2004-04-04 - 1:49 p.m.

Ralph Nader has come shambling up out of the Monticello marsh where he was buried with a stake of hickory through his heart by wild-eyed torch-wielding Democrats four years ago.

This rough verdant homunculus, bringing decay to all he touches, now staggers along the blood-soaked cobbles of the campaign trail, attracting through some base necromancy a handful of madmen and dreamers who had previously sworn their blades to John Kerry, the silvered warrior from the north. And in so doing, he has imperiled our campaign against the Shrub.

I never knew he would rise again so soon.

You see, when I first began moving my sneakered feet to the tune piped by the Green Man, it was in a time of innocence. Al Gore was a simple synthezoid, a man-machine forged of Clinton dogma and corporate interests. Press his keys and he plays soundbytes from what was already a bygone era. And his opponent was, in those happy days, a hollow grinning simpleton. An empty vessel from the Bush Dynasty into which could be poured all the most palatable liquors of the Right. Creme Taxcut. Eau de Right-to-life. 16-Year-Old oak-cask-aged Military Spending.

That was before he went mad and began sending his stormtroopers to bear his glorious likeness across the face of the world and crush all resistance beneath the gleaming Nike of American democracy. That was back in the days when September 11th was mostly notable for being just over a week before my dad's birthday. That was in the halcyon era when the massive Clinton surplus seemed so mountainous that not even a Bush could fritter it all away.

And the political system given flesh in the form of BushversusGore was -- as the leftist media so quickly caught scent of -- repetitive, dauntingly corrupt, and very, very boring.

Ralph Nader wasn't.

Here was a man who embodied the ethic of the citizen scholar. Well-read, well-informed, with an acerbic wit and a vast repertoire of tricks up his tweed sleeves. A modern Thoreau, an Emerson with a thirst for politics and the silver-tainted blood of his foes ... Nader was everything a young Turk like myself could ask for. A political cowboy, a lone gunman, riding hard against the dark iron giants of the east. So I rode with him.

And I stand by my vote. America needed then and needs now to break away from the tyranny of two political parties so outmoded and complacent that they've dragged our political discourse into a mire of stagnancy from which it will take decades to be freed. Ralph Nader presented a clean and shining alternative to a dirty and ancient game played by rusting colossi. He brought me out to vote when otherwise I would've simply stayed home and read V for Vendetta again.

After the empty vessel came to power, the Left turned savagely on Nader and his dreamers, but in so doing they discounted two important provisos: Firstly and foremostly, not everyone who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore. That is a simplistic mathematical exercise performed by bitter Democrats which discounts actual polls. By most counts, Gore would have received less than half of Nader's votes, with Bush receiving more than a quarter and the rest not voting or undecided. Secondly and more critically, the idiot child of the GOP was backed by a shadow cabal of unprecedented reach and bald-faced temerity. They stole Florida, and would have stolen it even if Nader had not run. Gore's loss did not hinge on the few hundred thousand votes he would have picked up across the nation from Nader. It hinged on the chicanery, espionage, and uncountable constitutional violations perpetrated in Florida, and that would have happened either way. The Green Wizard served as a martyr for the desperate and bewildered Democrats.

But his wizardry has faded, and we have come to a dark place. This is the time for a soldier, and not a dreamer. Nader is running now, regardless of what he might argue and regardless of how many more quotes from On Walden Pond he can dredge up, on a platform of raw bullheadedness. He refuses to believe he can be cast aside as unimportant so quickly, because he still believes he represents the vote of the politically-active philosophical intellectual, a thousand-thousand radicals and lovers and bibliophiles and advocates and rangers and cynics, speaking in one voice. And that might be true.

But now is not the time to grasp for Utopia. We can plan the perfect city-state after we've taken care of the little matter of the ravening ogre currently squatting on a throne of skulls on Pennsylvania Avenue, laughing until he chokes as he feasts on dusky roasted Arabs and the flesh of Afghani infants, and turns food for the hungry into gold ornaments to decorate million-dollar homes in Georgetown. Nader's time will come after the martial Left have sallied forth and slaughtered the Texan monstrosity, after the dust has settled and the globe no longer howls for American blood.

For now, Nader must be forced back into the sideshow tents with the rest of the freaks: Kucinich, Sharpton, Perot, Debs ... gnawing on chicken heads and waiting patiently for the madness outside in the real world to end, so they can have their voices heard.

Now is not the time, Ralph. I rode with you once and I'll do it again, but not now. Kerry may be a corrupt and sodden old man, but he's a soldier with a spark in his eye yet, and he knows deep in his wrinkled heart that he can bring down Bush if we'll work with him. We don't have to like him. We just have to march in step with him for a few months, and then drink a toast with him when the last of Cheney's clones is yanked up out of cryogenesis and set aflame to run screaming down the Beltway, lighting our celebration.

That very night, Ralph, you can come tell us how Kerry is just one more tool for the fatcats that have owned politics since before gold was found in California. And you'll be right.

But for the love of what's left of our nation, wait until then.

*****

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