Of course voting 3rd, 4th, 5th party is an obvious waste of time with what is essentially a first-past-the-post system, and seems to invariably end up as a two party affair.
But what power and influence does anyone have by forcing themselves (holding their nose etc.) to vote for one “Platform” or another, or abstaining entirely - a popular choice involving about half the live voters in the USA.
I won’t repeat my descriptive term for this kind of system, but has a system of preferential voting ever been tried in the US at the Congess or Senate level (Instant run off would be another way of describing it).
The system is still essentially the same but supporters of 3rd or 4th parties have a bit more sway on the candidates, at election time anyway, if at no other time.
Gosh, one day there might be a candidate with whom I agreed more than I disagreed on their 10 most important policies. Imagine, voting for a candidate whose policies actually correlated with one’s own personal politics! One day everyone might have this choice! Whatever would we call this radical new idea?
Deja vu all over again. This has to be at least the third thread this month about the subject.
Simply put, if you vote Green, you’re voting principle over reality. Which is really fucking admirable when we don’t have Junior fucking up the US’s image worldwide and squandering all of that 9/11 sympathy faster than a crack whore goes through a lottery win.
I agree that Gore ran an abysmal campaign in 2000, and that he is therefore more responsible than the Greens for the razors-edge nature of the endgame, but the risks are just too high! The Greens are never going to win, with the current electorate. But they refuse to listen to political wisdom and set a base in motion with local, state and congressional campaigns. No…they have to go for the presidency, which they’re not going to win in the near future. It’s the nature of the electorate. A presidential electorate is too big and too scattered politically for a far-left party to ever have enough appeal. The only way the Greens have a chance at the White House is like the only way King Ralph had a chance at the throne…all the other candidates have to die, either physically or politically.
Who’s Ralph gonna pick for his running mate this time?
Sometimes I worry about the Dems. They are trying to get votes from people who would support a vice-presidential candidate who wants to collect child support from everyone except her boyfriend.
Sometimes I worry. The rest of the time I just giggle.
Hmm…I remember looking at Gore in 2000, seeing him as farther to the right than Clinton, and thinking how gross I’d felt voting for Clinton.
I knew that Gore didn’t stand a chance in North Carolina. So I voted my conscience: there was zero practical value in voting for Gore in North Carolina. If everyone who’d voted Nader here had voted for Gore instead, Bush still would’ve taken the state in a landslide.
I remember thinking that if Nader got a strong showing, maybe next election cycle Democrats would think twice about running toward the right in an effort to catch the votes of Republicans.
Now it’s 2003, and instead of a let’s-conciliate-the-right-wing candidate like Gore was, we’re likely to get Dean as our candidate.
I didn’t get Bush elected. But maybe I helped the Democratic party realize that they weren’t going to steal enough conservatives from the Republicans to make up for the progressives they’d lose to the Greens.
And that’s a really good thing, and it’s something that can only be accomplished in a system with more than two parties.
Hey i’m a little young and maybe a little naive but can someone tell me what Nader did wrong? The only thing I have heard about him was that he was pro legalization.
Left hand, this is right slong the lines of Joe Kennedy being part of a cabal, the Pope all but telling Hitler to go ahead, etc. Al Gore, Sr’s vote is a matter of Congressional Record. Facts can’t be argued. So, yes, I will go there. (Just give me directions, as I’m not sure where “there” is)
killuminat, a brief summary from a purely unbiased perspective ;):
Gore ran in 2000 on Clinton’s basic philosophy: he tried as hard as he could to get the votes from the middle. Only he lacked Clinton’s incredible personal charisma, whereas W had such charisma in spades.
Voters in the middle who didn’t have much attachment to issues therefore went with W. No matter how far to the right Gore went, too many of those voters stayed with W.
Meanwhile, voters on the left, afraid that their votes would forever be taken for granted and most of their issues would be completely ignored, went for a third-party candidate, as a way of saying, Ignore Us At Your Peril.
And then the election happened. Even with his lack of charisma, our relatively liberal country (relative to the Republican party) cast more votes for Gore than for Bush. And a lot more votes for Gore+Nader than for Bush+Buchanan. But several things conspired to take the election from Gore:
His lackluster campaign, in which he didn’t even take his home state.
An incompetent party machine in Florida, which allowed absurd ballots to remain in use.
The Worker’s World Party candidate, which siphoned enough votes from Gore in Florida to lose him the election;
An attitude of contempt and hatred from Democratic party operatives toward Greens, alienating the very progressives whose votes could’ve won them the election (despite the Worker’s WOrld Party candidate’s siphoning of votes);
A terrible and unethical legal strategy in Florida post-election, trying to cherry-pick which votes would be counted instead of counting all of them; and
Weird shenanigans in Florida and in the Supreme Court by appointed officials.
Oh yeah, and
7) The Greens in Florida who voted for Nader instead of for Gore.
Does anyone like taking responsibility for their own failures? Oh, HELL no! Some Democrats, rather than looking at their lackluster campaign and their abandonment of their party’s core values and their weird and ineffective legal strategy in Florida, focused on one of the few aspects of their failure for which they wouldn’t have to take responsibility: they focused on the progressives who voted for Nader, and made him the scapegoat.
This has nothing to do with his current politics -but I can tell you one thing Nadar’s done wrong - he used to shake down small business owners.
My mother and two others started a small radon detection business in the eighties. It was the time that the dangers of radon in houses had just been “discovered” and in Pennsylvania a house could not be sold without a radon screen being performed. At the time, it was primarily real estate agents and termite killers who did this - and in the vast majority of instances they had no clue about the science behind the testing. My mom was a chemist, and she’d consult with the folks about where to put the detectors and then do the readings after the detectors were collected.
Anyhooo- She (her business actually) got a letter from Nadar’s organization. I’m not sure if he actually signed the letter, but his name was prominent on the leaderhead. It said that if she sent them money then her company would go on the list of environmentally friendly/useful and be promoted.
But…if they did not send money, they would be considered environmentally unfriendly and go on the “bad for the enviroment” list.
That’s the big problem I have with the Greens. They sit in their corner and yell at everyone else for disagreeing with them. They don’t really try to convince people that their views are correct; they just insist that they are and belittle everyone else who disagrees with them.
I agree with a lot of what the Greens have to say, but they have a crappy way of selling it.
I don’t know where “there” is, but I do know what “that game” is ;): that game is blaming people for the ill-advised actions of their parents, a very stupid thing to do.
My point, of course, was that Bush’s ancestors are hardly blameless, as the Master Himself points out (or didn’t you see that Cecil wrote the linked article?) HOWEVER, I consider that to be irrelevant: a person is in no way responsible for the actions of their parents. It is ridiculous to try to hold them responsible for that.