I know what you are going to say, but bear with me for a second. If the pundits and bloggers can spend hundreds of hours and thousands of lines speculating on the Kerry-McCain ticket that is never going to happen then goddammit I can spend five minutes on this.
Here is the plan. At the right strategic time, Kerry announces that Ralph Nader will be his VP candidate. This shocks everyone and dominates the headlines for weeks, giving Kerry and Nader the kind of press that you can't buy (well, actually you can, but this would be a way to bridge the financial gap between Kerry and Bush) and a golden opportunity to spell out their plan for a better country.
By most accounts, 40% of the US is in the anybody-but-Bush camp and 40% are in the lets-follow-Bush-off-that-cliff camp. All of the tens of millions of dollars spent during the campaign will be spent on the remaining few. Obviously Kerry would lose some moderates because of this, but he would pick up EVERY SINGLE GREEN VOTE in the country (along with their energized grass-roots campaign efforts). If Kerry were to continue to run as a moderate he could still pick up close to half of the remaining undecideds. He gets credit by many for making an extremely bold move and any charges of wishy-washyness are expelled forever. There will be howling and grunting and thrashing and crying from the right, but lets face it, we are going to see that not matter who the hell he picks anyway. This way, much of the howling is going to be directed at Nader and I'm pretty sure he can handle himself.
The risk, of course, lies in the fact that there are many, many more moderate undecideds (read "clueless idiots") out there than there are Greens. I would be interested to see how many people would be initially turned off by a potential Nader nod. If the gap between those people and the Greens (remember, they probably wont be voting for Kerry as it stands right now anyway) is not that wide, I think that Nader could win them over by using his new, powerful bully pulpit. He is an excellent and convincing public speaker.
There are many side benefits to this too:
1. I can stop despising Ralph Nader.
2. The Nader-Cheney debates.
3. No need for secret service protection for Kerry anymore.
3a. The pleasure of imagining our friends at the NRO sweating and being unable to sleep for the next four years out of fear for Kerry's safety.
• It's an intriguing idea, I must say. Undoable, of course--the election is going to hinge on the 11% of undecideds who are centrist-tending-toward-conservative, and Nader would drive them away in droves (the paltry numbers of Greens who wouldn't be voting for Kerry anyway would never be able to make up for them). But it would certainly neutralize the Nader Factor. And I have to admit that the delicious thought of a series of Nader/Cheney debates would all by itself alnost be worth the risk.
• Mick,
I tried to answer in the comments over at Omnium, but your comments section doesn't seem to be working right now. Here is what I wrote:
Hey, if the wingnuts can have their little fantasies of world domination (and actually work successfully towards implementing them), I can have a little fun with mine. Right?
I went away fishing with my kids for the weekend and planned on coming back and defending my little idea (for sport), but was reminded by all the recent news that things are just too serious. The lionizing and lies for that bastard Reagan. The new WSJ article on torture (lets see them dismiss the WSJ as just a liberal rag that hates America). The new Texas Republican Party platform. The new comments by the Bush administration official about the homeless, "We don't know how many of them are that way by choice".
You would think that the RNC has some kind of plan in place to diminish our capacity for outrage through a campaign of outrage overload.
Kryton,
I don’t remember ever actually hearing many liberals pushing for a Hillary nomination. That story seemed to always come from the right. She is the liberal boogyman that conservatives tell stories to their children about to keep them in line. “Better give your allowance to the RNC, or that bitch Hillary will be your next president!”.
