Will there be a Democrat challenge to Obama

Will Nader run against Obama as a Democrat? Will Nader's decision cause a more prominent Democrat to run? The more bizarre thing is that Obama is the most left wing politician to ever be president, but there are even more left wing Democrats who are upset.

Perennial third-party candidate Ralph Nader predicted on Wednesday that President Obama's tax deal with Republicans will earn him a primary challenge in 2012.

Though he wouldn't rule out another presidential campaign himself, Nader, 76, said he hoped that a new face would take up the progressive cause.

"I'm not foreclosing the possibility ... There are just other things to do," he said. "And it's time for someone else to continue. I've done it so many times. When I go around the country, I'm telling people they need to find somebody."

Nader, a consumer advocate, described the immense procedural difficulty — the "obstructions and litigations" — of appearing on the ballot in every state as a third-party candidate. He ran under the Green Party banner in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 2004 and 2008, and earned less than three percent of the overall vote each time.

He said on Wednesday that Obama's decision to allow tax-cut extensions for the wealthy in the lame-duck deal betrays the progressives who supported his campaign in 2008.

"There will be a primary," Nader said. "Just a question of how prominent a person [will run against Obama]. This deal is the last straw." . . .