Why vote for Nader?

Great Debates
22

It is inconceivable that such a scenario would play out. We are discussing a question about real, pragmatic American politics, not about some insane hypothetical situation – unless you seriously think you can make a case comparing Hitler and Bush.

But let us suppose for a moment that a Hitleresque candidate did run. If his intentions were known, then (1) it should be easy to convince people that this sort of evil is not in their or the country’s best interest or (2) people really like Hitler, Jr. in which case we have much more serious problems than one election. It would be precisely your kind of voting which would send this sort of race into a close contest. “Hmm,” says potential voter, “I’m not sure I’m up for the evil, but I don’t like the other guy’s stance on [abortion, gay rights, gun control, military spending, taxes, insert favorite issue here]. Guess I have to vote Hitler, Jr. since a third party is just a waste.”

This doesn’t even touch on the fact that there are a myriad of options available. I could expose Hitler, Jr.’s evil intentions. I could campaign aggressively for my candidate and convince the people that he is best. In the final event, if true evil was elected, I could take up arms against the government of Hitler, Jr.

This is the ultimate conflict in our views. A third party candidate is not a spoiler if he, like Nader (said by a man who does not agree much, if at all, with Nader), presents an alternative view not supported by the major parties. A vote for any candidate that you support and believe in is not a wasted vote. Rather, I would say that the votes of those who prefer Nader and are not satisfied by Kerry’s plans but vote for Kerry because they hate Bush are the ones who are wasting their votes. No matter who wins in that case, their true voice goes unheard.

Kerry is much more palatable to you. As such, you should probably vote for him. However, the Nader supporters I have spoken to and heard interviewed do not share this view. I know this anecdotal, but it is the only evidence I have to create a view.

[quote[It would be nice if we could just wash our hands of Bush, but unfortunately we have to live in this country as he takes it over a waterfall.[/quote]

You don’t have to live here. There are hundreds of other countries spread across the globe. You chose to live here, but are free to revoke that choice at any time.

I see, it is partisan (or personal) vitriol that prompts your objections rather than belief in the two-party system. It is probably not worth the time to type to argue then. I would love to see a list of things that Bush (alone, without the support or approval of Democrats) has done that merit such animosity. Don’t worry, I don’t expect it to be long, or persuasive.

I would be willing to wager large amounts of money (if either of us were likely to be able to collect) that in 100 years a ranked listing of presidents would find Bush in the middle of the first 43. There were many better presidents, but there have been many that were (in some cases much) worse.

The development of parties in America has hardly been a linear, binary, uncontested, or necessarily positive aspect of national politics. Our country has seen any number of important third parties in our history, the birth and death of several major national parties, and presidents elected by near (if not actual) acclamation. A solid, consistent, unyielding two-party system has hardly been the bedrock of our national political history. If you think that the current parties match very closely in any manner to those of any other era of our history you are sadly mistaken. But history lessons probably belong more appropriately in another thread.

23

Anyone who prefers Kerry to Bush, yet still votes for an independent who couldn’t even pull 10% when people felt it was “safe” to vote for him, is monumentally unaware of how the voting system operates. The information is free, publically available, and studied for decades and decades. The spoiler effect is real and completely obvious to anyone who can do arithmetic.

Practically speaking, a vote for an independent is a vote for Bush. There are two ways to help Bush: vote for him directly, or vote for a candidate who can’t win rather than his only realistic competitor.

How long have independent parties been running in America? How many of them have won the presidency?

It ends when independents ban together for one friggin’ election cycle on a simple, common platform that is very centrist but suggests that the voting system be changed to something that encourages people to vote for independents. Until then, it doesn’t end. The alternative is a fantasy.

One of the reasons many Nader voters gave for their vote was that Gore had an easy win. Nader still couldn’t garner 10% of the vote, and Bush turned out to be a monster.

This kind of idealism is what paints people as being on the idealistic fringe. No one heard your message, as far as I can tell. Shouting at a wall isn’t civil disobedience. Find another way. In the meantime, vote for the candidate you prefer that has the best chance of winning out of all those you prefer. Frankly, I find it very hard to believe that any Green would possibly not prefer Kerry to Bush, were those the only two options. (What was the phrasing above?-- ) And those are the only two practical options.

24

Correction: this is only true when we’re talking about independents left of center. I heartily encourage all righties who are upset with Bush to vote Libertarian. :slight_smile:

25

My argument as to why it is in the interests of progressives and populists to deny the Democratic Party their votes is not only free and publicly available, it is right here in this thread. Savant, educate thyself.

This may seem practical from your point of view but not from mine. For me the choice is voting for a minor candidate or not voting at all. Neither choice helps Bush more than the other.

This seems mighty idealistic to me. Have independent Americans ever banded together for one election and managed to win enough power to enact legislation? Not that I know of. OTOH, existing parties adjusting their priorities to fit new political realities is ubiquitous. It seems to me that you are the one indulging in fantasy.

26

If you truly do not prefer Kerry to Bush, I guess so. I find it hard to believe, but what can I say.

And voting for independents to “send a message” is just pure pragmatism. :wink:

27

What is going on with the SDMB tonight?
Am I stuck in some hell-dimension where no one will ever condescend to address the points I have made?

28

I can be more condescending if you’d like.

29

Thanks, but I’m getting enough of that from Zagadka right now. What I would like is for you to address my argument that if enough progressives deny the Democratic Party our votes it will move to the left. It seems clear to me that if large numbers of potential Democratic voters demand democracy as a precondition then the Party will respond.

30

I feel that if the population moves left, the politicians will move left. I don’t think voting for Nader will make the rest of the population move left. I don’t think politicians treat voting as polls. But, what do I know.

31

2sense, if Progressives leave the Democratic party, then it will respond by moving farther right. Why try to win people that you can’t trust, when the bulk of votes is and always will be, almost by definition, at the center? If you want to change the party, do what Dean did and almost succeeded at: be a man, and join the frickin primary. It takes even less sigs than a national indepedent run is. And let’s be clear: Dean only failed because his campaign sucked on the ground, their people were too green, too inexperienced.

But this is what’s so silly about Nader’s push: even if we had proportional representation, his faction would STILL be irrelevant. Power is blocky: you are always going to have majoritarians and minorities, no matter how they are composed. And Nader’s faction is a pathetic minority, not the mass movement he believes. He and his supporters just don’t realize how incredibly arrogant they are to think that his positions are anything but well outside the mainstream: not because people are brainwashed, but because the majority of people in America just think a lot of them are nutty and irresponsible. But they cannot accept this. No: it must be because of a big conspiracy!

And worse, they cannot accept the possibility that they can lose everything: not only create vast Bush-induced suffering that they claim to be against, but also fail utterly to create any hope for a viable third party. As far as I can tell, this lose lose looks to be exactly what will happen. Bush wins, the country moves farther to the right, away from what Nader claims to support, and at the same time the Democrats realize they can’t trust the far left, so they head right as well to follow the voting public. Plus, the long history of a series of failed attempts at a third party, as well as the spoiler effect, turns people off to the idea even more. (Note that Nader’s runs have gotten less and less support as time goes on, not more, and the only indepedant who stood any chance in recent memory wasn’t a lefty handjob fantasy, but rather a right-leaning anti-government populist.)
Even if you don’t agree this will happen, what is your response if this is what DOES happen? “Sorry?” Great guys, thanks for playing.

But anyway, I’ve decided to sign up with the Nader campaign. I’m going to tell them that I’ll handle the signature effort in some region of some state, and promise them 500 signatures. Then, when it comes time to hand them in, I’m going to tell them “well, here’s two. There’s really no difference between 2 and 500, in my opinion.”

32

This assumes that a Nader voter would vote for Kerry. I am suggesting that one who wants Nader, does not like Kerry’s platform, and is only considering Kerry as a “lesser evil” than Bush ought to vote their conscience and support the candidate (Nader) who best matches their own views.

You call the effect a third party candidate has a spoiler effect because you (along with the majority of the population) are operating under the misguided assumption that the major parties are the only ones deserving of your vote or of the office for which they run. I look upon my vote as an expression of my political desires, and I will not prostitute myself for a candidate who does not match my opinions if there is another candidate who does.

A vote for an independent (including your later caveat of a left-leaning independent) is not a vote for Bush, practically speaking or otherwise. Kerry and the Democrat party have no claim on those votes. If they cannot appeal to left-leaning voters they do not deserve those votes.

There is a systemic bias for a two-party system in the current operation of our government, especially for the presidential elections. This bias is not a good thing, as it builds in a very strong bias for the status quo – something I think Americans of all political stripes are unhappy with. The only way to get the major parties (who currently hold all the power) to do anything about this is to deny them your vote. If enough people do this, they will get the message.

As long as we have had elections. Depends on how you want to define independent parties.

The two-party system does not have to change for third-party voting to have an effect. The Know-Nothings and the Progressives (of 100+ years ago) were two parties/movements that were far from centrist, did not win the presidency, and still had a profound effect on American politics. The effects of the Progressives are still felt today in very real ways.

…still waiting for that list I asked for in my last post. :dubious:

This kind of idealism is what can cause a change. This kind of idealism is the only thing that causes change. Your brand of cynicism is what keeps the Democrats and Republicans in power. There is more difference between the ideas and actions of Nader and Kerry than between Kerry and Bush.

Kerry and Bush are not the only two practical options. Not voting is a much more practical option than voting for a candidate you do not agree with, who does not support the political ideas you do. Why is voting for a candidate I like less practical than that?

Voting third party is not the ultimate step in recreating the system. It is not the penultimate step. It is merely a step. But I will echo more of Thoreau’s words – if every man actually voices what he wants in government, that will be the first step toward having it.

33

Elections are popularity contests. They always have been. If you win, it’s because you’ve convinced more people than your opponents have that you should be in charge, or that your party should be in charge.

34

Given that the American population as a whole is never given the chance to vote on anything I doubt that politicians include the general populace in their political calculations. What I think moves pols are potential voters. If a lot of hardcore Republicans move left I’d say the GOP would move a bit with them but the Dems would be unchanged. Hardcore Repubs aren’t potential Dem voters. I’d also say that if large numbers of pro-democratic potential Democratic voters refused to vote for an unDemocratic Party then the Dems would become more democratic PDQ.

You have it exactly backwards. If you can trust someone to vote for you then you don’t have to win them. They are already won. The people you need to win are the ones you can’t trust. Viewed from a 2 party perspective it is the centrists the Democratic Party can’t trust. They might go to the Republicans but the leftists never will.

You better be careful or you will have Brainglutton in here with that list of political parties we might divide into if we had proportional representation.

( Just kidding, BG. You know I love you. )

Nader has good reason to believe his ideas are popular. Because they are. Who isn’t for good jobs, a safe work environment, or a government that serves people first and corporations 2nd?

It’s like Michael Moore says, America is pretty darn liberal. Right down the line on policy polls show that most Americans prefer the liberal position. Abortion, gun control, protecting the environment and so on. In fact, the only major policies that liberals advocate that are unpopular are ending the death penalty and keeping Affirmative Action. The liberal positions are popular yet they don’t get enacted into law. So yeah, the fix is in. The 2 party system perverts the political scene.

Also, I think you fail to understand Nader’s goal. If I’m right it’s not surprising you and so many others have a misconception since he lies about it. If you take the view that what Nader really wants is to help the conservatives win then everything he does suddenly makes sense. I suspect he believes that contemporary American politics are hopeless and that it will take another traumatic event such as the Great Depression to shake things up and bring about another New Deal. This means he is working to keep Democrats out of power so they can’t stop the Republicans from flushing this country down the toilet so we can start anew in a nation where conservatism is discredited. Perhaps I am wrong about him but actions speak louder than words.

35

Yes. I genenerally feel that, if asked, most Nader voters would answer “yes” to the question, “Do you prefer Kerry to Bush?”

What? No one “deserves” a vote. If you don’t like your candidates then don’t vote. But if you prefer any candidates to other candidates, then you should vote and think about what you’re doing. The spoiler effect is called so because of how the voting system works. Let’s take a very simple example. Suppose there are 13 people. Six have already voted for Bush, four have voted for Kerry, and the three remaining people are Nader supporters on their way to the booth (of course, they don’t know the tally). If these three voters prefer Kerry to Bush, then voting for Nader spoiled the election: the outcome failed to match the preferences of the voters. I don’t believe that all Nader voters prefer Kerry to Bush, that’s so. But I feel quite comfortable suggesting that quite a few do.

How’s that working out for you?

Again, to the example above: those three voters vote for Nader. Who wins because of that? Practically speaking, they might as well have voted for Bush, because in either case Bush wins.

Enough people won’t do this, you see, because enough people aren’t on the fringes of political views.

36

No, trust me, I don’t. I’ve been working with people that have been doing this for decades: not partisan this or that, but on the the ground fieldwork: who you spend your time and energy on and who you don’t, with limited resources.

Not the case at all. In fact, about 90% of fieldwork time is spent trying to convince your base to support you. And in primaries, it’s even more focused on trying to woo the consistent base.

No, they are the ones you waste no time worrying about. Persuading people who lean against voting for you out of principle is a waste of time compared to people that will give you a fair shot.

The centrists are where the bulk of the votes are! And they are far more cost effective to go after: you get a way bigger bang for your buck than trying to spend three weeks arguing with someone who thinks we should abolish the CIA. That position will almost certainly NEVER be part of a winning majority, so why go after it?

It doesn’t matter how things divide up. You still end up with majoritarians vs. a shifting morass of minority parties. This is a fundamental aspect of power, not political system. There are things that could help break the two party system, but the ironic reality is that these things are LESS likely to ever come about if the left lets the Republicans rule.

Boilerplate. Translate this into actual policies, and most of America will be running for the door.

Yeah, sounds like a fantastic plan. And you know, I don’t doubt that this IS his plan, because he’s said similar things before. I can’t believe that anyone could agree to something so asinine however. The reality is that with the way things are going, we are going to end up with mega-corporate rule, not great depression or anything that so boldly refutes conservative positions.

37

erislover, stop ignoring akennett’s argument. Yes, if we accept your limitation that we should only consider which candidate a single election then you are right, a voting for minor candidates is little different than voting for the major candidate we dislike more. But people like ak and I refuse to be boxed in by your conditions. We are looking at the larger picture. You can never convince us you are right by ignoring these other factors. Perhaps you should take a step back and then try again this time taking everything into consideration.

And speaking of ignoring arguments, should I take your silence on the matter as a tacit admission that my plan to make the Democratic Party more democratic is more practical than your idea of all independents somehow coming together to do it themselves?

And speaking still further of ignoring arguments, how about noticing that I have already argued that many liberal views aren’t “on the fringes of political views”?

38

Perhaps I misunderstood your post. When you talked about trust I took it to mean people who could be trusted to vote your way. If I got it wrong then let me know. If not, then my point stands: there’s no point trying to convince someone to vote for you if you already trust them to vote for you. I really don’t see how it can be any clearer than that.

Assuming you are equating “people who lean against voting for you out of principle” with my hypthetical group of progressives and populists who will withhold their votes from the Dems unless it accomodates their desires then I fail to see any distinction between these 2 groups you have divided people into. If the 2nd group feels what some political party is offering is a good deal they will take it. Same with the first group.

The bulk of the votes aren’t in the middle. They are on the sidelines. Half of America doesn’t vote.

And notice that this isn’t a discussion of fieldwork but of the effects of electoral politics on policymaking. Time and effort are meaningless. What matters are the positions a party adopts.

I’m not sure how you mean “majoritarians”. When I use the term I mean those, like myself, who favor majority rule. You seem to mean “the biggest party”. Perhaps a look at BrainGlutton’s list would do you some good. IIRC it supposes that the social conservatives who make up the bulk of the GOP would remain by far the largest party.

For myself, I don’t judge governmental systems on outcomes. That’s too self-interested for me. I judge them on how well all viewpoints are represented. If that produces the results I prefer then so much the better. If not, at least I know that it’s a fair outcome.

Unsupported assertion. Cite?

Perhaps you are right. For myself, I’m not so sure. Sometimes I lean towards the view that he’s on to something and sometimes not. In the end I just can’t justify to myself the certainty of letting things fall to shit with the possibly that this will lead to better things. You’ll notice that my plan is less grandiose.

39

I understand that it might seem that way to you, but the reality is, this is exactly what campaigns and political parties spend the majority of their time doing: trying to fire up their base to vote for them.

You basically jumped out of this discussion with a quip. Politically, in terms of what they will or will not support, the bulk of people are moderates. The reasons people don’t vote are varied, but they mostly border satisfied indifference, disinterest, and the feeling that there is no real urgency to vote when polls show that one guy or the other is going to win (which is why we expect a huge turnout this year).

Which, in a national election, will be to fight it out for votes in the center. Even if we had more regional, broken up platforms that swayed this way or that, the end result would still have to be fighting over the center of all these views.

I mean it as the majority coalition.

For goodness sakes, do you really think that any majority of Americans support taxes that are even higher than even Kerry is being slammed hard for supporting, cutting back on our military drastically, all sorts of workplace laws that crush small businesses, full featured gay rights, free abortions for everyone, abolishing gun ownership, and so on?

The Democrats can barely barely get by with positions that lean in those directions, and you really want me to believe that America in general supports policies even further to the left? I have hard enough time trying to sell Kerry’s fairly moderate platform to people out here for whom gun control is evil and fags are getting too uppity. People that are unemployed but are dead set against spending tax money on job training programs or education. And then I have Nader people telling me that the Democratic Party would be a big winner if only it were more into socialism. Can you understand how insane that sounds to someone like me, someone that’s actually in the thick of actually trying to talk to real people about the issues and sell them on even moderate takes, as opposed to pontificating on a platform about leftist pipe-dreams like Nader is doing? Nader isn’t playing any sort of real grassroots democracy, he’s playing a Broadway musical. I’ve yet to meet a SINGLE Nader volunteer on the ground and actually trying to get him elected. Meanwhile, we are getting our butts kicked by the Republicans just because we don’t yet have THOUSANDS of volunteers we need to win.

And, ironically, to play his insincere games, Nader’s hooked up with some of the biggest corporations in the world, the ones he claims are the source of all evil (like Murdoch’s News Corp). He’s the ultimate sound and no fury candidate: someone that knows he cannot win, but refuses to support those who can who could actually make a difference to the issues he claims to care about.

In other words, you don’t really care about the issues, just saying that you care about them? I don’t get it. If you want greater access to healthcare for all Americans, why would you support behavior that makes it less likely to happen as opposed to behavior that makes it more likely to happen? And don’t tell me that it makes it more likely to happen in the long run. First of all, in the long run, we’re all dead, and the people that suffer in the meantime can’t unsuffer. Second of all, I don’t see HOW it will make any difference to the long run, because it’s going nowhere, and the country is steadily heading to the right due to Republican domination of the government.

40

It’s not that he literally can’t win, it’s just that it’s unlikely to the point that it makes no sense to even consider the possibility of his winning. You understand how political polling works, right?

Strawman. I never said it was a popularity contest, and no argument I have made even remotely suggests that such is the case. The issue of being a “popularity contest” has nothing to do with any of the arguments presented thus far.

Never said you were.

And I never said anyone should do so.

No, that is absolutely antithetical to my point. The reasons I gave to support voting for Kerry had nothing to do with “saying you voted for the winner”. This is not about saving face in any way, shape, or form. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about that.

Well you can stop feeling ill, because that idea is a strawman. You just made it up, and nobody here has made such an argument. You are trying to substitute emotion for reason.

Thus my point - if Kerry is such poison to the extreme left, surely Bush is 10 TIMES WORSE.

I don’t understand. How is the fact that the legislature refused to back Clinton’s plan (because they thought it was too liberal), proof that Clinton was too centrist?

So what will happen is that we’ll get 4 more years of Bush. How is that an improvement over your scenario?

That’s not a response to my question. My question was, if we have had a 2-party system for over 200 years, how is it going to be so terrible to put off protesting it just for 4 years, until we get the clown out of office?

Then so much more the support for my argument that it can wait 4 years.

I don’t see how making sure that Bush doesn’t get re-elected constitutes abandoning ones principles.

41

Amazing! I put in caveats up the wazoo, and it’s like you just didn’t read them at all.

Blowero: Now, that’s a silly, extreme example, but you have to concede that it is at least conceivable that there might exist a condition where the stakes were high enough to justify voting for the lesser of 2 evils.

akennet: Your example is silly and extreme.

:smiley:

Ha ha ha. Man, I wish it were that simple. Oh, yeah - we’ll just convince them. Short of Bush raping his mom, some people aren’t ever going to be convinced.

To which problems are you referring?

Huh? That’s like the opposite of my point. The point is to pick the lesser of 2 evils, not the greater of 2 evils. Duh.

That stuff has all been done with Bush, but it still looks like there’s a good chance of his being re-elected. So obviously your alternatives aren’t enough.

Of course, on the other hand, if you like Bush, or if you think Bush and Kerry are equivalent, then there’s no point in even having this conversation.

I don’t follow that reasoning at all. If you got the guy you hate out of office, then it’s not a waste.

The purpose of voting is to determine who gets elected. If the guy you voted for doesn’t get elected, then your voice wasn’t heard anyway. The votes that went to the loser don’t go into some “heard voices” storage facility for later use.

Then that’s a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ARGUMENT. If you see absolutely no difference betwen Bush and Kerry, and the point is moot to you, then by all means, vote however you like.

QUITE OBVIOUSLY, we’re talking about people who believe Kerry would be much more palatable than Bush. If you don’t believe that, then OF COURSE there would be no reason to vote for Kerry. Did you really think we were having this discussion about people who think the 2 are equivalent?

Neither do you. What the hell is your point?

Look - you are completely missing the point of this discussion. If you LIKE Bush, then this has nothing to do with you. There are 2 sides to the argument:

  1. If you hate Bush, and think Kerry wouldn’t be as bad as Bush, but still aren’t 100% satisfied with Kerry, and you vote for Nader, then it’s a “spoiler vote”.

  2. No, it’s important to vote for Nader out of principle. There’s no such thing as a “spoiler vote”.

If you LIKE Bush, or you think Bush and Kerry are exactly equivalent, YOU DON’T BELONG IN THIS DISCUSSION AT ALL. Neither argument would apply to you.

Sorry, but I’m not going to start in on what’s wrong with Bush. We’ve done it TO DEATH.