The Sell-by date.

Sometimes politicians have one too.

Let's start out with a trivia question, shall we? This one's a toughie!

Okay, here it is: When was the last time Harold Stassen won a presidential primary?

Now I know if I had this as a poll, the answers would be 40% "Who is Harold Stassen?" 40% "Harold Stassen never won a presidential primary" and 20% random dates, mostly from the 19th century.

The answer is 1952. He won Minnestoa, beating General Eisonhower by 20,000 votes. I mention this to show that once upon a time, Stassen was a major politician who had yet to reach his sell-by date. You know those, the note on the side of the label saying "Must be sold by..." Presidential candidates have those too.

Generally, it's three strikes and you're out. If you don't make it by the third time, you're done. Any more than that, permenent joke status forever.

Harold Stassen.

Ralph Nader has passed his sell-by date a long time ago. He first started running for president as far back as 1990, when he started his own political party. He ran as a write-in candidate in both 1992 New Hampshire primaries, tried again in Massachussetts' later in the spring, and ran on the Green party line in 1996.

The next time he ran, was of course 2000. It's hard to believe how different things were back then. The lunatic left had just "won" the "battle of Seattle" the year before, and many of them believed that genuine popular revoltuion was possible. The "fashionable left" supported Nader with gusto, believing that Gore was just more of the same and that within a year or so of Bush, the Democratic party would wither away on the vine and the nation would just fall in their laps.

The fashionable left and Nader supported this plan, it seemed to be working...that is until September 11th. The FL head for the hills, and the LL and Nader decided that this was just the time for revoltuion.

Nader ran again as the Reform party candidate (remember them?), but he got less than he did in 1996. People didn't want him to run, for obvious reasons. It seems that it was an ego trip. He was Harold Stassen running again and again and again, doing it because he had nothing better to do.

Fool me once, shame on you....nobody's fooled this time. People can see him for what he is, how he's pretty much negated all the actual  good he's done. He's now officially pathetic.

So don't worry about Ralphie boy. he won't do any harm this time.

•  tip jar.

  is anyone reading this?

  by YoursTruly on Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 01:18:32 PM PDT

  •  I am and it was a good way of

    dealing with him. The only thing I would add is that his label had a little block at the bottom which read, "Not Suitable As A President."

    He had some decent ideas but would have been a disaster if he had been elected.

    by Gary Norton on Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 01:27:04 PM PDT

  •  Not only is Nader stale and rancid

    but a rotten a--hole by now.

    by doinaheckuvanutjob on Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 03:20:06 PM PDT

•  as long as we have the electoral college

  I worry that he will have an impact somewhere.

  I hope I'm wrong.

  by vard on Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 01:19:58 PM PDT

•  So Nader is like a gallon of rancid milk

  Sounds about right.

  by quaoar on Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 01:25:20 PM PDT

•  Didn't he end up with like .3%

  in 2004?  down from a bit over 2% in 2000.  Maybe we'll see another order of magnitude drop this fall.  .03%, that would be sweet.  I'm not worried about Nader, does anyone think, after 8 years of George "Wish he was exactly the same as Al Gore" Bush that his argument will play.  I bet he doesn't even get on the ballot in 20 states.

  by Mickey Thunder on Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 01:55:37 PM PDT