Electoral politics involves people posturing and bending the truth and frequently telling lies in order to get adopted as a candidate, and then in order to get elected - and of course also to get the financial backing they need, especially in the American system, where there is no cap on how much candidates can spend, and where TV time can be bought.

It's a mistake to put too much faith in anything candidates aiming to get elected say, whether that's stuff you welcome or stuff you deplore. Whatever happens all you can do is hope they are better than you fear, even if they won't be as good as you hope. Of course it's all very unsatisfactory and imperfect.

On balance it seems pretty likely that Obama is likely to be better than the only other candidate who could be elected.

Of course getting elected isn't the only game in town, and it's not the one that Nader is engaged in. That's what I meant by "candidates aiming to get elected", because that's not the only reason for standing in an election. For some candidates what is involved is different - they are out to use the electoral process to get people thinking about certain issues and certain changes, and building a movement of people who will keep on pushing for those changes, and bringing those issues into the forefront.

And the hope has to be that that is going to have an impact on how the actual people elected will behave and put constraints on how they act. There's a pincer movement involved - and people who are working outside the system and the people with essentially similar hopes and vision working inside the system need to recognise that they both have a part to play in that rather than kick hell out of each other.

A first past the post system does screw things up - unlike one where people rank candidates, which means that votes for a campaigning candidate without a hope of getting elected won't damage a perhaps second best but electable candidate's chances, as happened in the case of Gore. Of course that's not what you've got or are going to get in a hurry. But it's silly to work up hatreds over what are essentially transient tactical decisions.