in any state where he might swing the reulsts, but he got irritated when he was excluded from the debates, and so he campainged far more aggressively than he had originally planned. On raw numbers, his vote total exceeded the margin of Bush over Gore in two states, Florida and New Hampshire, and even NH would have been sufficient to give the election to Gore. Of greatr importance, his vote made a number of democratic states far too close for comfort, specifically Oregon, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Thus one criteria of electability should be that one's candidacy keeps nader out of the race - that solidifies Blue states and puts in play several Red states - beyond FL and NH, one can also consider NV and possibly OH as well, both states in which Bush did not do that well.

I hope if the issue of electability is borught up on Sunday Feb 1 on Meet The Press that Gov Dean has been prepped to make this point. And for any Dean supporter talking to wavering voters, this is a point well worth making.