"People versus the Powerful" and his constant, unremitting references to "Big Oil".

As usual, the media made fun of it and the sheeple, this time including progressive, otherwise intelligent people, went along happily.

I had not followed politics all that much until then; but the difference between Bush and Gore was clear as night and day. Just the intelligence quotient difference would have been sufficient for me.

The Democratic party does need to be dragged away from this corporate money addiction it has gotten itself into (somewhat due to necessity) -- but Nader in 2000 was not going to do it and that was clear for anyone not self-indulgent enough to see that they were helping the obviously worse choice by their actions. There is NO getting around this point: Nader voters should have used their heads instead of their hearts.

In fact, most of the left was irresponsible in that election. For instance, in the home-stretch days of the 2000 election, Florida enviros were making loud noises about some stupid air strip or the other and Gore's position on it, which may have cost Gore far more than the 500+ votes that Gore needed.

The problem for the Democratic party is the fact that most of the activists seem to live in a rarified world were the consequences of their irresponsible advocacies (such as during the crunch times of elections) are not really felt by them, but by those for whom they should be advocating.

It is mind-boggling that those who voted for Nader can still cling to that mind-set. The only rational course of action for the 2000-Naderites now is to acknowledge the error of their ways and learn from the mistake. What is the difference between the thugs maintaining that they are never wrong and this inane insistence from Naderites "that they could not have foreseen how bad Bush would be"? It was not necessary for Bushco to be this bad; the results of 2000 would have been sufficient for you to fess up and say: "sorry, we were stupid enough not to be rational; this was an indulgence, we will henceforward be more thoughtful of the consequences of our actions". This is the way to grow; stubborn adherence to a viewpoint will not advance us or more importantly, our causes.

I am not saying activists should shut up -- but they have to exercise their sense of perspective: when the choice presented to you is between a man who claims that human behavior has no effect on the earth and a man who wrote "Earth in the balance", and you are an avowed enviro...