Ralph Nader announced yesterday that he will run again for president, and groans echo around the country by Democrats who believe that he cost us the last two elections. If you haven’t seen An Unreasonable Man, I reiterate my belief that you should watch the film. I won’t speculate as to what those voters who voted for him might have done had Ralph not been running like others do, and Nader’s main point, the drum he pounds consistently, is that Democrats are too disorganized or downright timid to take up the issues and create change.

I agree with him on this - if Democrats were really speaking the language of the people, the election results wouldn’t be so close all of the time. Obama and Clinton supporters are split down the middle with many saying they can’t distinguish between the two; on the issues, yes but on spirit and personality, I support Obama. Both candidates are beholden to a party that lacks strategic vision as well as solid short and long-term goals. If you think the Democratic party is doing a good job, raise your hand. No? That’s Nader’s point!

Honestly Nader would be a great president on domestic policy. He would balance the budget and be the kind of responsible parent this country needs so desperately. I agree that it is disheartening to think that any votes might go astray in this next election, but if the Democrats could get their shit together and present something that Americans could get behind, Nader wouldn’t be an issue. Let’s focus our energy on pushing the party to be better rather than moaning about Nader. He is trying to provoke a different discussion, he’d just not doing it successfully because he doesn’t have enough campaign money to buy the right message.

Today I took my car in to finally get it registered in Texas (yes, Ma, I live in Texas!) where the lady offered me a voter registration form. I asked her if I should take it with me, and she said no, that I should fill it out and she would take it for me as voter registration is in the same building. Well, you can call me cynical and I’ll believe you from here forth, because I was totally dumbfounded that this woman would wait for me to fill out this dumb form and process it for me right there when I actually came in to to do something totally different! That seemed to me above and beyond the call of duty, and I certainly didn’t expect to find that kind of service related to voting in a conservative state (Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America’s Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Try)). So, I guess this is a hat tip to Texas and a reminder that even though it can seem like a pain-in-the-arse to register, if you don’t do it, you won’t be able to vote in this important upcoming election.

I know that there is a media circus going on around the primaries, and I’m kind of staying away from it, probably wrongly, but I just can’t help but feel that this whole thing had shied so far away from people and our day-to-day lives. It’s kind of embarrassing from a global perspective. I wonder what it looks like from the outside. Any non-North American readers out there? I’d love to hear from you!