I live in outstate Missouri, about 60 miles east of Kansas City. It is a college town ten miles from the home base of the B-2 bomber.
It is a part of Missouri that has been trending Republican.
Missouri, it appears, will be close. If Obama wins Missouri, he will be the next President.
Yesterday, I go to the local Democratic headquarters and Obama office (they are in the same block) at 5 PM. At the corner are half a dozen Nader supporters holding up signs: vote for Nader, I would vote for Obama if he supported Single payer, No to the bailout, etc.
more below the fold . . .
I saw these same idiots with a float in the homecoming parade this past weekend.
I know I shouldn't, but I engaged them in a conversation.
I point out that Nader uttered the biggest lie of the 2000 election: There was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush. They, of course, disagreed and respond "Al Gore would not have appointed Alito and Roberts." Silence from the idiots.
Now, of course, it is hard for anyone to argue that Obama and McCain are the same. Instead we get the "purity" argument.
I ask the idiots last night will they stand in front to the Republican office, which is not a location with much traffic. I'm told it is on private property: a lie.
So, these idiots are splitting the progressive vote in Missouri, a state in which the margin of victory looks to be razor thin.
Of course, I should have observed that dividing the left has been really successful. Canada is the most obvious example.
As I end this rant, I wish that Ralph Nader never has another peaceful night's sleep for the rest of his life. I hope every night he is haunted by the tens of thousands of people who have needlessly suffered and died because Al Gore did not become President in 2000.
I hope the delusional people I saw yesterday will come to their senses and confront him with a question about why his ego was so large that he thought he was improving the political discourse in America by running for President in 2008. Instead, Nader was diminishing it.
We have the chance on November 4th of electing the best President in my lifetime (I'm 58) and moving our country out of the darkness it has experienced over the last eight years.
Ralph Nader's ego was so large he refuses to be part of this movement. I hope the effort in my town that his ego created is irrelevant to the outcome in Missouri, but I can not forgive Nader for dividing us at a time when we must be united.