You make a good point. Much better than DanBlather who is aptly named. However, the parties do need a shaking up. It is very satisfying to see two candidates who are not pre-chosen by the powers in the party; are apparently going to be running against each other. After two weak candidates in a row, the Democrats look like they have said enough is enough. We don’t want your choice push down our throats, we’ll take a better choice. Obama has energized people. Hillary, unlike Bill is the establishment now. She had a good chance of losing and giving the Republicans 4 more year to really load the Supreme Court beyond hope.
On the Republican side, I see moderate and liberal Republicans voting for McCain to try to wrest control back for the Theo-Cons and Neo-Cons that stole the party. Rudy made a terrible mistake in his campaign, the same one I keep accusing Gore of having made. He did not run as himself, he ran as someone to broadly appeal to his party and failed (a lot worse than Gore). Rudy needed to run as himself, he probably still would have lost, but he would probably have made a better showing.
Well that might be the truest statement anyone ever said. Please believe me when I say it has exceeded my worst nightmares. He has even managed to renew hostilities with Russia, his Pop has to be really fuming over that part. And yet, that flies under the radar with all the other shit he has done.
This man makes Nixon, Carter & Reagan* look wonderful.
I will stand guilty of seriously underestimating how much harm he could do. I am to this day dumbfounded that he got re-elected. This should not have been possible.
Jim
Please note, I actually liked Reagan, but I have seen and heard too many Liberals and Democrats make the point he is far worse than Reagan.
By any stretch of our imaginations, can we say that the Nader candidacy was any help? Was there any conceivable scenario wherein a Nader candidacy assisted in removing this band of rabid jackals from power?
The best that may be said is that Nader was not instrumental in assuring the re-election of the Man Who Fell Up. Well, whoopity fuck de doo!
Well it was a double failure, most people I know that voted for Nader thought we had a chance to get the Green Party a 5% vote. This seemed very important at the time. Now it does seem Quixotic.
I will stress again, the not all Nader voters were Democrats. I [del]am[/del]*was a Republican. Many others were either actual Green Party members or independents that did not feel any reason to vote for Gore.
I would like to see a really scientific poll that really broke down the Nader Voters in 2000. I always hear that most would have voter for Gore, but I have never actually seen any proof of this.
Jim
I am still trying to get use to this independent tag.
Actually, the scary part is it might well be true.
Gore actually had a record as a centrist Democrat from the South, and the nation was coming off of eight years where a similarly positioned Democrat was pretty popular. Gore should have run on his own record and simultaneously put his wife and daughters front and center - strongly implying that the country would get Clinton-era policies from him while not getting any embarrassing personal scandals.
Mind you, I’m not a Clinton supporter in the least - but I can tell you this approach likely would have worked. It would have been, at the least, hard to run against.
Gore chose to run as some weird kind of populist, though, and he never was able to pull this off convincingly.
How do you figure? Nader got 2,883,105 votes in 2000. This is saying that if he’d stayed out of the campaign Gore would have picked up another approximately 1.12 million votes to Bush’s approximately 721,000. I find it inconceivable that the addition of that many more votes to Gore’s total would not have sufficiently shifted the EC results. Now if that data were broken down by state we could possibly get a clearer picture.
I wouldn’t accept that without verifying it. My guess is that the polling numbers are accurate, but anyone claiming to know how many votes Gore would’ve gotten had he taken different positions politically is making some pretty big leaps. Anyway, if you’re really interested, I’m sure a little googling with that guy’s name will turn up some stuff.
I don’t quite see where Nader is denying the charge there? He claims 25% of his votes would have gone to Bush, and 39% would have gone to Gore. That’s a 14% difference between Bush and Gore. 14% of 97,488 is… 13,648 votes? Which is more than 537 votes, isn’t it? Somebody help please? Math is hard.
That is a bizarre comment. Have I turned my back on my roots and you are now a disillusioned fan? Have we talked before? But it’s not worth hijacking the thread to find out so I’ll live with the mystery, if it’s all the same.
The way I saw it, he had 2 points. First, he claims that every 3rd party candidate got more than 537 votes, so any of them could’ve been a “spoiler”. Second, he claims that only a few of his votes would be net Gore (as you calculated). However, he also claims (and this is where I’m suspicious) that his being in the race forced Gore to take more progressive stances and therefore netting Gore more “extra” votes than he would’ve gotten had he, Nader, not been in the race.
So… he’s claiming he actually helped Gore? By “pushing Gore to take more progressive stands,” Nader forced him to attract votes against his will? If it weren’t for Nader’s unsolicited aid, Gore would have lost even more than he ultimately did?
That is an extraordinary campaign philosophy, I have to say. I guess he’s hoping to help out the same way in this election?
Here’s a detailed discussion of the transition, or lack of transition, between the efforts of the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. Clarke has made clear that the Bush administration completely back-burnered all of the efforts that had been going on under Clinton.
Maybe. I think you’d have to look at the stuff by that professor he was talking about to see how believable that story line is. I’m just telling you what I heard on Meet the Press, not saying I agree with him. Frankly, I don’t really care. I’m not into reliving the 2000 election every 4 years and pining about what might have been.
