McKinney Joins The (Third) Party As Barr, Nader Fight On

As we noted over the weekend, the Green Party named former Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney as its candidate in the 2008 presidential race on Saturday. McKinney is the third relatively high-profile, long-shot candidate to formally enter the race, along with Ralph Nader, who is running as an independent, and Bob Barr, who is on the Libertarian ticket.

The Green Party had little impact on the 2004 election, with nominee David Cobb garnering 119,859 votes – just 0.1 percent overall. In 2000, however, Nader took 2.8 million votes as the Green Party candidate, and his presence on the ticket is believed to have helped President Bush take the White House.

If history is any indication, McKinney could bring fireworks to the campaign: Political junkies will recall her scuffle with a Capitol Police Officer, her suggestion that Mr. Bush might have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and her quixotic efforts to impeach the president.

McKinney favors pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, creating a Department of Peace, and reparations for slavery, among other measures. Her running mate is Rosa Clemente, who is described as a "hip-hop artist, journalist and activist."

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, McKinney seems to be targeting far-left voters disenchanted with Barack Obama.

"Don't expect me to keep a count of the major flip flops of the other candidates between now and November, I'm sure there will be plenty," she told Green Party delegates, many of whom, the AJC reports, "inveighed against the 'crimes' of the Bush administration and the distortions of the news by 'corporate media.'"

Nader, meanwhile, is busy trying to get on ballots: His supporters today announced they have enough signatures to get on the South Carolina ballot, as well as the Rhode Island ballot. Efforts are also underway in states like New Hampshire.

As for Barr, who has been polling at more than 5 percent in some early polls, he is expected to make a push to be included in the presidential debates, much as Ralph Nader was in 1992, Campaigns And Elections reports. Barr's campaign manager calls the present system for inclusion – among them a requirement to show at least 15 percent support nationally in 5 different polls – "absolutely, unequivocally unfair," adding that " the debate commission is a complete fraud."

Barr, who will be on the ballot the vast majority of states, suggested the debates, in their present form, are "a forum for the two major parties to preen before the voters and support the status quo and to take the nuanced differences between the parties and pretend that they are actually substantive differences."