Throughout the past month, Ralph Nader’s polling numbers have fluctuated between 1 and 4 percent in Wisconsin.

If Bush wins Wisconsin, it is likely to be by less than Nader’s support. If Bush also wins the presidency by fewer than 20 electoral votes (i.e. few enough such that Wisconsin’s 10 votes could have been the difference), Wisconsin will witness a Nader hate-fest unseen since Florida four years ago, and this writer will likely become a punching bag for Madison Democrats.

Permit me to pre-empt such a scenario not with a disclaimer (as I am proud to have convinced many people this autumn of the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party) but with an explanation that few dare to offer.

This election is John Kerry’s to lose. With the resources available to him and the widespread hatred of Bush’s policies, Kerry’s campaign should be a cakewalk. Half of this country doesn’t vote because neither candidate, pandering to corporate interests, addresses them.

Consider health care: Kerry wants to decrease the burden on employers. That burden has to land somewhere, so this means increasing the burden on employees — those without health care. His specific plan is to make private insurance coverage available with government subsidies for the poor. The problem is that private coverage is so outrageous that, even with government assistance, poor families cannot afford it.

A similar plan currently exists for those unemployed because of foreign imports. Fewer than 2 percent of those eligible can afford the program. If Kerry promised what every American deserves (single-payer, universal health care), then you better believe that the 50 percent of Americans who don’t vote would call in sick on Election Day and get to the voting booth. Kerry would rather lose … and lose he may.

For those who are trying to justify their vote for Kerry with illusions of “stark differences” between Bush and Kerry, come off it! I concede there are differences, but stark?

Kerry’s energy plan involves drilling all over Alaska except for the Wildlife Refuge and decapitating mountains in the Appalachians for coal. Kerry’s war plan is to double the size of the U.S. Special Forces and deploy 40,000 more troops around the world.

Kerry is even less critical than Bush toward Israel. As the New York Times’ conservative William Safire describes: “As the Democratic Whoopee Brigade hailed Sen. Kerry’s edge in debating technique, nobody noticed his foreign policy sea change. On both military tactics and grand strategy, the newest neoconservative announced doctrines more hawkish than President Bush.”

George Bush has presided over the greatest torture scandal in recent history, a so-called illegal war, the undemocratic deposing of Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide and countless attacks on working people and the poor in this country. Yet Kerry doesn’t talk about overturning Taft-Hartley, the biggest legislative barrier to workers’ rights to organize into a union. He won’t mention universal health care, and he sure won’t talk about leaving Iraq before he makes it safe for American business. How many “I will hunt down and kill the terrorists” will it take from Kerry before Madison liberals take a stand for their own political convictions … or have they given up on those too?

For those crazed Democrats who still don’t get it, the question stands: Who, in their right mind, is possibly going to vote for Ralph Nader? I’ll tell you, and I dare you to share your venom with them the way you’ve shared it with me.

Nader’s new base are the people who are most affected by the Kerry/Bush consensus. These are the poor and working class gay couples who don’t want civil unions and back-of-the-bus treatment. They want, deserve and need equal marriage rights — something Kerry adamantly opposes.

They are women in 90 percent of U.S. counties with no access to abortion procedures — Kerry offers these women nothing. These are Dane County’s blacks, the victims of some of the nation’s highest incarceration rates, Bill Clinton’s disastrous welfare “reform” and the racist, bipartisan war on drugs.

Twenty-five percent of Arab Americans have grown so sick with scapegoating and attacks on civil liberties that they are Nader’s most consistent base. Latinos are leaving the Democratic Party to build an independent alternative to Kerry’s pro-NAFTA, anti-immigrant, “close the borders” racism.

These are the people who thank Nader’s supporters instead of attacking them because for them, Bush or Kerry is a non-choice. After all, somebody has to run against Bush this fall.

Thanks to Nader, someone is.

Chris Dols ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in civil engineering and a member of the International Socialist Organization.