Letters to the Editor.

Doomsday with Nader

Ralph Nader is an idea whose time has come and gone ("The Nader Challenge," Comment, July issue).

Twenty or thirty years ago, he might have made a viable Presidential candidate, but now he is reduced to doing a nightclub comic's shtick, paraphrasing George Wallace's 1968 mantra that "there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the major parties" by saying that "the only difference is the speed with which their knees hit the floor when the corporate contributors come through the door."

What Nader can do is tip the balance in "battleground" states, like Ohio and Wisconsin and the big enchilada of California, to George W. Bush. And if W. gets elected, the following doomsday scenario could occur:

In 2001, Chief Justice William Rehnquist retires, and President W. elevates Antonin Scalia to that position. To fill Scalia's seat, W. nominates J. Michael Luttig, the most conservative judge on the most conservative Court of Appeals, the Fourth Circuit. Then, in late 2001, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retires, and W. nominates Judge Daniel A. Manion of Indiana, an extreme conservative who barely survived a Senate confirmation fight. And then comes the cruncher. In the 2002 midterm elections, the Senate Republicans, having picked up two more votes in the 2000 elections, get three more than they need for a filibuster-proof Senate. Then, eighty-two-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens suffers a heart attack and reluctantly retires, giving W. his first chance to replace a liberal on the Court. W. administers the coup de grace by nominating Robert H. Bork. A desperate Democratic filibuster in the Senate is broken, and Bork is confirmed. Before the 2004 election, Roe v. Wade and Miranda v. Arizona are toast. The Court overturns its recent decision invalidating Nebraska's "partial-birth abortion" law. It overturns its 1989 decision that flag burning is protected speech and finally overturns the "Brady Law" and the law banning so-called assault weapons.

This is what Ralph Nader will have wrought. Is it what The Progressive really wants?

Norton N. Black Tucson, Arizona

Regarding "The Nader Challenge," I must say that as a gay man, and in light of the recent Supreme Court decision on the Boy Scouts, I cannot afford to vote for Ralph Nader and thereby siphon off a vote to Al Gore.

As much as I share your reservations about the Vice President, the thought of Pat Robertson & Co., through his terrible stooge George W. Bush, making Court...