Nader mentions a lot of the same issues that Ron Paul was trying to address with his unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination. Both candidates say we need major reform in our government and we need to address the fact that big corporations and lobbyists actually run our country. Corruption and scandals dominate the political landscape and nobody in Washington wants to address the issue because all elected officials benefit from the current system.

I’m not voting for Ralph Nader or Ron Paul but I have to agree with them that our system is broken. Our political parties hate each other so much that no candidate will be able to reunite them in our lifetime. America has become polarized and you are now labeled a Conservative Republican or a Liberal Democrat. There is no middle ground anymore in spite of the fact that probably 70% of all Americans are somewhere in the middle. You never hear anything from the middle. The only politicians we hear from are the extremists, the ultra-conservatives or the liberals which are a very small minority parked at each end of the spectrum. Why don’t we hear from the majority that occupies the middle and share values that are consistent with most Americans?

Enough ranting. Let me show you why Ralph Nader will not affect the election like he did in 2000. Many experts say Nader cost Al Gore the election because he pulled almost 100,000 votes away from him in Florida alone. The experts say Nader had no impact on the 2004 election but look at these stats from Google Trends. The trends aren’t available for the 2000 election but seeing the spike in Google Searches in 2004 makes it clear that Nader will not impact this election. Since he announced his candidacy last week, the number of searches for Ralph Nader are almost non-existent.