I tracked down the witchdoctor at Elephant & Castle I paid £20 to in exchange for a powerful hex on Randy Moss and Tom Brady in the playoffs. It had been tricky this morning- the weather was deceptively placid, but threatened to erupt into a storm at any moment, lending the endeavor a spooky quality, and when I arrived at her backroom office near the tube station, it was empty save for an old, get rich or die tryin’-era 50 Cent promotional poster and four coconut halves, one in each corner of the room, lying face down, along with a pad of Post-It notes in the shape of a pumpkin with nothing written on it. No forwarding address- nothing. It was fortunate that I had a mechanical pencil I had filched from our flatmate in my pocket, and I rubbed over the top Post-It and found an address listed- down on the Victoria line, in Brixton.

Well, what the hell? I hopped a bus and made my way to the address and found her sitting on a couch, watching a repeat of the father dowling mysteries on BBC3.

there you are, I said. i need your help. i have cash.

ah, yes, she replied kindly, the american. tell me, how did your american football contest turn out?

it was fantastic, I told her. you are clearly possessed of great power, and that is why i have returned.

She nodded. tell me what you need, she said.

I produced three £20 notes from my wallet and counted them before shoving them into her fist. let’s not fuck around, I said. i need the good stuff.

of course. if it is within my humble powers, i shall assist you. i have relocated to brixton as a test, and you have proven yourself worthy.

terrific, I said. listen- i need you to send me back in time. eight years.

She laughed. eight years! you speak madness. keep your money. you are a fool. it can not be done.

four? I asked. or- what about a message? can you help me send a message back to myself eight years ago?

you have no idea what you are talking about. return to your home and keep your money. spend it on a book, or go to wikipedia. time travel is a theoretical impossibility, and you insult me by asking me to help you with it. i can no sooner teach you to fly, or to shoot laser beams from your eyes. go now!

but-

She threw the three bills at my feet. I scooped them up and rose to watch her turn her back. spare me your foolishness in the future, she said, and the door was closed. I walked to the tube stop and caught the Victoria Line to King’s Cross, then the 46 bus back up to our flat.

And so much for that. Without the possibility of time travel, I had lost the chance to engage my twenty year old self in a debate on a topic very close to his heart- Ralph Nader.

Well, what’s there to say about Nader?

I voted for him in 2000, and I was a strong supporter of his right to run in 2004; when most of my friends were villifying him for daring to suggest another campaign, I was going to hear him speak, to give him a chance to make his case. Halfway through, a group of young Democrats had burst into the lecture hall he was speaking in, locked arms, and chanted ralph don’t run! ralph don’t run! ralph don’t run! before turning and leaving the room together.

This was 2004, mind you, so I wasn’t really sure what it was all about. It may well have been a flash mob, for all I knew. Turns out there was a semi-national movement called ralph don’t run, and these young citizens were speaking as unofficial representatives.

I liked what Nader had to say in 2004, when I heard him speak. Kerry had not yet fully secured the nomination- Howard Dean was finished at this point, but John Edwards and Wesley Clark still had some hope left alive. Nader insisted at his campaign stop in Austin shortly after announcing that he understood the differences between the Bush administration and a potential Democratic administration, and that he was not there for the purpose of discouraging people from voting Democratic. we have the ability to say and do some things they won’t, he explained. He expressed some broad support for John Edwards (which he reiterated on meet the press yesterday- dude has a crush. I think it’s the dimples) and talked about how he wasn’t looking for the Green Party’s nomination. I thought it was cool, and while I didn’t vote for him, I defended his right to run, and my vote for him in 2000.

And now? If the witchdoctor had been able to grant my request and send me back to 2000, to argue with my younger self about the consequences of Nader’s candidacy?

Thinking about it, I doubt much would change for me.

Oh, I don’t think I’d have been convinced by his argument that there was no difference between Bush and Gore. I’m not retarded. Yeah, if I’d known in 2000 that a Bush presidency would lead to two wars, legalized torture, a dollar worth less than the Canadian looney, an American prison camp in Cuba, gas at three dollars a gallon, a general feeling of shame when traveling abroad… of course I wouldn’t have tried to maintain that there was no difference between the two. But goddamn- the only thing Al Gore ever did to earn my vote in 2000 was to not be George W Bush. It should never have been taken as a given that me or the other 3% would have been natural Gore voters if only Ralph had bailed on the contest. Gore ran as a center-right candidate promising to be a cleaner, less-fun version of the low-fun Clinton administration, and there was no good reason to vote for him except for who he wasn’t. And I was cynical at twenty, but not that cynical.

And there’s no right that guarantees a candidate should be able to run without someone else in the race. Nader had every right to run in 2000, and in 2004. He has every right to run in 2008. It’s stupid, and you can’t convincingly state that it’s not motivated primarily out of ego, but hell- go to www.ralphdontrun.com right now and scroll down to the bottom of the page, where they take credit for the fact that Nader’s 2000 campaign, before their website existed, got 3%, and the ‘04 campaign, in the face of their site, was relegated to 0.3%. Nader may be motivated by ego, but that sure as hell also seems to be a characteristic of his critics. So what the hell? Is ego that bad? We’re talking about running for president here. Find me somebody who isn’t motivated by ego.

But that isn’t the whole story. Because Ralph Nader was profoundly stupid in 2000, and so were we, the people who supported him. He had a very brief window where he was one of the most influential people on the planet Earth- for about three months in the fall of 2000, Nader had the ability to determine if the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet would be Al Gore. He may not have been fully capable of delivering all of his supporters- it would have been hard for me at the time not to have been disappointed if he had dropped from the race- but he’d have offered up enough, with a cessation of his campaign and an endorsement, to guarantee that Gore would have won clearly an election that he won anyway. And with that influence- man, he could have done anything. He could have insisted on a high-level cabinet position; he could have insisted on strong institutional support for a campaign for Joe Lieberman’s Senate seat in Connecticut. We could have had Senator Nader, Secretary of the Interior Nader, attorney general nader- any of these incredibly important things that would have changed the country in ways that were not just anybody but bush but genuinely progressive. And instead, we got George Bush.

So when Nader announces for ‘08, I don’t have a damn thing to say to twenty year old Dan who volunteered for his campaign. Except, goddamnit- this guy is going to blow it.

And now? Hell. Nader’s a joke, and he represents zero threat of playing spoiler. Regardless of whether to brave and incredibly influential folks at ralphdontrun.com show back up to discourage people from voting for him, he’s going to score even less than his 0.3% from 2004. Even if you don’t blame him for Bush- and I don’t, in the end- he’s gone from being potentially a world-changing figure to a very minor footnote, and if you believe that he’s motivated by ego, the irony of that should give you a good chuckle.