I don’t know really. After hearing his spiel the first time, I tuned him out as being basically a crackpot without a chance in hell of getting such policies through the legislature. I then concentrated on the Gore/Bush struggle.
Nen, I am not refuting the rights of others. I am pointing out this case as a classic example of what supporting a spoiler candidate can do to an election. Your point about the votes for third-parties in other states is well taken, but I believe that underscores what I am trying to say rather than detracts.
Nader ran on largely environmental platform. He specifically attracted voters away from Al Gore, who may talk more than he has acted on the environment but who has at least paid valuable lip service to those issues.
As it turned out, those who supported Nader proved to be the swing vote which denied the election to Gore (I’ll amend that to probably in Florida). By squandering their votes on a third party, instead of choosing the lesser of two evils, these supporters have ensured that the very most damaging policy on their pet issues will be made and their views will be least effectively represented. The same could very easily happened to any other group in any other state, on any other issue. That is the nature of the two-party system.
I therefore argue that in this case the vote of conscience should have been the strategic vote. By breaking away from the Democratic party instead of trying to change it from within, these people have doomed the very cause for which they were fighting.
Hey, I don’t like it either, but that’s the political reality of the matter. Their loss is my loss as well. Had we stuck together, we could have prevailed in part and settled our remaining differences. Instead, we all lose. And I have a right to resent that, not refute others’ rights.
I realize that you are not attempting to refute individual rights; however, your assertions that the third-party candidates steal bipartisan votes is unfounded. There isn’t any hard data to support the assertion that Nader’s presence was responsible for a deduction in support of Gore. It is possible that third-party candidates did detract from the votes of republican and democratic candidates. It is also possible that absentees which would support bipartisan candidates was a significant factor. One can’t put all the blame on Nader.
Please support the first clause of the latter statement with statistical evidence.
Bear in mind, Nader voters weren’t aware of precisely how close the election was. Polls had closed long before the data was available. In their eyes, they might not have been squandering their vote, but assisting the destruction of the bipartisan system while supporting an individual which espoused ideas which most closely resembled their own. Had they been aware of the even nature of the election, they may have changed their vote to a “strategic” one.
The Green party is not a faction, subset, or relation of the Democratic party. Supporters of Nader did not break away from the Democratic party any more than did supporters of McReynolds. Once again, the vote of conscience could only be tempered by that of strategy if one were to have prior knowledge of the nature of the outcome. In that light, I don’t see how you can maintain that the vote of strategy is more highly valued than that of conscience. An assertion based on hindsight is untenable at the time of relevance.
nen wrote:
Yes, there is (as I noted in my earlier post):
In exit polls (i.e. polls of those who actually voted), more than half of the Nader supporters said they would have voted for Gore in a two-way race. Another 1/3 said they would not have voted at all.
So Nader was clearly the difference in Florida, and by extension, the difference in the national race.
You make some good points, Nen, and I won’t try to further sway your position (nor shall I concede my own) beyond this one point:
The current eventuality should have been considered by those voters who elected to vote for Nader instead of Gore. Those who “swung” their votes. This is not hindsight logic. Pthalis has already simply stated the logic behind this course of action–not a chance in hell, so concentrate on the real battle. I’m sure that thousands of individuals did just as Pthalis. I certainly did. As has already been cited in this thread, particularly by spoke-, the swingers could easily have kept the election in Gore’s hands. That, in my book, is a squandered opportunity, and it was not invisible prior to the election.
Arnold, on the other hand, has clearly stated that he wouldn’t have gone Gore no matter what. He’s one of the folks you’re speaking about. I should have more clearly defined my argument to disinclude individuals such as he.
I’d be interested to see the wording of that poll. The result I heard was that in a two-way race, 65 percent said they’d have voted for Gore, 10 percent for Bush, and 35 percent said they’d have stayed at home.
However.
Consider the difference between the two following poll questions conceivably posed to Nader voters:
[list=1]
[li]In a two-way race, would you have voted for Gore or Bush?[/li][li]In a two-way race, would you have voted for Gore, Bush, or would you not have voted at all?[/li][/list=1]
I think the question could easily have been asked either way. People, however, are usually loathe to give an answer outside the bounds of the choices given; they’re afraid their choice won’t count. (Hmm, funny parallel.) So if the question asked was the former, giving just Gore and Bush as alternatives, then everyone who answered “stay at home” did so on their own–in which case, the number who’d have chosen that alternative had it been presented would likely be much higher.
As I say, I don’t know how the question was asked–but its phrasing certainly impacts any interpretation of the results.
(That being said, this election strongly showed the need for approval or preference voting in national races.)
All right. Let’s clear up the statistics so we don’t have to go over this anymore. There are two exit poll citations, from AP and the L.A., cited below. My election results are coming from CNN. All fuzzy math errors are my own.
According to CNN, 96,837 people voted for Nader in Florida.
AP says: “Exit polls in states including Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington state and Wisconsin suggested that at least half the Nader voters would have voted for Gore if it had been a two-way race. In many of those states, it was enough to throw the state to Bush. But nearly one in three said they simply would not have voted at all.”
However you play with the wording of that blurb, you wind up with anywhere from 32,000 to 48,000 Democrats who voted Nader in Florida. In a 1,725 vote race.
Or if you want to play with another citation, even if only one out of ten Democrats walked away from Gore in Florida, as this article suggests, that’s 29,000 walk-away votes. If you divide those 29,000 evenly among the percentages that all third party candidates recieved in Florida (uncluding such an unlikelihood as Democrats for Buchanan), you still wind up with 20,000 Democrats voting for Nader. In a 1,725 vote race.
If only two out of a hundred Nader voters was a Democrat who switched, you still wind up with 1,937 votes. In a 1,725 vote race.
Which, again, is why we need preference or approval voting. And, come to think of it, proportional apportionment of electoral votes, state by state.
That, or we can just go back to having two monolithic parties presuming to speak for the whole of the relevant political spectrum. :rolleyes:
You know what? Forget blaming Ralph Nader.
During one of the excruciating political discussions in our student lounge a few days ago, I realized why we needed Ralph Nader in this race.
Note that these are medical students–ostensibly mature, intelligent, and responsible adults (although that perception could certainly be argued). I heard several of them saying that they could not support Gore because they were in favor of the death penalty and could not support decreased military spending or universal health care.
Of course, I tried to step in and point out that Gore is in favor of the death penalty and increased military spending, and is very much against any sort of universal health care plan. The few who didn’t zone out said that what he says doesn’t matter–he’s a liberal, so of course he’s going to support all the progressive causes.
When election time rolls around, a lot of people develop borderline personality disorder–it’s all either black or white, liberal or conservative, left or right. If you’re a Democrat, you’re a liberal, and if you’re a liberal, you’re a commie pinko socialist. If you’re a Republican, you’re a conservative, and if you’re a conservative, you’re Rush Limbaugh. If you think that maybe we should require a background check before we sell someone a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher, you want to rip the rifles from the hands of law-abiding deer hunters.
The result here is that Al Gore gets credit–and blame–for supporting issues that he does not support at all. (The same could be said for Bush, although I would say to a much lesser degree.)
Nader’s campaign, by its very existence, shed light on this fact. He kept Gore honest. If Gore was going to win or lose this election, it was going to be on his own merits and positions rather than those traditionally implied by his party affiliation.
This election isn’t over by a longshot, IMO. (It’s all over but the shouting, but the shouting could make the difference.) If Gore loses, though, he lost it himself. Nader didn’t beat him.
Dr. J
He thinks Gore and Bush are the same when it comes to the environment. According to him Gore talks the talk but he doesn’t walk the walk. As far as environmental issues go he thinks they’ll both do similiar things in office. It is not a betrayal of his principles.
Marc