After a year of concentrated effort that includes a multimillion-dollar p.r. campaign on top of An Inconvenient Truth and slavish media coverage parroting the climate-alarmist line, recent polls show that public opinion on global warming has barely budged. Only about a third of Americans, according to a recent Gallup survey, are agitated about climate change, and even people who say the environment is their most important issue rank climate change behind air and water quality in importance.

Meanwhile a backlash in the scientific community has begun. New York Times veteran science reporter William Broad filed a devastating article about scientists who are “alarmed” at Gore’s alarmism; Gore’s account of global warming goes far beyond the evidence. The dissents from Gore’s extremism, Broad explained, “come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists” who have “no political ax to grind.” It appears Gore refused to be interviewed directly for the article; he responded to e-mail questions only.

What to do? What to do? The party bosses are slumped in their seats, staring blankly into space, or doing job searches on their Blackberries. All is gloom and despondency.

Then … A fanfare of trumpets! A shaft of light! Into the hall rides a man on a white stallion! Stirred from their lethargy, the delegates begin rising from their seats. They start cheering and applauding. The rider reaches the podium, dismounts, and strides to the dais. The applause is deafening now. Cheers ring round the hall! Women are weeping; men are hugging each other.

Broad-shouldered and confident, his sternocleidomastoid muscle flexing and rippling, the Rescuer sweeps his powerful gaze around the hall. A hush falls. He begins to speak. As he speaks, the same though settles on every listener simultaneously: This is the one. He has always been the one. What fools we have been!

Don’t think it couldn’t happen. Don’t, in fact, think it isn’t going to happen. The Democratic party has two lame candidates, without a dime’s worth of executive experience between them.

The automobile fatality rate per miles driven was less than one-third as high when "Unsafe at Any Speed" was published as it was back in the 1920s. But facts never carry as much weight as a dramatic vision of "corporate greed" sacrificing helpless consumers until they are rescued by "consumer advocates" and federal regulations. For the left, Nader was playing their song and they danced to it.

In one of his earliest writings, Nader said, "the consumer must be protected at times from his own indiscretion and vanity." In other words, he wanted the Ralph Naders of the world to be able to dictate to consumers and producers alike. It's all about him. So is running for president.