Editorial: Ego that won’t quit

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 | 8:56 a.m.

Ralph Nader announced Sunday that he is running for president. Unlike in 2000 when he ran on the Green Party ticket, this time Nader will run as an independent. Nader will have a harder time getting on all the ballots in 50 states since he won't be affiliated with an existing third party, but Democrats still are experiencing angst over Nader's bid. Democrats are worried, and Republicans are hopeful, that Nader will drain enough votes from the Democratic presidential nominee to throw the election to George W. Bush.

It's clear that four years ago Nader helped hand the election to Bush by siphoning votes away from Democrat Al Gore. In Florida alone, which Bush won by only 537 votes out of about 6 million cast, Nader received 97,488 votes. If just 10 percent of those liberal-leaning Nader supporters in Florida had gone for Gore instead, Bush would have lost the state's 25 electoral votes, costing him the general election.

Despite Nader's contention that there isn't much difference between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration espouses an extreme, far-right agenda, fawning over corporations and pushing through anti-environmental policies. Nevadans have experienced all of this firsthand, as Congress approved Bush's plan to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Southern Nevada. As a reminder that there was a real difference, Gore condemned Bush's recommendation to go forward with a nuclear waste dump.

Nader has every right to run for any elective office he chooses, and with his oversized ego it's hard to imagine anyone getting through to him about the pitfalls of being a presidential candidate again. But we're confident that voters last time learned that protest votes aren't just hollow exercises -- they can have terrible consequences -- and that this time around Nader won't get any traction.