If you honestly believe that, then you really should study the issues more closely. Gore and Bush are miles apart on many issues: Court appointments, the environment, reform issues, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Nader wants people to believe that there’s no difference, because it helps his own cause. Don’t buy that propaganda.
What IS Nader’s stance, anyways?
The thing is-Nader ain’t gonna get elected. If you don’t kiss the ass of either big business, the religious right, labor unions, etc etc…you ain’t got a chance.
Color me cynical.
spoke-, you might want to take a look at this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=38131
I’m voting for Browne, but just to keep that Nader bastard out of the White House. What’s that? Oohhh…they’re the third-party candidates.
Here’s the response I posted to Chickenhead (is that name right?) when s/he asked the same “is a vote for Nader a vote for Bush?” question back on the “Voting” thread:
While we have an undemocratic poll-driven, winner-take-all electoral system (and btw, perhaps the most effective blow we can strike for better representation for all political viewpoints is to institute electoral practice reforms such as instant runoff voting and proportional representation), we should feel no shame about manipulating the system to the tiny extent we can, in order to make the best of our appallingly limited choices. Color me not cynical!
Fortunately (in what sense of the word?) Virginia doesn’t count individual votes, per se; one candidate takes the whole state or none of it. Since this is the SAME state that was a laughingstock a few years ago when Ollie North was a candidate for Senate (and the weird eerie little ratfucker almost WON), there is not a doubt in my mind that the old money and tobacco farmers will be gleefully catapulting this state’s electoral votes DIRECTLY to Bush. I’m voting for Nader anyhow. No vote from me…or anyone else…is going to swing this state’s electoral votes to Gore, not even if the Good Fairy came down and gave him her personal endorsement.
If Bush wins…I’m not going to kill myself and I’m not going to kill anyone else, and I’m not going to move to another country. If Bush starts doing all of the nasty things that have been remarked on as possibilities…I might start seeing how much of a market there is for network administrators in Toronto or Vancouver.
No. If the green party were not fielding a candidate, I would be voting for McReynolds and Hollis (american socialist party).
To all those people that say - a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, my answer is always the same:[list=A]
[li]Don’t assume that people that vote for Nader would automatically support Al Gore (as this thread has shown), and[/li][li]To me that sounds suspiciously close to the argument “what does your one vote matter anyway? Is your single opinion going to make a difference amongst the millions of voters? How many times has a presidential contender in the USA won or lost the election by one vote? So why bother voting at all?”[/li][/list]What if the opinion polls showed a commanding lead by one of the candidates, let’s assume George Bush for the sake of argument. Would then all the democratic voters be justified in staying home because their candidate has no chance anyway?
Hijack
Posted by Satan
I was going to move to Asheville, NC, mainly because that’s where my families from and I love the place but in part to vote against that jackass. Then I realized it’s the eastern portion of the state that keeps electing the bastard :mad: Still, I plan to move there anyway, it’s a gorgeous place.
Byejack
Ok, here is my take on the differences between the two candidates.
One wants to tell me I can’t have an abortion or sex education and probably want’s me to pray in school (note: these are not al of dubyas issues but just the ones I really have a problem with).
The other one wants to take all my money away and give it to lazy fuckwads and foreign welfare and has not concept of a progressive economy (any of you people who thing that our curren’t prosperity isn’t going to have a major backlash has been hoodwinked. Does the term “leveraged economy” mean anything?). I also get an ooky “puppet master” vibe from Algore that just creeps me the hell out (ok, maybe not the most rational basis for vote casting, but if you have ever had that kind of vibe you will know that it is a valid judgement tool.). Again these are not al of his issues, just the ones i have problems with.
Then you have Nader: Here is a guy who has managed to lead a successful private life with no major scandal or any prison terms while having spent nearly 12 years with the big three auto manufacturers (possibly more time than that) gunning for his ass with every resource available to them. He managed to make your car safer for you without ever being an elected official and has a “no bullshit” agenda that I agree with. He is funding a campaign with no special interest backing that I can think of and is not in the red in doing so. So he knows how to balance a checkbook, or at least who to hire which makes him a damn sight better than any major candidate in the past 16 years or more. He is also in favor of minding his own business and streamlining the judicial system. He is interested in reform of our current criminal and civil courts system and has had some harsh words for the ATF.
Gore will let me have an abortion but by the time he gets done taxing me I won’t be able to afford one. He also wants to eliminate pollution but lacks the balls to face the auto companies and have a show down. Oh and it’s big tobacco’s fault you have cancer not your own stupid ass for smoking when you knew it was dangerous. Yeah, he won’t make you pray in school but he has no plan to deal with the our of control immigration problem in this country. And if you don’t think that is a problem then read your Roman history. Assimilation at too rapid a rate tore them apart, think it isn’t happening here?
Bush dosen’t think your body is your own, but then again he will let you shoot a rapist and leave you enough money to buy condoms even if he won’t let you learn how to use them. He is still a cock about prayer in school, but to be friggin honest, who the hell cares? Seems like a shitload of protest over something that is really nothing. Don’t effin’ pray if you don’t want to. I never did my pledge of alleigence after i learned it was nerdy, you think kids are going to pray if they don’t want to? You get my gas down to a dollar a gallon and you can effing do all the praying you want. He has a plan to slow illigal immigration. Unfortunately he dosen’t know it, he just likes to shoot Mexicans.
I could go on all day about each candidates policies and someone is still going to thing that the only reason I like Nader is that I just don’t know anything about one of the other candidates. And I guess i feel the same way about them too.
Point being is that EVERYONE who thinks they are right, thinks everyone else is wrong because they are either stupid or misinformed. Not the case. I just don’t value the same things as an informed Gore or Bush supporter, or at least not in the same way. I also think the prez has a more economic influence than a social one and I view Nader as a sound economic candidate.
zen101
D.F.A.
My two cents:
I voted for Clinton twice because I believed in him as a candidate. I liked what he had to say, despite the fact that I am really a raging pinko-libertarian, and seriously considered voting for the socialist party candidate.
In this election, I started out with a similar attitude. I figured that Gore probably represented my views a lot better than Bush–and it’s true, he does. I liked Nader a lot more, but I reasoned that in a two-party system, you can’t vote for someone, you have to vote against. But as I learned more about Gore, I realized that we have very little common ground. The more I learned about Nader, the more I realized I agree with him on every issue with the exception of world trade. Why shouldn’t I vote for the candidate that best represents my views? If I vote for Gore, I’m losing my voice! I’m saying to the world that I approve of Gore and his policies, when really, by and large, I don’t.
A colleague of mine (who’s even more pinko than me) was asked by a foreigner, “But if you vote for your candidate and he just gets a few percent, will anybody even care?” He responded, “They’ll care just a little bit more than if I don’t.” A hopelessly idealistic statement, but one that resonated with me none the less.
However, according to the polls, Gore will probably take my state without breaking a sweat. I admit that this soothes my conscience somewhat.
zen101 wrote:
You are misrepresenting what I said.
What I said was that if you think Gore and Bush are the same then you are misinformed. Now you may not agree with either of them (and clearly you do not), but that doesn’t mean there’s no difference between the two. To say they are the same is simply wrong.
As far as being in favor of Nader is concerned, I don’t think that makes you misinformed. Naive, perhaps, but not necessarily misinformed.
zen101 also wrote:
Hmmm… Maybe you are misinformed…
A President can have a profound social impact in several ways:[list][li]Supreme Court appointments. Conservative judges = fewer individual rights. People don’t realize fully the impact that Supreme Court decisions have on their daily lives.[/li][li]Lower court appointments. The Presidant also appoints federal judges across the U.S., who in turn make decisions affecting people’s lives and their rights every day.[/li][li]Political appointments. You think it doesn’t make a difference who is running the Department of the Interior. Next you’ll try to tell me there’s no difference between James Watt and Bruce Babbit.[/li][li]Federal Regulations. Promulgated by federal agencies headed by the President’s appointees. This is a battleground on environmental matters. Under prior Republican Presidents, environmental regulations have been weakened and then enforced laxly, if at all. Clinton/Gore have reversed that trend. Also, think of FDA policies, Department of Education decisions, etc. etc.[/li][li]Veto power. Under Bush, every half-assed bit of legislation that comes through the Republican Congress will get signed into law. I should mention here the power of the President wielded in battles over the budget as well. You would be amazed at how much social policy gets tucked away under the guise of budgetary priorities.[/li][/quote]
The President of the U.S. isn’t just a smiling face for the cameras. The office wields enormous influence over the country’s social policies.
I live in one of the five states in which the election is actually important, so the Ivins rule does not apply to me. Basically, I am forced to vote for one of the major candidates, because in Ohio, every vote might just count.
Not that this bothered me. I hate Bush enough that I will not vote for anyone but Al Gore. Had McCain been running, he would have gotten my vote. But of course, the fucking dumbed-down American population needed someone they could relate to, and George Dubya came on the scene.
Frankly, I wouldn’t vote for Nader because I think he’s a power-hungry egomaniacal lunatic, and I wouldn’t vote for Harry Browne because he’s an idealistic hard-liner when the only way that libertarianism would work is if it were moderate. Gore is prone to exaggeration to prove a point, and Bush seems completely unequipped to run the country, not to mention the fact that I disagree with him on every single issue that is important to me.
I see Gore as the lesser of four+ evils. It’s a sad state when I have to vote for the guy I dislike the least, but that’s pretty much where I am. And I have a right to bitch, because I voted for McCain in the primaries. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that the majority of the voters who went for Bush in the primaries did so because of name recognition and nothing else–I can’t imagine anyone actually WANTING him to be president. Hell, most of the Republicans I know loathe the man as much as I do, but they have even less of a choice in the matter than the liberals do.
Election day is going to be a sad day in our country, no matter what the result.
I loved this. Great sentiments from zen101
I could also throw out the quote from presidental canidate Debs. A man who actuall got a substatial ammount of the vote while sitting in jail.
“I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want and get it.”
I mean fuck. Look at Gore’s record. The man is only an environmentalist because it paints him as a populist. He has absolutely no convictions, all he wants is power. He reminds me of Martin Sheen’s character in the Dead Zone. Creepy, and amoral.
When confronted with the fact that Bradley had a better environmental record than him, he responded, “Well, Senator Bradley wasn’t a senator from TN.” This is a guy you want being president? Someone who would pass off on what’s supposed to be his most dearly held beliefs because he want’s to be reelected in TN?
Clinton and gore have been scarecly better on the environment than Bush Sr. They passed Nafta, they talk of privatising SS, Gore wants to ban partial-birth abortions (so much for the right to choose), the man physically disgusts me. The only reason why Dan Savage was able to put forth a good argument to vote for Gore, is frankly, all the letters he printed were written by morons.
A vote for Gore is a vote for an empty suit who would gladly devour your brain if he thought it would give him 2 points in the polls.
A vote for Bush is a vote for someone who right now thinks it’s unbelievably funny to put people to death. Ick.
If Nader weren’t running, I’d vote for Browne.
I disagree with both Bush and Gore strongly on various issues - some of which they disagree with each other about, some of which they don’t. I’ll admit that they aren’t the same candidate, but I have no reason to like Gore any better than Bush or vice versa.
On the other hand, I agree with both Nader and Browne about equally.
What would I do if I were forced at gunpoint to choose between Bush or Gore? I’d probably choose Gore, but only because I like the word “Democrat” better than the word “Republican”, and I know that censoring the Internet isn’t technically possible.
As far as I’m concerned, I simply cannot vote for any candidate who supports escalating the drug war by using the military in Colombia. That is a bad idea of the highest magnitude, and I refuse to be a party to it. As for the Green Party, I looked at their platform, and some of it scared me:
Somehow, I don’t trust Ralph Nader (or anyone else for that matter) to have that degree of control over my economic affairs. I also have heard Ralph Nader speak, and he doesn’t seem capable of grasping the concept that corporations are not inherently evil and the root cause of all problems. It was a rally against the requirement of passing a 12 hour standardized test in order to graduate high school in Massachusetts. Somehow, Ralph decided that corporations were behind a law passed by the government that affected public schools only (I believe), and that more government regulation was the answer. Sounded to me as if he was saying “our government just passed a ridiculous law, and they’ll do worse unless we give them the power to make more laws.”
So (ignoring the Socialists, because I hate socialism with every fiber of my being), I will keep my conscience clean, and not be associated with any of the above, and instead vote for Browne.
Every fiber? Every fiber?
Hey water, have you heard of Tom Campbell? He’s a republican out here who actually proposes a sensible drug policy. In fact, I’ve noticed a lot of republicans have started doing that, something the democrats won’t touch. I think I might even vote for him, simply on that one policy.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by zen101 *
**
Oh…okay. Sure…there won’t be intimidation! That’s not a violation of Church and State. The hell?
I do NOT want to have to pray in my school. I do NOT want religion forced on me. It’s one of the reasons I’m so fed up with the Catholic church. NOT the religion. The church.
Yeah, fuck it’s not.
I noticed Nader supports African-American Reparations…does
that mean the slave reparations?
He also wants to ABOLISH the CIA…like THAT’S gonna happen!
Sorry, a lot of the Green Party platform looks like pipe dreams to me.
Nader, Bush, Gore who are these people? I dont know any of them so i will vote for someone I actually know. (myself)
The only way you throw your vote away is if you cant claim credit for it after, such as dont blame me i voted for the other guy. Inherently your vote has no value so the only value it has is for the people who take it seriously.
After wading through too many Nader/Gore arguments to count, I did not even read this thread through, so this may not be relevant to the current line of the thread. But in answer to the OP, No I am not a Nader Supporter who would vote for Gore if he was not a candidate. For those of you who didn’t know, Nader was the Green Party Candidate in a few states in '96 (the only ones I’m pretty certain on are Wisconsin and California- they may be the only ones). I worked with a group in Wisconsin to get him on the ballot, but found myself in Massachusetts come election time. I wrote in Nader (I voted for Clinton in '92, I just couldn’t stand the bastard by that time).
I was overheard telling my drinking buddies very loudly on numerous occasions that there was no way I would even vote in this year’s election if we ended up with Gore and Bush. What Nader is doing in my situation is getting someone who was planning on boycotting the election to the polls. So my vote for Nader is not a vote for Bush, it is a vote for Nader.
Guinastasia, that quote in your thread is incorrectly attributed to me. It’s not mine.
Or rather, that quote in your post is incorrectly attributed to me.