Who wants Ralph?

Did we miss something?

Amid all the clamor of the Democratic presidential primaries, the ruminations over George W. Bush’s recent poll numbers, and the odds-making over the second spot on both sides of the ballot, somehow the public outcry for Ralph Nader to run for president had escaped us.

The silence, in fact, has been deafening.

But Ralph’s in.

Responding, one assumes, to the call of his own ego, the one-time consumer advocate officially announced his candidacy on Sunday.

Four years ago, there was a fig leaf of rationale behind the Nader candidacy. Some disaffected Democrats felt they’d been shut out of their party and were ready to look elsewhere. Nader gave voice to their frustrations.

Four years later, it’s a very different picture.

George W. Bush is president in large part because of Nader’s third-party run. And those Democrats who wanted to lodge a protest vote are back in the fold simply because they want President Bush retired from office.

Meanwhile, the candidacies of Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich — yes, Dennis Kucinich — provided an outlet for the sort of rage-against-the-machine wing of the Democratic Party.

They may not have won many votes, but they did have a chance to be heard, and they had an impact on the debate.

The party is different, the candidates are different, and the issues are differently aligned.

All of that’s clear to even the most casual observer of American politics, though not to Ralph Nader.

So what’s one to make of all this? Not very much, it seems. As an independent, Nader’s not going to make it onto the November ballot in very many states. And if he’s not running a truly national campaign, it’s unlikely he’ll be afforded much of the spotlight.

In some quarters, what the Nader candidacy might most provoke is voter anger. To some Democrats, after all, he’s the man who put George W. Bush in the White House. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]