Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, said today that he will run for president again.
Nader, who played a spoiler's role in the presidential election of 2000, said today on NBC News' Meet the Press that he is ready to run again in 2008.
"I have decided to run for president,'' said Nader, who, at 73, is a couple of years older than the likely Republican nominee, John McCain.
Nader is voicing a familiar refrain: Maintaining that most Americans are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican Parties, and that none of the presidential candidates address ways to combat corporate crime and waste within the Pentagon waste and to promote labor rights.
Nader ran as a third-party candidate in 2000 and 2004.
And many Democrats will never forgive him for the role he played in 2000, when his marginal share of the vote in Florida likely cost Democrat Al Gore victory in a razor-thin, disputed vote.
The days of a third-party candidate claiming a large share of the American vote -- such as the nearly 20 percent that H. Ross Perot won in 1992, playing a role that many Republicans will never forget -- may be gone.
Yet, with elections contested on the margins in many states -- from Iowa to Wisconsin, and from New Hampshire to Florida in recent years -- any active third-party candidacy could have an impact on the Electoral College balance.
And already this year, sizeable numbers of people have voiced discontent with the leading candidates -- discontent manifested in the campaign of Republican Ron Paul, for instance. So the question looms this year: Might Nader play the spoiler once more?
Not again...
