FYI, vanilla, Gore still would have lost Ohio even if all the Nader voters had voted for him. (The margin between them was like 176,000 votes.)
And, in return for that nugget of info, can you tell me who won the Ohio Supreme Court race…the one where that Democratic woman justice was being targetted by all the corporate money?
and I voted for Nader. My reasoning was I wanted the 5% for a 3rd party, and I wanted to send a message to the other 2 parties that I wasn’t happy with either candidate. My hopes were that the vote would be so close that just those few Nader votes would make a difference. Guess I got what I wanted, although I’m not sure the Democratic party will get comprehend. My county had a very understandable ballot that you colored in the circle by the cadidates name. We probably won’t have a re-vote, but if we did, and Nader’s name wasn’t on the ballot, I’d probably not vote.
later, Tom.
I voted Nader in Illinois, which went Democrat but was allegedly a “swing state” at the time I mailed off my absentee ballot. Which reminds me (off the subject: my absentee ballot had to arrive in the office by 7pm on election day. So why is everyone still saying that they must wait for oversees ballots and why has this issue never been raised in previous elections?
Anyway, back to the topic. Why the hell should Nader voters have to justify their choice to anyone? Gore voters don’t have to justify their vote, and neither do Bush voters. Gore had 6 months to convince Nader to not run or to try to appeal to Nader’s constituents. Instead, he waits until 2 weeks before the election. Now, Nader is a convenient scapegoat for the New Democrats if Bush actually does win. Nader officially won 3% of the vote. Only about half of that 3% say they would’ve voted for Gore had Nader not been a contender. Therefore Gore would’ve had 50.5% of the popular vote nationwide instead of 49%. There’s still no guarantee that he would’ve gotten all the electoral votes needed. Come on people, the guy lost in his home state and in the incumbent president’s home state. To blame Nader for this candidate’s imcompetence is just plain moronic.
Having said that, I’m going to justify my vote anyway. I wanted the Greens to get 5% for matching funds, and to send a message to the New and Improved Conservative Democrats that there are still people who actually give a damn about liberal causes and aren’t willing o settle for the lesser of two evils. My only regrets are that now the Greens are right back where they started, and that Nader’s reputation is forever sullied thanks to the laziness and ineptitude of Gore and the Democratic party.
Seems to be there are different rules for absentee ballots from overseas than from in the U.S., at least in Florida. Perhaps they feel requiring them to arrive by the day of the election just doesn’t give you enough time to vote if you are living overseas? And, as for previous elections, they didn’t hinge on differences of a few hundred votes! This is the same reason that “chad” has become a household word. (Surely, punchcard ballots have been around a while!)
Of course, for those who say that Nader wanted to have Bush win to galvanize the left, what if Bush becomes president and does such as great job that everyone wants to move to the right, politically?
I don’t know about normal overseas ballots, but members of the military are covered by federal law, as the federal government got sick of dealing with 50 separate laws some time ago. And I’ve heard California only went to Nixon in 1960 after the overseas absentee ballots came in. Not that it affected the outcome, but the issue has come up in the past.
A common misconception among many voters, not just Nader voters. Ed, you are not voting for Gore. Or Bush. Or Nader. You are voting for a particular political program. Realistically, in this election we had a choice between the Republican program and the Democratic program. You chose to Subtract one vote from the Democratic program, thus increasing the possibility that the Republican program would prevail. Knowing that, to vote for Nader, who has no chance of winning, is what the late Lenin called infantile leftism.
My politics are to the LEFT of the Greens and Ralph Nader, but I voted for Gore!
You will notice that the hard right did NOT come out for Pat Buchanan. Why? Simply because the people that the left often sneers at as backwards understood the overriding political reality better than the infantile leftists. They knew that, while Bush is no fascist, his election would move the political agenda in their direction.
That’s just absurd. The Democrats are not entitled to all left-leaning votes. No one is subtracting any votes from anywhere. Each person has a vote that he can give to whatever candidatee he sees fit.
By your logic, the parties start with votes, which people then selfishly steal from them to vote on the basis of such concerns as character or personal politics. That is, simply put, a stupid way of looking at elections. Perfectly fitting that the logic is associated with Lenin, though.
Okay, let me put it this way: I will not vote for the democratic candidate. Period. You don’t need to know exactly why, suffice to say I feel somewhat averse to voting for a candidate I detest in about every sense of the word. What kind of message am I sending if I vote for a candidate I don’t otherwise support in any way? I did that with Clinton and felt like an idiot while he backpedaled out of every promise he ever made for eight years.
So don’t tell me that my vote for Nader was a vote for anyone other than Nader. Or that it “took away” a vote for Gore, since he didn’t have it in the first place. The only thing it took away from was me sitting on my ass watching TV for half an hour. Gore can win or lose without me.
(And, for what it’s worth, people who voted for Nader in the close states and then cried when it turned in Bush’s favor are idiots. I, however, am not one of them.)
What the heck are all you Green Party people complaining about anyway? I’ve been voting Libertarian since 1984. I know that we have basically a 0% chance of winning an election, but I’m sticking with my guns. I don’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils, I want the major parties to either get their acts together, or another party to replace one of them. If they republocrats keep getting their elections messed up by things like this they might actually consider adopting and enacting some of the platforms that are attracting the swing voters.
The one time I did compromise my position and vote for one of the demopublicans for US Senate, they lost anyway.
I think “republicrats” works better than “demopublicans”. Just my opinion though.
I like best kimstu’s creation of refering to anything she reads out of the three major news weeklies as having come from “NewsTime Report”! 
I double plus happy read NewsTime!
Tom Tomorrow points out (www.thismodernworld.com) that a party calling itself Workers World actually got enough votes to be the deciding factor in Florida. What were they thinking?
The same Workers World Party whose platform includes the liberation of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jabar as a key element? Who the hell is that, anyway?
You know, if Gore had decided not to run, Nader would have gotten all his votes and we’d have a President-elect. Ralph said it best: Gore is losing to this nincompoop, and Nader is the reason? Utterly ridiculous.
Why blame everyone who voted for Nader? Why not blame everyone who voted for Bush? Aren’t they the natural adversaries of the Left?
Or maybe it’s Algore’s fault for not inspiring enough of his suppoters to vote. That makes a lot more sense to me.
This is what I love about Democrats. They nominate a guy who’d say just about anything to get elected, that’s how bad he wants it. He’s worked his whole life for it. And when they lose, they try to place the blame elsewhere.
If Gore had decided not to run…LOL
can’t imagine that
If Gore had decided not to run, Ralph would’ve been able to debate Bush.
One can only imagine how much fun that would’ve been.
Bush would’ve gotten the 3% then.
Last I checked, he is on death row in Philedelphia. IIRC, he shot a cop who was in the process of beating his brother to death. At the time, he was also an editor of a heavily political newspaper and some say that is why the prosecutors pushed for the death penalty in a crime that was practically self-defence, if not a heat of the moment type thing (3rd degree murder?). You should be able to find out more details on line somewhere.
So, if Clinton had pardoned this guy, Gore would be President. Hmmm… for want of a nail!
I would have voted for Nader, except that I was out of the country on Election Day and neglected to file an absentee ballot.
I’ve fantasized about being the last person to vote, with Gore and Bush exactly tied, happily casting my vote for Nader and single-handedly depriving Gore of my state’s fifty-plus electoral votes. Why? I think (and I daresay many Nader supporters, deep down, feel the same way) that the Democrats should be punished for their failure to stand up for people and against corporations.
Democratic candidates still paint themselves as the descendants of FDR, Kennedy, and Johnson even though they’re nearly as face deep in the corporate hiney as the Republicans. They’re fooling fewer and fewer people, but there are still those who think Al Gore really means it when he says “I will fight for you.” Do you think he’d have painted himself so pink if Nader hadn’t started telling everyone the emperor had no clothes?
Ah City Gent, nice to see someone actually “gets it”.