Ralph Nader-GO AWAY!!!

The BBQ Pit
41

[QUOTE=groo]
Candidates like Kucinich and Nader are useful and a valid part of the process. It’s still early, and they support positions that need to be heard. As we get closer to the election, I agree that those without a hope of winning should bow out and advise their supporters to support one of the front-runners. The front-runners, meanwhile, will have figured out that if they want to get those extra voters, that they have another consitituency to pander to.

Nader didn’t pull votes away from the Democrats. The Democrats failed to pull those votes in on their own.
[/QUOTE]

Did Nader really “pull” any votes (no matter how you define it) from the Dems? He didn’t get any electorial college votes, AFAIK, so the question is: In any states that the Dems lost, were the votes for Nader enough to have shifted the outcome in that state to the Dems? I know that in '04, if everyone who voted for the various third party candidates (Nader, Libertarian, Pat Buchanon, Nutjob Party, etc.) had voted for Kerry, he still would have lost TN. I have a feeling that it’s the same in most of the other states as well.

IMHO, voting for either the Republican or Democratic candidate in the general election is “throwing your vote away.” Your one vote isn’t going to be enough to shift the electorial college one way or another, and the major party candidates only care about the “big picture” as it were. A third party, however, will care about each individual vote they get, because the more votes they get (even if they don’t get an electorial college vote) will be more ammunition in their case that a third party can be viable in the US. (And yes, I realize that if everyone followed this logic, we’d wind up with a third party candidate in the White House, given that the immediate response to this by the two main parties would be to get their shit straight, I see this as only a positive. Besides, it’s not like a third party President would be able to do much of anything, anyway.)

42

I do know Nader’s history and I had no respect for him long before 2000. Most people forget that 2000 was not Nader’s first presidential run. He first ran in 1992 seeking the - gasp! - Democratic nomination. He obviously didn’t get it. But he’s run again in every presidential election since then. But his goal now is simpler - he just runs against the Democratic party that spurned him. He’ll claim that he has an independant agenda but if you listen to his actual speeches he’ll talk about how people shouldn’t vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is. Basically, Ralph Nader has spent the last sixteen years pouting in the corner.

But it wasn’t his political career that cost Nader my personal respect. He had lost that before he ever ran for office. While he likes to pretend he was a man of the people back in his consumer advocacy days, his really was just another special interest lobbyist. His organization was funded by tort lawyers and he consistently pushed for the kind of big lawsuit settlements that made these lawyers millions of dollars. Any time anyone else suggested some other kind of pro-consumer activism that didn’t involve court settlements, Nader would lead the denunciation. Nader basically hijacked the consumer protection movement and turned it into a money making operation for his clients.

And Nader could play rough. Read Andrew Tobias’ account of fighting Nader over insurance reform. Tobias was pushing for an insurance bill that would have helped consumers but wouldn’t have benefitted tort lawyers. Nader was adamently against the reform. What was Nader’s plan to fight the bill? He held a press conference to reveal that Tobias was a homosexual. Back then, this was enough to discredit Tobias and the reform bill he was adovcating.

43

[QUOTE=Eonwe]
And, finally, anyone who thinks Nader is a douche is frankly a bit fucking ignorant about Nader’s career and legacy in this country.
[/QUOTE]

OK, Nader is a douche (formerly not a douche).

44

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
In a democracy, politics is all about getting people in office. You don’t change things by running for office, you change them by getting elected. The left wing of American voters has fallen off the map; they’ll vote for third party politicians, so their agenda is ignored. The right wing of American voters got smart instead. They made some compromises but they got inside the Republican party. They helped get people elected so their agenda was listened to and they moved the country to the right.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not a Nader fan but with all due respect Little Nemo (and I mean you have some fascinating, interesting, fun to read posts) I disagree …

If a voter believes that Nader best represents their point of view then why shouldn’t they vote for him? We can’t predict who the GOP/DEM nominees will be in a few days much less what the political landscape will look like in 20 - 30 - 50 years from now. Who is to say that today’s seemingly misplaced efforts to get Nader elected don’t, down the road, lead to a third party or to the Dems taking a lot of the Green parties points on or who knows what else.

I mean only to say that if someone HONESTLY believes in what Nader says then by all means they SHOULD vote for him … no vote is ‘wasted’ even if the person being voted for doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.

45

Holy crap, I have something in common with Hunter Thompson.

(checks brain - yep, few synapses still transmitting)

46

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
In a democracy, politics is all about getting people in office. You don’t change things by running for office, you change them by getting elected.

[/quote]

If the Democrats are so concerned about losing votes to Nader or other third parties then they should make some attempt to address the issues that turn voters to those third parties.

Marc

47

[QUOTE=Billdo]
OK, Nader is a douche (formerly not a douche).
[/QUOTE]

Correction accepted! (though I disagree, since I don’t think that he’s responsible for the current administration). :slight_smile:
Seriously, though, there seems to be some sort of spectrum of opinion towards people running for president which ranges from humor to indifference to hatred as the person seems more popular, until he/she actually has a chance of winning, at which point it’s ok to actually like them.

I think it’s sad when the American People[sup]TM[/sup] get angry and turn on a person merely for fighting an uphill, impossible battle. What ever happened to our supposed belief in the individual? When someone says “Ralph Nader go away,” what I hear is, “I want other people to pick my president for me, and I want to be sure that I have good shot at being on the winning ‘team.’ I want the security of knowing that my candidate’s opinions and stances (at least public ones) have been vetted through corporate and popular interests, so I can feel comfortable casting my vote without worrying too much about whether my candidate is actually going to do anything that might offend my sense of status quo.”

48

[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
Nader/Paul '08?
[/QUOTE]
The trouble with that is that there just aren’t all that many libertarians. The more I think on this, the more a Nader/Huckabee alliance seems the way to go. The green wing of the resulting party could walk all over the christian wing for 10, maybe 20 years before they noticed.
The christian right is ready to reject republicanism. Why not offer them a place to go where they can do some good?

49

It’s sad really. You’d think that after 2004 he would realize that he was just a tool of the Republican party. It is they who raised money for him and got him on ballots. Yet, they are ideological opposites. But he just can’t seem to see the reason behind their largess.

50

[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
Did Nader really “pull” any votes (no matter how you define it) from the Dems? He didn’t get any electorial college votes, AFAIK, so the question is: In any states that the Dems lost, were the votes for Nader enough to have shifted the outcome in that state to the Dems?
[/QUOTE]

Um, Florida?!

The final certified vote count in the 2000 election was Bush 2,912,790, Gore 2,912,253, Nader 97,421. Even leaving aside the “butterfly ballot” and other shenanigans, if Nader hadn’t been on the ballot in Florida I am extremely confident that enough of those 97,000 Nader voters would have voted for Gore to give him the state, the electoral votes and the Presidency.

51

Because a vote that’s thrown away is simply thrown away. It counts for nothing and doesn’t send any message.

Let’s assume you have fifty ideas that you’d like to see made into laws. And there’s a candidate who agrees with you on all fifty of those ideas and would enact every one of them if he got elected - but that candidate has no chance of getting elected. And there’s another candidate who only agrees with you on one idea - but that candidate does have a realistic chance of getting elected. Who do you vote for?

Some people would say vote for the first guy - he’s the perfect candidate. But if you vote for him, none of your ideas will become laws. If you vote for the second guy, you’ll see one of your ideas become an actual law. It’s very little, but it’s more than nothing. And when that guy runs for re-election, you can tell him that if he wants to get your vote again, he going to have to agree with you on another idea from your list. Or you can go to his opponent and tell him that your vote can be bought if he agrees with you on two ideas. Your vote now means something and has a real effect on the world.

As I said above, compare the success of liberals and conservatives in this country. Liberals keep insisting on candidates who are 100% pure - and they get nothing off their agenda. Conservatives are willing to compromise on candidates who might only be 50% pure - but they get half of their agenda made into laws.

No, it’s the exact opposite. It’s the people who are willing to work in the system as it actually exists that are making the changes. And it’s the people who insist that they won’t participate in a less-than-perfect system that are helping to maintain the status quo.

52

My grandfather used to eat at Nader’s family diner, when Ralph was knee high. Says the kid was a douche back then, was one in his teens, was one in his 20s, is one now.

53

As I wrote above, I think Nader is completely aware of who’s funding his campaigns. And I think that’s the way he wants it. The Democratic party rejected him back in 1992 and he’s spent the last fifteen years trying to pay them back for it. Costing Al Gore the election in 2000 was probably the high point of Nader’s life and he’s hoping he can repeat it and help defeat another Democratic nominee.

54

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Let’s assume you have fifty ideas that you’d like to see made into laws. And there’s a candidate who agrees with you on all fifty of those ideas and would enact every one of them if he got elected - but that candidate has no chance of getting elected. And there’s another candidate who only agrees with you on one idea - but that candidate does have a realistic chance of getting elected. Who do you vote for?

Some people would say vote for the first guy - he’s the perfect candidate. But if you vote for him, none of your ideas will become laws. If you vote for the second guy, you’ll see one of your ideas become an actual law.
[/QUOTE]
Only if he wins, though. It seems to me that, by your reasoning, the only people not throwing away their votes are the ones who vote for the winner. So even if only the big two were running, you’d be throwing your vote away if your guy/gal lost.

You might argue, “But he/she had a chance of winning.” Well, okay. Still, the best you can say is that you might not be throwing your vote away if you vote for him/her. But after it’s all over, it is a certainty that you threw your vote away. Right?

55

You make a good point, Liberal. Obviously a lot of Democrat and Republican candidates lose elections. And many of them clearly have no chance of winning as indicated by polls on the eve of election day. The people who voted for John Kerry in 2004 had to know that he wasn’t going to win.

But there’s more to a party than just a candidate. Individual Democrats and Republicans have lost elections but both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party have won elections and continue to do so. These organizations are showing they can get people elected and get campaign platforms turned into actual laws. The Libertarians; the Greens; the Reforms; the Socialists - they haven’t done this.

56

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Because a vote that’s thrown away is simply thrown away. It counts for nothing and doesn’t send any message.

Let’s assume you have fifty ideas that you’d like to see made into laws. And there’s a candidate who agrees with you on all fifty of those ideas and would enact every one of them if he got elected - but that candidate has no chance of getting elected. And there’s another candidate who only agrees with you on one idea - but that candidate does have a realistic chance of getting elected. Who do you vote for?

Some people would say vote for the first guy - he’s the perfect candidate. But if you vote for him, none of your ideas will become laws. If you vote for the second guy, you’ll see one of your ideas become an actual law. It’s very little, but it’s more than nothing. And when that guy runs for re-election, you can tell him that if he wants to get your vote again, he going to have to agree with you on another idea from your list.
[/QUOTE]

And he will laugh at you, and point out that you’ve already proven that he’s already done all that he has to do to get your vote.

57

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Because a vote that’s thrown away is simply thrown away. It counts for nothing and doesn’t send any message.
[/quote]

Is that true? I recall in 2000 that, if Nader got 5% of the vote, he’d get matching funds, which would bring the Green Party to another level. It didn’t happen, was a miserable failure, but it WOULD have count for something AND sent a message.

It depends on what your philosophy of the vote is. If your goal is to build up a third party by supporting its candidates, and you realize you won’t win but are building up over time with your support, then you might vote for the candidate who won’t win. How else do you recommend that people foster the growth and development of new parties? Or is that, in your opinion, a completely futile and worthless endeavor?

And what if he says, “I don’t care if you vote for me or not. Your vote, and your non-moderate views, are not worth my time to indulge. My party and I really cannot accommodate you, though we do expect your vote because we know the other candidate is even more unpalatable.” How do you influence a candidate with this attitude by voting for him? Don’t you think denying him your vote and fostering a third party which better represents you might make your point better?

58

So, you shouldn’t vote for third parties because they stand no chance of winning elections. They stand no chance of winning elections because no one votes for them, which is, of course, because they stand no chance of winning elections?

The problem inherent in getting a third party elected is the problem inherent in affecting any sort of large-scale change, and that is the idea that the actions of the individual do not matter. The reason this is such a problem is that, all other things being equal, for any given individual it’s more or less true. The flaw in that reasoning is that all other things are not always equal; the individual is never acting in a vacuum. The key lies in convincing the individual of that.

It is for this reason that I despise the concept of “society”, or “the public”, as entities with ideas and agendas against which the individual’s should be compared. A million people is one million instances of one person, nothing more and nothing less. “Society”, inasmuch as it exists at all, is nothing more than the current majority’s perception of the status quo. It does not quash the opinions of the individual, it does not render his actions impotent. It does nothing but exist, and only then as a matter of perception: its “power” lies in the fear of the individual to oppose it.

One person who votes for a third party is not throwing his vote away, he is expressing his opinion, as is every other one of the millions of individuals who cast their votes. That individual’s vote will likely not have any immediate effect unless others choose, each individually, to join him. If, however, each of those people chooses to think like Little Nemo, we end up with a situation in which no individual will cast his vote for a third party until there is a sufficiently large pre-existing voter base, and such a thing will never exist, because everyone is waiting for everyone else to do it.

Little Nemo, you say that your goal is to affect as much change with your vote as possible. If that is truly what you want, then vote for the candidate you and you alone feel is best, and encourage others to do the same. Resigning yourself to the catch-22 created by your reasoning will, in the end, accomplish nothing but stagnancy.

59

[QUOTE=Roland Orzabal]
The problem inherent in getting a third party elected… <snip>
[/quote]

The problem with getting a non-Dem/Pub (Nader is not a “third party”) elected President is that we don’t elect people to the highest office in the land out of nowhere.

60

One more thing, because I just know someone will dig up this old post of mine if I don’t.

Yes, I voted for Kerry in 2004, despite not believing that he was the best man for the job. I did so because I believe Bush to be the closest thing to an evil human being that has ever held the office, and the chance, however slim, to get rid of him was too tempting for me to pass up. In voting for Kerry, in other words, I used the same rationale I argue against Little Nemo for using.

For the record, I believe that voting for Kerry in 2004 was the wrong thing (for me) to do, and stand by the reasoning in my above post.

Sheesh, now I sound like I’m running for office.