Ralph Nader is 74 today. But the birthday gift may be for Republicans.

He's running for president again.

Many Democrats fault Nader for throwing the election to George W. Bush in 2000, and with some degree of justification: While Bush's margin of victory was in the hundreds in Florida, Nader took more than 90,000 votes there in 2000 -- the majority of which, you'd have to imagine, would have gone to Al Gore.

But Republicans shouldn't get too excited, nor Democrats too exercised, about Nader's candidacy this time around.

For one thing, after winning almost 3 percent of the national vote in 2000, Nader only attracted 0.3 percent in 2004.

That's a pretty low approval rating, even for a perennial presidential candidate.

Moreover, it's likely that the left wing of the Democratic Party, which might have been more receptive to Nader's insurgency in the past, will be quite content with the Democratic nominee this time around -- especially if it's Barack Hussein Obama, who some regard as the most liberal U.S. senator.

Nader increasingly is becoming worse than irrelevant: He's becoming a caricature of himself. And that's never good in politics.

The bigger wild card is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a more viable potential independent candidate.

In our view, Bloomberg is quite liberal. In fact, he once told donors to stay away from Augusta-area congressman Charlie Norwood because of Norwood's views on stopping illegal immigration.

Yet, it's difficult to say which party Bloomberg would draw from and hurt more, especially with Sen. John McCain the likely Republican nominee. As centrist as McCain is, it's probable that a Bloomberg candidacy would draw supporters from him as well as the Democratic nominee.

"Now is the time for Michael Bloomberg to pick up the ball and get in the game to even the playing field," wrote one Democratic-leaning columnist. "If Nader can steal a few Democratic point(s) from either Obama or Clinton, we need Bloomberg to be an Independent to begin creaming John McCain. That evens things up again.

"All isn't fair in politics, and it's time the Republicans got a large dose of some vote-bleeding medicine."

All of that assumes Ralph Nader is "vote-bleeding medicine" himself, and not just a placebo.