Ralph Nader will appear on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, the same platform he used to announce his 2004 run for the Presidency. It is not much of a stretch to predict that Nader is likely going in front of the nation to declare his official intentions of running for the White House. Nader has been through this before and understands how to best use this opportunity in front of a national audience. By waiting until he has a national audience to announce his bid he will quickly be able to follow up the announcement with his platform and reasons for running.

Nader has expressed that he would like to raise $10 million and fill volunteer positions throughout the country, preferably in every congressional district, before officially declaring that he is in the race. His explorityory committee team has not yet released numbers on volunteers or fundraising, so it is still unclear whether or not he has come close to reaching these goals.

Nader launched his exploratory committee late last month just after Dennis Kucinich exited from the race. Once Kucinich dropped out of the race to focus on his Ohio Congressional seat, Nader saw a void that needed to be filled.

Some Democrats will likely be upset by Nader’s entrance into the race because some like to label Ralph Nader as a spoiler for the Democratic Party. Many of these Democrats unfriendly to Nader point to Florida in 2000 when Nader collected nearly 100,000 votes in a state that was decided by less than 1000 votes. Their reasoning is that if Nader had not been in the race his 100,000 votes would have gone to Al Gore and Gore would have gone on to the Oval Office with no controversy. Nader replies to this argument by claiming that he actually did Gore a favor by pushing him to adopt a more populist message, which Nader says helped Gore receive more votes. In recent interviews Nader has implied that he may do the same for Obama. He points to Obama’s desire to strengthen the military and intervene in countries such as Pakistan as issues that need to be closely examined by progressives.

Nader has said he will run as the Green Party candidate this election. The last time Nader ran as the Green Party candidate in 2000 he received approximately 3% of the popular vote nationwide. In 2004 Nader failed to crack the 1% mark when he ran as an independent. Ballot access should be less of an obstacle for Nader if he receives the Green Party nomination over Cynthia McKinney  

Part of Nader’s problem in the 2004 election cycle was that the Left was so desperate to oust Bush that they decided to vote for a “winner” in Kerry, instead of making a statement and voting for their favorite candidate. This year if Obama continues his current trend of momentum, Nader supporters might be more likely to cast their vote for Nader.

The reality is that a successful Nader campaign would likely bring Obama back to the pack, at least to some extent. But according to Nader’s philosophy this is irrelevant.

A phrase Nader likes to use is “rationalizing our own futility,” implying that this country tries to convince themselves that it can’t get any better than the two party system.

If, and it is now looking like “when,” Nader enters the race, I hope he is able to make a push to make this election more about the substantive issues and less about the horserace, but I have to admit I’m not holding my breath.

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