"It doesn't matter who is doing this."

Oh yes it does. When your sworn political enemies are trying to destroy your campaign by getting you off the ballot, it is the only thing that matters.

Everyone can agree that the rules are the rules. But it is the State of Arizona's job to examine the petition signatures, and therefore it is, at this point, counter-productive for the Dems to intervene like this. Once the State of Arizona makes it's determination would be the time to intervene. But not now. This pre-emptive strike is bad PR and strategy for the Dems for a lot of reasons.

It presumes that the state officials charged with the job of examining the signatures can't be trusted.

Considering that over 22,000 signatures were gathered, and roughly 14,000 are necessary to get on the ballot, it also seems like a long shot that Nader won't make it onto the ballot. Which then begs the question, why bother?

A simple but powerful argument can also be made that dwindling campaign time, resources, and Democrat dollars would likely be better spent going after Bush, especially in McCain country.

The Democratic National Convention is but a month away, and will give all the Democratic candidates a boost. So again, why bother with Nader now, when he isn't even officially on the ballot, but ESPECIALLY because it makes them look even worse than Republican gerrymanderers.