I read this on the Guardian UK's website and found it interesting enough to share. There are a few parallels between the Labor Party's recent losses in England and the Democrats in the US. A few excerpts can be found below. The whole article can be found
here:
Backing Nader in 2000 was to them not just a poor electoral choice: it represented a moral flaw. But to bottle up all that bile for four years does not just make for bad karma - it is bad politics. To repeat the arguments for and against Nader's candidacy in 2000 is not the point here. Not just because it has been exhaustively examined in this column and elsewhere, but because to do so would simply compound the Democrats' fundamental problem: they have not moved on. And if they don't find closure soon, they could end up making the same mistakes they made last time.
...
The Democratic party's strategy to deal with this thus far has been simple. Along with "independent" organisations like StopNader.com, it is doing everything legally possible to keep him off the ballot in different states. "Nader must be nowhere near the ballot," wrote a Texas Democratic official in an email seen by the Guardian.
The trouble with this plan is not just that it employs purely bureaucratic means to prevent a legitimate, if misguided, political expression. It is also that it reveals the extent to which Democrats believe they are entitled to Nader's votes even if they make no appeal to the concerns of those who cast them. The source of their anger is that they believe his votes are rightfully theirs. The logic of their campaign is that if Nader is removed from the equation the votes will automatically return to their rightful owner - John Kerry.
If they want to see where this sense of entitlement could lead they need only look over the Atlantic, where the Labour party leadership has stretched the loyalty of its core supporters until, last week, it finally snapped. The only thing that was surprising about Labour's drubbing last week was that it was such a long time coming.