July 21, 2004: Op-Ed Why Ralph Nader should be taken out and shot

* Dick Cheney stated today that he was changing his position on caps in medical malpractice cases now that he had learned that his former doctor was a huge coke addict and may or may not have left a scalpel, three clamps, a watch and a television remote control inside his chest during his last two heart surgeries.

* Op-Ed

By E Pluribus Unum
Guest Columnist

Why Ralph Nader should be taken out and shot.

There is a joke circulating around the Internet.
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Ralph."
"Ralph who?
"Ralph Nader is going to bring about the end of democracy in this country and I don't understand why the hell he would do that?"

What I find fascinating is that Ralph Nader has no supporters and yet he is polling at 6%. I exaggerate. Nader has lot of REPUBLICAN supporters who are spending gobs of money and working diligently to get him on the ballot. But no one is actually planning on voting for him.

Now we've all, or most of us, have gotten over the fact that there were significantly more Nader votes in New Hampshire and Florida than the Bush margin of win in either of those states. No one is saying that we need to build a time machine and prevent Nader from running in 2000. That would be a moderate waste of resources. The 2000 election is past. And even though if Nader hadn't run in 2000 Al Gore would have been President with no recounts or any of that nonsense. We're over it. All of us. It's the past. But who the hell is going to vote for Nader in 2004? I mean seriously? Who? Because every person I know that voted for Nader in 2000 is not voting for him in 2004. Not a one. Barbara Ehrenreich even wrote an Op-Ed in the ultra-ultra-super-liberal New York Times about how she was not going to support Nader in 2004.

So who the hell are these 6% of voters people? Now. Those republicans are crafty. They could always pretend they were going to vote for Nader when asked by the pollster. But in the polls it is always Kerry who loses votes when they add Nader's name to the mix. I mean why the hell would the republicans be funding Ralph Nader's campaign if they thought he was going to hurt Bush? Now, the republicans are very crafty, so they could be saying they were going to vote for Kerry and then in the second question switch to Nader. But for the life of me I don't see how that helps them. I mean if they were really that crafty they'd say they were voting for Bush that way the democrats wouldn't get so freaken scared that Nader will end up on ballots. Then come election day those six percent would stay for Bush and the democrats would be surprised.

So who the hell are these 6%. If no one who voted for Nader in the 2000 election is voting for him in 2004 then they can't be these 6%? Well, my first inclination was that it must people between 18 and 22 who couldn't have voted for Nader in the 2000 election and have decided that they wanted to exercise their right to destroy democracy in the 2004 election. But really, 18-22 year olds don't vote. I mean they vote at about .000008%; so they can't be 6% of voters.

Anyway, I've decided that we'll never know who these people are and they are obviously insane and obstinate, so it would be a waste of resources to try and talk them out of it. Which is why I propose that liberals take together a collection and have Ralph Nader murdered. We could even make it look like an accident. I think death by a product defect would be particularly ironic. I don't know what it costs to murder a celebrity, but I'm sure that MoveOn.org could raise the money. Democrats from all over the country would gladly dig into their PayPal accounts to see Ralph bite the dust. If enough money isn't raised the murder could always be videotaped and simultaneously webcast for a fee. People would gladly pay $5 to see Ralph Nader take one from an exploding shampoo bottle or defective stapler.

Did I mention how we're over the 2000 election?