Say it ain't so, Ralph!

I grew up revering Ralph Nader, Nader's Raiders, the PIRG organizers. Last election I vote traded with a guy in Georgia so I could vote for Gore here, and still know the Greens were getting one more chad.

But this article in the Village Voice is really chilling.

I want to hear from Nader that this man has been fired, because I want to know that this is not Nader's base agenda:

Later I was introduced to Nader's closest adviser, his handsome, piercingly intelligent 30-year-old nephew, Tarek Milleron. Although Milleron argued that environmentalists and other activists would find fundraising easier under Bush, he acknowledged that a Bush presidency would be worse for poor and working-class people, for blacks, for most Americans. As Moore had, he claimed that Nader's campaign would encourage Web-based vote-swapping between progressives in safe and contested states. But when I suggested that Nader could gain substantial influence in a Democratic administration by focusing his campaign on the 40 safe states and encouraging his supporters elsewhere to vote Gore, Milleron leaned coolly toward me with extra steel in his voice and body. He did not disagree. He simply said, "We're not going to do that."

"Why not?" I said.

With just a flicker of smile, he answered, "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them."

There was a long silence and the conversation was over.

Oh, Ralph... Oh, geez...

My bumper sticker for Ralph Nader this year:

Ralph Nader
...unsafe at any speed...