I believe the preferential status you’re looking at is “winning”, but no, they don’t, other than being able to win. If you feel you are achieving your political ends by voting without regard to whether or not your vote will impact who wins, then the point is assuredly moot. If, however, you use your vote in order to align political forces in your favor, compromising on candidates is your best, and pretty much only, bet.
Elections are a game. Place your bets to win. Whether or not I have some special affinity for the number ten, if I get cards adding up to ten in a game of blackjack you can bet your ass I’ll take another card.
Then the Dems have as much right to complain about them voting for Nader as they do about the far right voting for Bush. If you’re not going to cater to the desires of a segment of the population, you’ve got no right to expect their vote.
Presumably, Miller, those that voted for Bush got what they wanted. If Nader voters wanted politics to shift left, it is pure sophistry to suggest their vote accomplished that.
On the other hand, if they wanted to liberalize the Democratic party, they did accomplish that, in the sense that if the Democrats enact the exact same platform they wished to in 2000, it will appear much more liberal in today’s political climate. So they have that going for them.
Is it just remotely possible that Ralph thinks the Democrats chances this year are so strong that he won’t hurt their chances by running on principle? Or maybe he thinks that the alleged anti-Republican outrage is so strong that it’ll carry voters to the extreme left?
If that is not the case I have to conclude that he really has no clue what the voters in the country really think and that he’s surrounded himself with toadies who keep encouraging him and telling him that he’s the heir apparent. Toadies, or mirrors, one of the two.
Why are you suddenly against Nader? What element of democracy do you not understand? Don’t all citizens have a right to stand?
Why do you object to Nader standing?
Tell me, will you be an advocate of whomever the Democrats chose to put forward because it’s the Democrats who put them forward or because of him or her as a person? I suspect the former, in which case I have no trouble condemning you as an utter idiot.
Well, Miller, I think that’s a questionable presumption, at least more so than the one I presented. In either the other pit thread or some GD thread (this debate is all over the place) I presented the following hypothetical.
Suppose the following. Florida gets to hold its election last in 2000, and gets to see the results of the rest of the country. Furthermore, people who are registered greens get to wait to vote until after all other Florida ballots are in. What do they see? They see that their votes will decide the election. The entire election could go to Gore if they vote for him, or it could go to Bush if they don’t vote for Gore. Given the results from all the other states, they know for certain that it cannot go to Nader. How do they vote?
Consider another example. Suppose you are supposed to vote for two candidates. You mark your initial preference in one ballot, but then you indicate that, if your first preference doesn’t win, you would like your vote to go to the second candidate instead. Am I to believe that a significant number of Nader voters (that is, a number that would have swung Florida, or another closely-contested state) would have marked {Nader, Bush}? Or that they’d mark {Nader, WriteIn}? Or even, {Nader, AnotherIndependentOrThirdParty}?
In both cases, it seems clear to me that their votes would have gone to Gore in at least enough of a quantity to allow Gore the win.
My point, though, is that there is enough information available to tell them this would happen in the first place. Not necessarily that Florida would have been contested, but that 3-10% (they were shooting for enough of a percentage to allow the greens to receive funding) in a race for the center could be significant. In this case, their vote to Nader could be said to have acted against their interests (given the foregoing, of course).
The whole situation seems so immature; the hostility some have towards Nader for entering the race just sounds like a child whining, “But… it’s not fair!” He has the right to enter the race, same as, well, anyone. Maybe the 2000 election would have turned out differently, but as surreal as it was, maybe Bush would be president anyway. To use Nader as a scapegoat is just weird, aren’t there actual folks down in Florida, like the governer of the state, who we could point our finger at who were actually involved in making a mockery out of our election system?
Luckily, Nader won’t get so many votes as last time, especially without the Green party. Like a lot of people, last election I was feeling idealistic, now I just feel desperate to get a Dem into office. Still, instead of shouting “No fair!” I wish someone from the Democratic party would come out and say, “Good luck to you Nader, but we have the best man here, and we will beat Bush.” That would inspire a lot more confidence in me at least, and it would make Democrats look better, instead of like children on the verge of throwing temper tantrums.
I don’t get, and didn’t get in 1999/2000, why he does’t try and win the Democratic Primary. That’s his best chance to put himself in the White House and work on the policies he supposedly holds so dear. Why thrust himself into a nationwide compaign which spreads himself too thin when he can aim his message at a few states at a time? Especially if he’s not going to run as a Green. That’s the part that makes me see him as ego oriented.
Didn’t he guarantee the Greens a certain level of government funding after their showing in the last election? And now he’s going to be running against them? Isn’t that going to kill any momentum that party had in the first place? Anybody know how pissed the Greens are?
I have posted in other threads about 3rd party candidates that I think voting for them is generally a cast away vote. I’m well aware of the odds of Nader (or any other 3rd party guy) winning. But this isn’t Blackjack. That game has no principle involved. In the matter of elections, there is no reason to believe that voters have any allusions about whether or not their candidate can win, and that they are voting for the person they want to be president, period.
If we assume that 3rd party candidates are nothing but spoilers, then the logical conclusion is that no 3rd party candidate should ever run. Unless you are willing to make that declaration, then I think it’s beside the point to criticize candidates for running or voters for voting.
Actually, from what I understand, he would have gotten funding for the Greens if he’s gotten 5% of the vote, and I think that that was a state by state thing too. However, he didn’t get 5%, he got 2.74% nationally. (http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm)
I know in MN at least when you file your taxes you can check a box to give I think $3 to the party of your choice, and I bet that that’s the only way that the Greens get any governmental support.
Gore never had a chance in the South. To expect any Democrat to carry any state in the South aside from Florida is absurd.
To have moved left enough to satisfy the 4% of nutjobs who were Naderites would have cost Gore 10% of centrists. How would that make mistake?
The Naderites are left-wing extremists so far out of touch with the American electorate that they can never win, never make a credible showing. All they can do is fracture the Democratic core base just enough to put a Republican in the White House. Which they did (Florida, New Hampshire).
