A collective groan could almost be heard echoing around the Democratic Party headquarters this week with the news that consumer champion Ralph Nader was back and considering another shot at the White House.
His name alone is enough to send even the most mild-mannered Democrats into paroxysms of rage, still smarting from their defeat in 2000 when George W. Bush won the election by beating Al Gore in Florida by just 537 votes.
Standing as a Green party candidate, Nader took some 97,000 votes in the Sunshine State, triggering outrage among Democrats who believed he had siphoned off ballots from Gore.
Vote "raider" and "spoiler" were some of the more printable names hurled at Nader by his critics.
"Political bigot," shot back Nader this week, as he launched a presidential exploratory committee to see if he can attract enough support and funds to launch his fifth bid for the White House as an independent.
"They scapegoated me," Nader told AFP in an interview. "They are congenitally unable of avoiding the scapegoat tag. Instead they should look in the mirror and ask why they lost."
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