The Times is reporting that Nader will announce on Sunday whether or not he'll be running for President in November, and that all signs point to the former: After weeks of postponing his decision, Nader will appear on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' to make the announcement, said Linda Schade, a spokeswoman for Nader's presidential exploratory committee. `He's going to be discussing his role in the presidential election,'' Schade said of the man whose run for president in 2000 is blamed by many Democrats for tilting a close election in favor of George W. Bush. `He's felt there is a role for an independent candidate to play.' This would be, as I argued before, an unfortunate setback for progressive change in this country. Also problematic is this quote from DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe: I'm urging everybody to talk to Ralph Nader. I'd love him to take a role with our party, to energize people, to get out there and get the message out. Now I'm all for Ralph Nader energizing people - but that means energizing people to fight the rightward shift of the Democratic party as well as of the country. And whatever McAuliffe thinks "the message" is, if it bears any resemblance to the message he had the party push in the 2002 elections, then it bears little resemblance to the message Nader is pushing, or to the real concerns of millions of working people who choose not to vote or who vote for the Democrats as the lesser of two evils. So once again, Nader's wrong to obscure that Democrats are not yet Republicans, and McAuliffe's wrong to obscure that Democrats are not yet Greens. Both should perhaps take heed of this quote: What's needed is courageous leaders unwilling either to sacrifice the imperative of unseating Bush or to obscure the failure of the modern Democratic party to articulate or pursue a truly progressive vision for America.