An open letter from Ralph Nader.

• Author: Nader, Ralph
• Position: Thinking Politically

Dear Anybody But Bush Liberal Democrats:

If you wish to defeat George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in November, restore the House and/or the Senate to the Democrats and continue to build a longer term progressive political movement, enlisting the young, middle-aged and elderly together, beyond November 2004, and you have some doubts as to whether the Democrats can do this by themselves, this letter is for you.

Let's face the facts. Our country has serious problems. The world is not doing very well. We need every source of energy inside the electoral arena to turn harmful, costly and cruel trends against billions of innocent people into just and healthy directions.

The electoral system in our country is rigged in many ways against third parties and independent candidates having a level playing field chance to compete. This leaves the two major Parties to regenerate themselves internally without external pushes and jolts. The Republicans generate themselves with corporate batteries while the Democrats try to play catch up in the corporate money-raising sweepstakes. So it is not surprising that many people are left with the least of the worst choice and take it, assuming you are not in a single party district. After all, they know they are all hostages to this winner-take-all Electoral College straitjacket.

They realize that the political terrain is rigged to leave them as of now with just that choice if they want to be with a possible winner, which most voters want to be. A modern full representation system to make more votes count should become part of our national political debate. One version--multi-seat districts--elected the first woman, Jeanette Rankin, to Congress from Montana in 1916.

Apart from their ways, the Democrats need to be shown additional ways--strong, rational, emotive ways to defeat Bush and the Republicans.

Why? Because their leaders and consultants are either too cautious, too unimaginative or too indentured to vested interests to even conceive, not to mention field test, these vulnerabilities of the Bush regime.

Enter an independent candidacy in a duopolized system that does not believe the election has to be totally enclosed by zero-sum gaming among the major candidates. Instead there should be various strategies and probes and anticipations inside the electoral arena that in important ways escape the zero-sum mind so as to more likely achieve the common goal of ouster.

Here is what I mean. Campaigns must have distinct...