Pray tell, where do we elect them out of? I must have missed the memo on the predetermined candidate pool, as well as the one on what “we” do.
Yeah, that was much talked-about at the time. But it turned out to be a catch-22: there was room for Nader because the two candidates were seen as being similar on a lot of issues, which made for a close race, which meant that most people decided it was more important to choose one of the two candidates who had a chance to win.
He passed one law. He got one vote. If he wants another vote, he has to pass another law. And he wants that vote.
It takes a little work, but politicians can be trained.
What? In what universe does a politician get one vote for passing one law? Your scenario here just does not work for me, nor does it even really make sense.
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”
If you have a candidate that you really believe in and you think he or she’s got a chance of going somewhere, then by all means go out and work for them. But a quick show of hands. How many people think we’re going to wake up on November 5 and find out that Kent Mesplay’s been elected President?
If you spend hundreds of hours in the next few months working on getting Barack Obama elected President, you might succeed or you might fail. If you spend hundreds of hours in the next few months working on getting George Phillies elected President, you wasted your summer. You have done more good volunteering at a homeless shelter and you could have written in your mother’s name on election day to show her how much you love her.
Here’s a comparison. Ralph Nader’s hometown is Winsted, Connecticut which is in Connecticut’s 5th congressional district. It’s a conservative region and has traditionally been a Republican stronghold. Republican Nancy Johnson had represnted the district since 1983.
In 2006, she was challenged by Democrat Chris Murphy, a Connecticut State Senator. Murphy gave up his Senate seat to run against Johnson. Johnson waged what was described as the “nastiest campaign in state history” but Murphy ended up winning by a substantial margin.
Now Chris Murphy is just one person out of the 435 members in the House of Representatives. He’s a first term congressman and hasn’t made any national name for himself. But who do you feel has accomplished more in politics; Ralph Nader or Chris Murphy?
I absolutely, totally disagree with you here. You did NOT waste your summer. You raised awareness. You tried to change things instead of accepting an established two-party system that you feel is wrong, harmful to the country, inefficient, unjust, etc. Isn’t that exactly what you should be doing?
You say that people who vote for Nader don’t want to win an election, they just want to complain, but then, if someone actually DOES something instead of complaining, they are wasting their time. Bullshit damned if you do/damned if you don’t circular reasoning there. Taking action towards something that is meaningful to you is never wasted time. It’s giving a shit about improving your country and spending your own valuable time and energy to work towards it. Success will not be immediate or even huge, and I don’t think it needs to be. It’s laudable and productive and important to try. Your attitude, on the other hand, is defeatist maintenance of the status quo. No thanks.
If you believe that Nader is responsible for Bush winning in 2000 or 2004, then I’d have to say, Nader. I also think that Nader’s stated mission, which was to build a viable Green Party in America, was a worthwhile, meaningful goal that I still support, whatever my feelings about Nader himself might be.
Read the posts:
The one law is the one thing I agreed with the candidate on. The one vote is the only vote I had that election. But we keep having new elections. So if he got one vote for passing one law I liked in his first term then he has to tell me what new law I want that he’s going to pass in his second term so I’ll vote for him a second time.
In other words, if the Democrats are so concerned about losing votes to Nader or other third parties then they should lose *more *votes by taking positions not supported by most Americans. Nader is saying, “If you vast majority of Democrats don’t bend to my tiny spoiler’s will, I will sabotage you and give the election to people far worse than you.”
Nader’s role should be to convince as many Americans as possible that his political opinions are correct. Until he convinces more than a small fraction, telling the Dems that they must appease this small fraction is not only bad politics, it’s anti-democratic political blackmail. He’s using a tiny spoiler faction to try and force the much larger number of Democrats to endorse policies with which they disagree.
Oh, I read them.
We keep having new elections… every 2/4/6 years, depending on the office. What if he doesn’t pass my law? Or I don’t like the version of it he passed? And the other candidate is a much bigger asshole, but this one is pretty bad too? Then what?
Also, your one law/one vote scenario is reductivist and pretty absurd, regardless. No one votes that way, and no one should.
First, I’m not sure people choose not to vote for Nader because they disagree with him. I bet there is a significant number of people who consider themselves Dems who would agree with him more on specific points than they do with Clinton, for instance. But they wouldn’t vote for Nader because of the atittude expressed by Little Nemo: “he can’t win, he’s not really a politician, he looks funny,” etc.
The Dems need a left corrective. The Republicans have plenty of right correctives.
Well, the last several we’ve elected out of:
The Office of the Governor of Texas;
The Office of the Governor of Arkansas;
The Office of the Vice-president of the United States, plus an ambassadorship, time in Congress and the CIA;
The Office of the Governor of California;
The Office of the Governor of Georgia;
The United States House of Representatives (appointed);
The VP’s office again, plus The United States Senate;
The VP’s office again (succession), plus the Senate;
The Senate again
And so on. The closest thing we’ve had to a President being elected out of nowhere in a long time is Ike, who was only Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces.
So no, we in fact don’t elect people president out of nowhere. We elect presidents who have put time in the trenches of government. A candidate coming in and trying to score the top job in the country (in the absence of a billion-dollar personal fortune) has absolutely no chance and the only thing more foolish than those who run such a campaign are those who vote for them with any notion that they will ever be successful. You knew exactly what I meant and your shitty little ‘where’s the pre-approved candidates list’ comment is just you being an ass.
Yeah, I just think that’s empirically false. If you ask Democrats in an opinion poll whether they support Nader’s policies or Gore’s policies more, they say Gore. That has nothing to do with elections. They simply don’t believe Nader’s message. It is fantasy to believe that significant numbers of Democrats believe what Nader is preaching.
Maybe, MAYBE, Nader would gain more ground if he had a chance to really explicate and defend his message. But of course, that doesn’t happen in his Presidential runs. His time would be better spent trying to get his message out and persuade rather than blackmail.
No, I said they were wasting their time because they were wasting their time. They didn’t do anything - voting for a candidate that they knew never had any chance of being elected doesn’t count as doing something. It just makes you feel good while accomplishing nothing. A guy sitting at home watching TV all day accomplished as much as you did.
If people like me are making small changes we’re the ones fighting the status quo. If people talk about huge changes but never actually change anything - that’s maintaining the status quo. One small change does more than all the talk about change in the world.
You said: “If you spend hundreds of hours in the next few months working on getting Barack Obama elected President, you might succeed or you might fail. If you spend hundreds of hours in the next few months working on getting George Phillies elected President, you wasted your summer.”
This is not a question of just voting. This is about, as you said, spending hundreds of hours on the presidential campaign of a candidate who wasn’t going to win. Yes, that is doing something. Yes, it accomplishes something. No, it doesn’t get your candidate elected, because that’s not the actual goal of the campaign. The goal is to raise awareness. I cannot and will not agree that it’s a waste of time.
How are you changing the status quo in a meaningful way by voting for Hillary Clinton or John McCain? You aren’t. It will be more of the same, pretty much. It might be moderately better than what we have now, but that’s damning with faint praise. Spending hundreds of hours campaigning for a third party in your community? Sorry, buddy, but THAT is fighting the status quo. Holding your nose and voting for Clinton because she might pass one law in four years that you like is not fighting shit. You’re kidding yourself.
I wish I could do a survey where Democrats had a list of beliefs and policies but they didn’t know who was espousing them, and they had to check off which ones they agreed with most. I bet you that a hell of a lot more people would agree with Nader’s specific policy ideas than think that they would. I agree with you that they don’t agree with Nader’s overall message, don’t really care about promoting a 3rd party in general or the Green Party specifically. But when it comes to platform issues, I think yes, a lot of Dems would like his ideas better than Hillary’s. They are not really way out there.
Agree with this totally and wish the Green Party and other alternative parties would try harder to adopt this strategy. But people would have to go out on a limb and vote for them, not do as Little Nemo recommends.
Personally, I’d recommend they run for Congress in some fashion first. A third-party President faced with a wholly Rep/Dem Congress is going to have a hell of a time actually accomplishing anything useful, even if s/he were actually elected. Get the third party entrenched in Congress, and it’ll be a much easier ride to the White House. Going straight for Top Dog, with so few of the electorate actually knowing who you (as a party) are or what you represent is asking for failure, in my opinion.
Y’know, at this point I honestly have to wonder why the hell he even bothers anymore. It’s become abundantly clear that not only does no one gives a damn about his messages, his work, or what he stands for, they’re very happy to blame him for all kinds of things he had nothing to do with. (Hey, remember the thousands of votes that were thrown out for no good reason? The Supreme Court decision stopping the manual recount? Think those might have had something to do with Dubya stealing '00?)
Nevertheless, I want him around in some capacity. He actually does the same thing Ross Perot does, bring up issues that none of the other candidates are aware even exist. I’m sick of Obama black/Muslim/change one letter, huh huh huh huh/inexperienced and Clinton female/already First Lady/annoying/bad image. What about things that actually affect us and will continue to affect us years down the line? Did we really have to learn about our abysmal health care system from a fat, dishevelled maverick filmmaker? Do I still have to turn to a couple of cranky left-wing cartoonists to remind myself why Bill Clinton doesn’t deserve the incredible praise he’s getting? I’m sick of the endless same old crap now, and we have almost a year to go.
I say keep Nader in the program and give him something useful to do. BrainGlutton had the perfect idea. If that’s not feasible, air his views, or better yet, adopt them and make him irrelevant. But don’t just ignore him and pretend that you’re entitled to the election and everyone will just fall in line. That’s beyond pathetic.
What? 
Not only did I think Kerry was going to win at the time I voted for him, but based on all the early exit polling data, I thought he was going to win on election night when I went home to watch the returns. Did you forget how close that election was looking?
No way.
The democratic process is more than the winning presidential candidate, and it’s more than the Demorcatic or Republican party nominees.
Expressing one’s voice is a vital part of our government. Even if you’re a minority voice. Staying home and watching TV does not accomplish that. Voting for someone who you feel doesn’t represent you well does not accomplish that. Voting for the person that you personally believe in does accomplish that, whether or not he or she is likely to win.
This is how individuals retain a voice in large government; by using it, and not throwing it to the largest most well-funded organization that’s running.
And, I don’t really believe you about holding your vote ‘hostage.’ No one (or almost no one) operates that way, because there are only ever two options for president, who are often diametrically opposed on many key issues. I’m not going to vote for Huckabee (for example) in 2012 because Clinton or Obama didn’t enact the health insurance reform I hoped for, and neither would anyone else.
Your vote is your stamp of approval. How the heck is a candidate going to know you disagree with him/her if you vote for him/her anyway?
If I wanted to vote for a party I’d move to Canada. Of course, then I’d have many more options as well. 
But seriously, the Democrats or Republicans don’t have to show they can get elected; they are and have been the establishment (no negative connotation implied here) for so long that it’s guaranteed that one of them will be elected. If you hold a game and make the rules and write the guest list, it’s no wonder that your team(s) end up winning all the time. It’s hardly something to be proud of.
Every successful GOP candidate since the days of the Whig Party has done that, too. Are you saying that asking for votes belies a moral failing, but only when a Green Party candidate does it?
This is from Tobias’ account, right? If Tobias’ homosexuality was such a well-guarded secret, how did his chief opponent get a hold of it? Do you have a non-biased cite?
And what did Al Gore do with his time instead when he realized that he had lost votes to a Green Party candidate? Anyway, Al Gore could’ve gotten 98% of the popular vote in Florida and still lost the vote; I’m sure they would’ve simply recounted it until Bush came out on top.
Well, let’s take Obama (because I know his policies better than Clinton’s). On the issues on which Nader disagrees with Obama, which ones do you think a large part of the country would agree with Nader on?