Ralph Nader doesn't not throw hat in ring

You got that right. Doesn't not. The man who may have elected George Bush in 2000 hasn't ruled out another race in 2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Sunday left the door open for another possible White House bid in 2008 and criticized Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton as "a panderer and a flatterer."

Asked on CNN's Late Edition news program if he would run in 2008, the lawyer and consumer activist said, "It's really too early to say. ... I'll consider it later in the year."

Nader, 72, said he did not plan to vote for Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York and former first lady.

"I don't think she has the fortitude. Actually she's really a panderer and a flatterer. As she goes around the country, you'll see more of that," Nader said.

I really liked the headline: "Nader leaves '08 door open, slams Hillary." The problem with it is that if he's leaving it open, it won't slam Hillary. It would slam her only if he closed it.

And speaking of giving the 2000 election to Bush, here's a flashback: a Village Voice editorial endorsing Nader in 2000.

We survived 12 years of Reagan-Bush, despite their opposition to abortion, and, if need be, we will survive Bush Jr.—if we organize. With the Greens as a major national presence, this sort of organizing becomes more feasible.

The idea was that a vote for Nader would help the Green Party reach the 5% vote required for federal matching funds. I bet these guys have been kicking themselves about it ever since.

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Announcement

If you check in at Pillage Idiot in the next couple of days and it looks strange, it's because I'm in the process of switching to a nearly identical template that works with New Blogger. What it means is that I'm going to have to re-create the changes I made to my old template, and I hope most or all will actually work with it. I suspect it'll take a little time to get my upgrades back in order.

UPDATE: Wow! This is much more complicated than I realized. I get XML errors when I try to modify the new template, and I don't do XML. Installing the Haloscan comments is a more involved process, and the result needs adjustment, but the code is so complicated that I don't know where to start. In short, for now, I'm sticking with the old template. Maybe some other time...

UPDATE: I took another stab at it, and I'm on the way. I had to guess a lot about placement of the HTML code. I had to learn some really rudimentary XML (like the fact that all codes have to have end codes and have to be in order). But I'm making progress, and only a few bugs remain.

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