Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
[ kerry spot home | archives | email ]

Ralph Nader, as the Reform party candidate, could be on the ballot in at least three swing states.

Perhaps the most significant and underreported story of the past week: Ralph Nader was endorsed Wednesday by the Reform party.

Presuming he accepts their nomination — and Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese told reporters, "he'll be on the ballot in Florida" — Nader will automatically get on the ballot in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, and South Carolina.

The last four are shoo-ins for Bush, but the first three are swing states, and the Kerry campaign is spending $1 million in commercials in Colorado, suggesting they think they can pick it up.

Those four are also among Nader's stronger bases of support, judging from the last time around. Nader got 97,421 Florida votes in 2000 as Bush won the state by 537 votes. In 2000, Nader won 91,434 votes in Colorado — 5.25 percent of the vote — one if his best showings. In Wisconsin, Nader had 94,070 votes, or 3.62 percent, in a state that Gore carried by 5,708 votes. In Michigan, Nader had 84,165, or 1.99 percent.

Five Reasons Nader May Do Well In November:

1. Iraq will be at least one of the biggest issues, if not the issue in November. While Kerry is "nuancing" and talking about sending more troops to Iraq, Nader can play the role of the true antiwar candidate, demanding a total withdrawal within six months. How much will that siren's call appeal to ANSWER and the Deaniacs?

2. Some Green voters really do want to "punish" Democrats, for waffling, not taking a strong enough stand, and for not pushing Greens' core issues. Their ideology and views are personified by Michael Moore and Al Franken; leaders like Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi seem too bland and milquetoast for them. If Gore was too wishy-washy and moderate for them, is Kerry really going to stir their passions? Nader's message hammers the Democrats for selling out. "They don't have the sense of urgency because they have gotten too comfortable, and their expectation levels have been repressed," he told Business Week.

3. At some point, he's supposed to sit down and meet with Kerry, a summit that will generate buzz and show the public that he has forced the Democratic party to take him seriously. (This should be a fun meeting. Nader on Kerry: "The problem is these consultants who have got their hooks into the Kerry campaign. I mean, $27 million for a Madison Avenue image builder? He's not his own person. If there's one thing the mass of voters can see through, that's someone who is not his own person, someone who has more antenna than brains. They really see through that.") His announcement that he raised $600,000 in the two months since he announced his candidacy also helps boost the credibility of his challenge.

4. He seems to be consistently getting four, five, six points in polls, both nationwide and certain states. The AP-Ipsos poll had him at seven. A Quinnipiac University poll showed him getting eight percent in Pennsylvania.

5. He won't drop out. He told Wolf Blitzer this weekend, "You don't run a presidential campaign nationally and say to your volunteers who have worked their heart out sometime in October, well, sorry."

Five Reasons Nader May Do Poorly In November:

1. Today, many, many Democrats hate him with a passion, and will fight his candidacy as much as they fight the president. A writer for the Village Voice called him a "suicide bomber." Howard Dean has come out and told his supporters, "A vote for Ralph Nader is, plain and simple, a vote to reelect George W. Bush." The Nation and the New York Times urged him not to run.

2. Polls vs. Votes: Nader was polling around 7 percent in the days leading up to the general election in 2000, but ended up getting only 2.7 percent of the vote nationally. His current level of support may be illusory. While he has shown some stronger numbers among younger voters (at 13 percent in a March Associated Press/Newsweek.com survey of voters aged 18 to 25) he's relying on the demographic least inclined to vote and least reliable to get out to the polls on Election Day.

3. Last time out, Nader said he was running to reach the five-percent threshold for federal matching funds for the Green party — which probably may have convinced some Greens to vote to help out their party, rather than backing a candidate with a better chance to win. He won't have that argument this time around. His Green base of support may be diluted by David Cobb, who is running for the party's nomination. The Green party has its national convention in Milwaukee June 24-27, and members are debating whether to nominate Cobb or to endorse Nader, who said he would welcome the endorsement if the party decides to not run a candidate.

4. He's old news. His candidacy isn't going to surprise anyone, and there's no way Kerry will take him for granted. Bob Shrum and company are surely strategizing right now on ways to keep the Nader-inclined voters in the Democratic camp.

5. Most of those young, outside-the-system, Internet-and-MeetUp-organized progressive-to-hard-left voters Howard Dean organized are likely in the Democratic column. Inspired by Dean's youthful passion, they went to the polls for Kerry.

For now, Nader has to like where he is. He's got a serious issue that distinguishes him from Kerry and won't go away in the Iraq war; Kerry's biggest selling point to the Left is that he's not Bush, not that he's their ideal candidate; and his early fundraising suggests he'll get on a decent number of ballots. And while Kerry could easily get ten times as many votes as Nader, he's finding himself in Al Gore's uncomfortable position: fighting a two-front battle.