Nader Update

I’m not sure what this means:

Ralph Nader, the third-party candidate viewed by many Democrats as the spoiler of the 2000 election for taking votes away from Al Gore, has decided not to run on the Green Party ticket next year, a party spokesman said Tuesday.

Nader, who garnered nearly 3 percent of the national vote in the last presidential election, has not ruled out running for president as an independent and plans to make a decision by January.

[snip] … Nader said running as an independent would not hurt his campaign. “As an independent, you can do more innovative things because you don’t have to check with all the bases,” he said.

Why Independent and not Green? Are there people inside the Green Party, people with sufficient intra-party power, opposed to Nader running? Opposed to any Green candidate running in 2004? Who knows. Still, this should get the Democratic candidate an extra .5% to 1% in some important states.

AB