Secondly, I'll agree that there's no strong reason to suspect that Nader has more support than Kerry. Possible, maybe, but unlikely.
It's clear that Kerry won the primary mainly because mainline democrats thought he was the most appealing candidate to the independent voters vis-a-vis Bush. They were probably right, and this was probably good strategy. But it is not clear that Kerry was even the most popular Democrat in democrats' sincere preferences.
What exactly is it about Kerry that you find to be so sleazy?
I have learned quite a bit about Kerry in the last few months, and he
strikes me not as a sleaze, but rather as a well-intentioned and
intelligent person who is under an inhuman amount of pressure, since at
this point, there is so very much riding on him... the weight of the
world, in a very scary, literal sense.
I would broadly agree with that - Kerry is probably a decent guy, seems fairly intelligent, and has a huge amount of pressure as he is effectively the champion of the not-Bush faction of the electorate.
If you have any specific criticisms of him, I'd like you to bring them
forward. In your post, you seem to treat the notion 'Kerry is sleazy' as
if it were axiomatic. But to me, it is not axiomatic, so I would prefer
that you support it.
Basically, my problem with Kerry is that he, like many others, is largely funded by corporate sources. Although he supported Campaign fincance reform (https://ssl.capwiz.com/aclu/bio/?id=298) the funding records (http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/donordems.asp) make it pretty clear how much of an impact that has had (i.e. next to none). Really, only Dean (among the well-funded candidates) managed to avoid corporate sources. (His largest contributor was in the 14k range - incredibly small given his overall fundraising. Kerry got, I think, over 160k from Time/Warner, to name one.)
Some would argue that Dean's failure to take media money, as well as his opposition to several big media hot-button issues, were factors in the negative coverage he consistently received. He was labeled an upstart, too liberal, and with too much of a temper to be president, when all three appear false given any rational analysis.
I didn't mean to get so into Dean there, but the contrast does help highlight a significant way in which Kerry is more like Bush than a paragon of all things non-Bush.
P.S. I don't see much connection between Michael Moore and Nader. Actually, Nader has essentially been begging Moore to support him, in two separate open letters, and has been met with only a stony silence. I think that "Fahrenheit" is intended as an implicit endorsement of whichever Democratic candidate gets the nomination.
Fahrenheit is intended to defeat Bush. Moore is probably staying silent on Nader because, although he may support Nader, he feels that publicly supporting Nader would reduce the chances of Bush losing.
We're getting way off-topic here...
-Adam
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