Oh, no, Nader again?

JUST when you thought the worst of the holidays -- and the caucus madness -- was over, who should arrive but the ghost of elections past.

Ralph Nader, looking more spectral all the time, decided to break months of (relative) silence to voice his opinions on the Democratic field of presidential candidates.

In case you care: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a corporate goon and former Sen. John Edwards is the man on the white horse, according to Nader (who still is threatening to join the race.)

The news from Nader was about as welcome as a trail of fire ants at an Iowa corn roast.

“Can’t we get one of Dennis Kucinich’s UFOs to beam him up?” Democratic strategist Rick Taylor asked.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, Nader has left the building. He’s a has-been for one simple reason, perhaps the harshest of all: The recently released documentary on his life was a box-office bomb.

The movie “An Unreasonable Man” made its Sundance debut at the same time as the documentary about Al Gore’s global warming crusade, “An Inconvenient Truth.” That documentary won an Oscar and resulted in Gore winning a Nobel Peace Prize and a slap on the back from Hollywood’s docu-god Michael Moore.

Nader? Well, let’s just say by the end of the last year, his people would come to your house and screen the DVD for free -- if you would let them in. They’d even bring the popcorn (free of trans fats, of course).

How bad was it?

First there was the problem of obtaining a major distributor for the film. Without a large studio onboard, “An Unreasonable Man” staggered out of Sundance into the “art” theaters with the lumpy velvet seats. (There also was an issue of getting Nader to attend the L.A. premiere -- must have been scheduling conflicts, or maybe he was just being unreasonable.)

After four months in U.S. theaters last May, Nader’s film had grossed only $175,237, according to the Internet Movie Database. (“An Inconvenient Truth,” by contrast, went on to bring in $41.6 million worldwide.)

All this suggests that there is hardly a large constituency waiting for Nader to put his imprimatur on a candidate. So when Nader weighed in this week on the Iowa caucuses, there was a predictably fierce reaction on the blogs.

Wonkette’s wry Jim Newell had this to say: “Nader supports Edwards. This should help his chances, considering how much Democrats like Ralph Nader after he stole votes from George W. Bush in 2000 to give Al Gore the presidency. No?”

In case he wasn’t making his point clearly enough, Newell added: “I hate Ralph Nader.”

Moore, by the way, issued a holiday political missive this week.

“I am not endorsing anyone at this point,” Moore wrote in an e-mail dispatch to fans and others who are in his address book. “For months I’ve been wanting to ask the question, ‘Where are you, Al Gore?’ You can only polish that Oscar for so long.” (He added: “I don’t blame you for not wanting to enter the viper pit again after you already won.”)

Meanwhile, in case anybody thought that only Democrats had been slightly unhinged by too many months in the Hawkeye State, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign finished on a bizarre note with a TV ad attacking actor Chuck Norris as a hypocrite for supporting Mike Huckabee, who as governor of Arkansas pardoned the sort of bad guys Chuck used to kick across the TV screen. (His ad for Huckabee, by the way, has gone viral on YouTube. With more than 1.2 million viewings, it’s one of the site’s most popular political spots.)

Huckabee’s camp warned Romney that he may have made the martial arts star mad. “Remember, governor, Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep. He waits,” noted Andrew Romano on his newsweek.com politics site.

Maybe the thing political junkies should hope for are victories by Edwards and Huckabee in New Hampshire. Just imagine Nader and Norris mano a mano in a street fight.

Now that’s pay per view.

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tina.daunt@latimes.com