...well, then don't necessarily believe it. To be honest, I wasn't really all that confident in the reports (mostly coming from the conservative media) that Nader would, in fact, announce that he's going to run. I figured that it might have just been some agitating on the part of the Republicans, easily retracted. But, I should have had more confidence in Nader's convictions which, no matter what else you might think of him, he has in abundance and with admirable substantiation behind them.
I doubt I would vote for him this time, though, for a couple of major reasons: he is hostile to Israel and he is too enamored of the welfare state. Not that these are new aspects of his political position but, on the first reason, I refuse to ever negotiate again and, on the second, I think it's economically regressive.
However, I loved Nader's remarks to Russert on the "liberal intelligentsia." They are a bunch of sell-outs. When a magazine like The Nation has the temerity to try to intimidate him out of running, you have to wonder where their writers' and readers' principles have gone. As Nader correctly pointed out, Gore's loss of Florida could have just as easily been attributed to other independent voters in that state who didn't vote for him or Gore or Bush. That's how small the official vote margin was ---a fact that the Democrats still can't deal with.