Anyone who believes Nader's 2000 contention that there's no difference between the Rebpublicans and Democrats has only to look back over the last 3 1/2 years to see the error of that statement.

Had Al Gore been installed (rightly) as the 43rd President, do you really think his administration would have:
a. appointed theocratically-oriented right-wing extremist Federal judges at every opportunity?
b. gutted the Clean Air Act and virtually all other environmental protection laws
c. appointed an Attorney General with as little regard for the Bill Of Rights as John Ashcroft
d. pre-emptively invaded Iraq without a strong international coalition, without clear and compelling reason to do so or an invitation from the Iraqi citizenry
e. been hell-bent on "privatizing" everything from Social Security to the educational system
f. awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton for work in Iraq without accountability for the funds
g. attempted to distract the voting public from economic, security, and social justice issues by backing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage
h. disregarded or marginalized what the the commissions and agencies under the Clinton administration had learned and had to say about international terrorism (e.g., the Hart-Rudman commission)
i. pushed to permanently do away with the inheritance tax, no matter how huge the estate
j. proposed tax cuts that primarily benefit the extremely wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor
or
k. squandered a huge surplus and run up an unprecedented deficit?

No, centrist Democrats and centrist Republicans are not that far apart on most issues. But the Bush administration is not truly conservative, much less centrist; they are not strict constructionists of the Constitution, nor are they fiscally conservative. And on some issues, Kerry is definitely to the left of even the moderate Republicans.

Those who argue that the pendulum must swing even further to the "right" before truly leftist ideas (like those of Nader) will have a chance to take hold do not realize how much may be irretrievably lost before that happens, if we to go all Hegelian at this point instead of opting for the "lesser of two evils" -- which, IMO, is A LOT LESS evil.