I think the bottom line is this: If you voted for someone other than the man that you think was the better candidate to be President of the United States, you are an idiot.
If you’re buying a car, you buy one that you think is the best car for you.
If you’re grocery shopping, you buy the food that you think is the best food for you.
If you’re having sex, you have sex with the person (or animal) that you think is the best sex partner for you.
It is not that difficult. I would have imagined that the “I’ve got to cancel out HIS vote because I disagree with him!” mentality was left behind on the schoolyard.
In other words, “What a bunch of petty little pussies.”
Hey, to all you guys complaining that Nader cost Gore the election? No, Gore cost himself the election.
I decided to vote for Bush because WA was a battleground state and it was concievable that WA could have gone the way of FL. Bush is fucking pathetic, I only voted for him cause he’s republican and I wanted to give Bill Clinton one last kick in the nuts. Look, face facts. If you can’t beat GW Bush, then what fucking good are you? I mean, a trained monkey could have mopped the floor with Bush.
The fact that the race was close enough for Nader voters to make a difference is all Al Gore’s fault. With a competent candidate Nader wouldn’t have made a difference.
hmmm. I think we need a study on this. Bobo the chimp vs Bush. I’m guessing Bobo by 62%.
See, everyone knows that a vote for Gore was a vote for Bush. We all knew that Bush was going to win. A vote for Gore was a wasted vote. If only 10% of Gore voters had gone and voted for Nader however, then they could have made an actual effect in the election. They could have won federal matching funds for a third party. As it was, they simply wasted their votes on an unlikeable squeenk.
Or, at least, the best one you could find after the bartender declared last call.
Pep- I agree with Falcon. Thanks for the public apology. And as far as dreams of George Bush coming to kill you- girl, stop eating those damned anchovy pizzas before bed.
Fuck this. There are those of us who don’t want the Democrats and don’t want the Republicans either. We aren’t going to settle for either of them. Period. If that means that the side I’m closer to takes a hit, so be it. I don’t want either of them in power.
You do not tell me when it’s appropriate for me to act on my conscience. This was the time for voting one’s conscience. Every election is. Every choice we make in life should be made that way. Compromise when you accept the compromise solution. In this election, Nader supporters are those who did not consider a Bush victory something worth sacrificing their principles to prevent. For you to demand that they act in accordance with your values is inexcusably arrogant.
How many times must we say this?
If the Democrats had had a decent candidate, he would’ve won.
May I remind you that AL Gore was on eof the 98 voters on the 98-0 confirmation of Justice Scalia?
Al Gore cost himself the election.
SHould we have voted for Gore for “the good of the party”?
The good of the democratic party? No.
The democratic party has recieved its wake up call.
Maybe if Gore was an actual Democrat rather than a pro-choice Republican Nader wouldn’t have swung such a big dick in this election.
Gore is just as much big businesse's bitch as that Texan, hell he couldn't even swing his own state for Christ's sake.
And on his environmentalist image- he can write all the books he wants to but when he sells out the people in West Virginia to Big Coal and accepts Big $$ then how can you expect and REAL liberal to vote for him?
Nader was and always will be a Dark Horse candidate, but voting for him hopefully sends a message to the DNC that a vote for Bush wouldn not have. We can survive 4 years of Jeb and if the DNC puts up a real candidate then it will only be 4 years.
According to CNN’s online articles, voter turnout this year was around 52%, down from 55% in 1992. In other words, people saw more of a difference between Clinton and Bush, Sr. than they did between Gore and Bush, Jr. More people stayed home and didn’t vote because they didn’t like either mainstream candidate.
Given the absolute numbers of votes for the top four candidates (Bush, Gore, Nader, and Buchanan), total turnout was somewhere around 101.2 million voters. A quick calculation shows that this means some 83 million people stayed home. 83 million voters! If Gore had actually presented a real choice, I think it’s likely plenty of those 83 million would have turned out to vote for him.
Gore’s loss is Gore’s fault. He had 83 million potential votes he just threw away by being, as he’s been described here, a pro-choice Republican. The old saw about “appealing to the center to get votes” doesn’t fly either, given these kind of numbers. A successful political strategy doesn’t yield a 52% voter turnout.
I forgot to mention one item - let’s try to remember what happened to the last guy who got in on the electoral vote but lost the popular vote. He didn’t ruin the country and he was so laughable he was out in four years. A political cartoon of the day had his statue in a Hall of Presidents - a small runty figure peeking pitiably out from an oversize hat next to the tall imposing figures of his predecessors.
His name? Benjamin Harrison. His party? Republican.
Net effect on U.S. history? Zilch.
I’ll toss in that the big hat Harrison was poking out under was that of his grandfather, President William Henry Harrison. Although I thought he managed to gain some respectability after being in office for a little while.
All these people that say “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” must have flunked math. A vote for Nader is only 1/2 of a vote for Bush. Here’s why:
The people that say “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” means you take away one of Al Gore’s votes. They are counting the potential vote for Al as real.
If I wanted to vote for Gore, but instead actually voted for Bush, I take away a potential Gore vote, and add an actual Bush vote. That’s a difference of two, if you count the potential as a real vote.
However, if I vote for Nader, I only take away a potential Gore vote, without adding anything to Bush’s total. That’s only a difference of one. Therefore, it’s only half as bad as if I voted for Bush.
That said, I agree completely with OldScratch. Furthermore, I think it’s essential to democracy to have extreme candidates. Without any 3rd party candidates, both candidates would logically have to assume positions almost exactly in the middle, which is the same behavior found in the old “ice cream vendors on the beach” problem. Like the vendors problem, the equilibrium at present is not the most convienent to the majority of voters.
