Nader and the Greens

Here’s an odd passage from Boehlert’s Salon piece on Nader’s candidacy:
Even some of Nader’s closest progressive allies have their doubts. “I love and appreciate him, but I definitely want to get Bush out of office, so I won’t vote for him, which would be a first for me,” says Medea Benjamin, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate from California in 2000. She says it’s good that Nader is not running as a Green Party candidate, because it will allow someone else within the organization to gain national attention as a presidential candidate.
So let me get this straight… Ms. Benjamin disapproves of Ralph’s candidacy because it may hurt the chances of getting Bush out of office, but she is happy that the Greens will run another person as a national candidate in 2004? So there will be two leftist candidates on the national stage drawing votes from the Democrats?
This wasn’t all direct quotes, so there’s the possibility of misinterpretation here of course, but geez, if that’s not the case, and this is the left’s brain trust vision of election 2004, we kinda might as well not bother having one…