Let's hope Laurence Tribe has a finely honed sense of irony. It was nearly four years ago that Tribe, a Harvard University constitutional scholar, saluted the Florida Supreme Court for ordering a manual recount of our state's now-notorious presidential votes. The court had declared it was duty-bound to "safeguard the right of every voter to express his or her will," and in Tribe's eyes, that was a conclusion so "carefully reasoned" he went on to defend it before the U. S. Supreme Court, touting the wisdom of that legal decision as Al Gore's attorney in Gore v. Bush.

This past September 17, there was Tribe -- again addressing the Florida Supreme Court, again working on behalf of the Democratic Party. Yet now Tribe had a curious message: Yes, all voters still had the constitutionally protected right to express their wills -- unless they were audacious enough to want to vote for Ralph Nader.

Nader's Reform Party candidacy was a "sham," Tribe argued, and keeping the long-time civic crusader on this November's Florida presidential ballot would be not only "chaotic," but "worse than the butterfly ballot, you'll need a centipede ballot." Tribe added, maintaining a completely straight face, that allowing Nader's name to stand could eventually lead to "a Manhattan telephone-book ballot."

The Florida Su-preme Court was un-moved, and in a 6-1 decision, the same judges Tribe once praised sent him packing back to Cambridge. Tribe remained unrepentant: "For many years Ralph Nader was a hero of mine, but this offends me deeply," he told reporters afterward. "He toyed with the laws of Florida."

In fact the only one toying with Florida's laws was Tribe -- and behind him, the Democratic Party leaders so desperate to avoid a repeat of Bush's 537-vote victory they were willing to do precisely what they'd earlier accused Republicans of doing: Rig the ballot to ensure their man won.

"Laurence Tribe is not immune to the role of switch hitter," Ralph Nader explained to Kulchur while in Miami this past weekend, sounding less bitter than resigned to the situation. "I think he was trying to ingratiate himself with the Kerry campaign, possibly for a supreme court appointment if Kerry wins. If you scratch deep enough with these fellows, you hit their autocratic partisan core, which reveals the lack of depth of their principles of freedom."

Autocratic or not, there was plenty of fuming from Democratic Party officials. "This case will serve to further illuminate the fact that Ralph Nader is a tool for the Republican Party," declared Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox, pointing fingers of blame at Gov. Jeb Bush and the presence of GOP-aligned lawyers on Nader's side.

We also heard plenty of attacks on the Reform Party itself: It was a disorganized shambles, its national bank account held a meager $18.18, its dwindling membership was hopelessly riven by ideological disputes, having whipsawed between Ross Perot's 1996 candidacy (which drew more than eight million votes), the 2000 takeover of the party by arch-conservative Pat Buchanan (its national vote total plummeted to 448,895), and now the ascendancy of leftist Ralph Nader. Tellingly, it was the Reform Party's own treasurer who alerted the Federal Election Commission to that near-empty bank account, hoping to sabotage Nader's presidential bid.

All of this is true. With Perot having returned to doing what he does best, making money (his Perot Systems consulting firm looks set to top its 2003 revenues of $1.3 billion), the Reform Party undeniably wields a mere fraction of its former influence. To which the only proper response is: So what?

As Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Pariente explained in her court's decision to maintain Nader's ballot slot: "We've got a declining, almost dead party. And they see themselves revitalizing with Nader -- why is that not legitimate?"

Indeed why is the Reform Party no less legitimate than any of the other "third parties" that remain on Florida's presidential ballot? The Socialist Party has, according to its state chairman Steve Sears, a grand total of seven members in all of Florida. That's a notable increase over its 2003 membership, when only six stalwart comrades rallied to its call. Yet we heard not a peep from Laurence Tribe or Scott Maddox about the Socialists and their "sham" candidacy, how "chaotic" their inclusion on the ballot would be, or how Socialist presidential hopeful Walt Brown was little more than a Republican "tool."

Ditto for the Socialist Workers Party, whose 2004 presidential contender, Róger Calero, admitted to Kulchur that his group had only "a few hundred" members in the entire country. Moreover, lacking citizenship, Calero couldn't serve even if elected. Yet Calero's presence on the Florida ballot doesn't seem to bother the Democrats; neither does the Constitution Party, the Nader-less Green Party, or the Libertarian Party, all of whose candidates' names will appear right alongside Bush and Kerry throughout the state, and all of whose parties tallied more than those crucial 537 votes in 2000.