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The truthiness of this has been blown way out of proportion for far too long. It’s so bad even 3rd party supporters even believe it. I’d like to just dispense with this nonsense once and for all, and be done with it.
Ralph Nader (Stephen C Webster / Flickr)
As the Obama vultures come out from hiding as November approaches, two of the few reasons they have for supporting Mr. Obama are the Supreme Court (which is BS too, but I digress), and that an alternative candidate will supposedly cause the Republican to win, as evidenced by 2000. We need to do away with the falsehoods that allow the latter argument to still be said without shame or embarrasment.
This is the first of a series that will disprove this myth; a myth that can be debunked in a myriad of ways. I hope this info helps Firedogs in their efforts to keep other progressives from voting for their own oppressors, and will let people vote their conscience guilt free this fall.
From journalist Tony Schinella:
In Florida, CNN’s exit polling showed Nader taking the same amount of votes from both Republicans and Democrats: 1 percent. Nader also took 4 percent of the independent vote. At the same time, 13 percent of registered Democrats voted for Bush! Again, Gore couldn’t hold his own base and because of this, he lost. The Democrats don’t say one word about the fact that 13 percent of their own party members voted for Bush.
In fact, by a huge margin, the people who voted for Nader were not ex-Democrats, but ex-Reform Party voters who supported Ross Perot. These people 1) vote third party or stay at home, 2) won’t vote for a D or R regardless, and 3) are conservatives not liberals.
When asked who they voted for in 1996, 1 percent of Nader’s voters said they voted for Bill Clinton, 1 percent said they voted for Bob Dole, and 10 percent said they voted for Ross Perot.
Here is the chart:
1996——All—Gore—Bush—Buchanan—Nader
Clinton—46——82——16———0————1
Dole——30——–4——93———0————1
Perot——–7——23——65———1———–10
No vote—12——50——44———0————7
Again, Nader’s support did not come from Democratic supporters. They were mainly non-voters and ex-Perot supporters, most of whom were conservatives who supported Bush anyway. Not only that, Nader took from Democrats and Republicans equally: one measly percent.
Further:
Perot voters trend conservative. In fact, by a 3 to 1 margin, Perot voters in Florida went with Bush. So, with Nader taking equally from voters who cast votes for Clinton as they did from Dole, and then 10 percent previously voting for Perot being split on a 3 to 1 margin to Bush, that shows that if Nader had not been in the race, the majority of those voters would have gone to Bush, by a 7 to 4 margin.
So not only does the data show that Nader did not cost Bush Florida, he took votes away from Bush. Again, this is reiterated as fact by CNN’s own exit poll.
Had Nader not run, Bush would have won by more in Florida. CNN’s exit poll showed Bush at 49 percent and Gore at 47 percent, with 2 percent not voting in a hypothetical Nader-less Florida race.
Even further, according to exit polls, only 25% of Nader supporters would have voted for Gore had Nader not run. Over half of the Nader voters would have stayed home, and the rest would have voted for Bush or another third party candidate.
Summing up:
- Nader took votes equally from Ds and Rs
- The amount taken was minuscule, and balanced each other out
- The party who suffered the most was the Reform Party, by a factor of 10, compared to Gore
- Reform Party voters tend to vote GOP, so Nader actually took votes from Bush, not Gore, and is reflected in CNN’s own exit poll.
- Nader supporters couldn’t stand Gore, and never would have voted for him anyway, much like Anderson/Stein/Stewart 3rd party voters would rather stay home than touch Obama with a 10-foot pole.
- Likewise, CNN’s own data shows that Gore would have lost by 2% if Nader had not run.
Now, does anyone have any actual poll data or hard numbers that refutes this?
Does anyone have any research or data that disproves CNN’s data which shows that Gore would have lost had Nader not run?
Do Markos Moulitsas, Jennifer Granholm, or Rachel Maddow have a retort to this? All I hear is this myth that is presented as fact, simply because people heard it on TV.
There is absolutely no evidence that justifies this myth, and if you have any evidence please submit it.
Here are the sources:
Raw FL exit poll data:
http://www.vrdc.cornell.edu/info4470/projects/~bap63/pdf/florida2000.pdf
Tony Schinella Report:
http://politizine.blogspot.com/2004/02/debunking-myth-ralph-nader-didnt-cost.html
Progressive Review report
http://prorev.com/green2000.htm
Matthew Jones of USC’s Political Science Department:
http://www.disinfo.com/2010/11/debunked-the-myth-that-ralph-nader-cost-al-gore-the-2000-election/
ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/02/spoilage/
Parts 2 & 3 will have even more analysis of actual poll data, as opposed to more Democrat fear-mongering.
60 Comments
Jest, i hope you realize you have taken on a Don Quijote type quest against the true believers. Nader is responsible for all of their failures and he will never be forgiven.
I did get to boo Michael Moore when he was stumping for Kerry, it felt good but shocked those around me.
jest–
Thanks for debunking the “Nadar as a Spoiler,” narrative. I just hope that those who’ve bought into it, are willing to consider the facts that you’ve presented.
Thank you. Recommended.
Blue
Thank you, thank you, thank you, but why didn’t you post this years ago. I am really curious? Jest are you under 21 years old?
By the way The Pennsylvania Democrats didn’t appeal Jill Stein’s get on the ballot petitions this time, but the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to keep the Libertarians and Constitutionalists off the PA Presidential ballot. Democrats must now realize that election excitement will mean more votes for Dems who would originally stay home.
Exit polls are not the recorded ballots. That proves little. However a press review of the ballots after the Supreme Court decision came to the conclusion that had all of the ballots (remember Miami-Dade was prevented from being counted by the Brooks Brothers “riot” staged by Republican aides), that Gore had won the actually ballot count.
There were numerous factors that led to this situation. Jeb Bush stripped 90,000 “felons” of their voting rights prior to the election; many did not know they had been dropped from the rolls until they tried to vote. Palm Beach County had a butterfly ballot that registered Gore votes a votes for Buchanan. With all the “hanging chads”, it is likely that a lot of ballots were not properly die-cut to punch out easily. There were the first electronic voting machine irregularities noticed in some precincts. But Nader’s 97,488 votes, had even part of them gone to Gore, turned the election into one that was close enough to steal. Had a part of the Nader votes added to Gore’s total or a part of the votes resulting for Jeb Bush’s disenfranchisement move, there would have been no crisis.
It happened. It’s past. Nader came up 2.8 million votes short of winning Florida.
But the exit polls tell nothing.
To make the argument that it was miniscule the difference between the number of votes taken form Gore and those taken from Bush would have to be less than 540. But as I laid out above, the killer in the end was the failure to recount the Miami-Dade votes.
This thorough and nonpartisan study by UCLA reluctantly comes to the conclusion that Nader cost Gore Florida in 2000.
Yes, I know. I happen to be a sucker for lost causes.
I can’t help it.
Exit polls are different because they relay the intent of the voter.
When all is said and done, Al Gore couldn’t carry his own home state, Tennessee.
Mr. Blue grew up in Gore’s old congressional district, approximately 36 miles from the Gore’s farm in Carthage (Smith county), TN. (This is the congressional district held by conservative Democrat Bart Gordon, until he retired in 2010. It was during the 2010 mid-term election, that Republican Diane Black took this seat with 67% of the vote. (Had been a Democratic Party seat, since Al Gore served as representative from 1983-1985.)
He didn’t carry TN because of concerns about his personal integrity (due to right-wing charges), and to a lesser degree, because he was not even considered (by many) to be a Tennessean. Check out his bio. Gore grew up in, and was educated in D.C. (son of Albert Gore, Sr.). He only occasionally visited the family farm in TN. Lots of lingering resentment, silly or not. Just Googled, and found out that he and Tipper were even married at the Washington National Cathedral.
Also, didn’t help him with activists on the left, that he chose Lieberman, as his running mate. Bottom line, he lost the race, and has no one to blame but himself. Anyone who can’t carry their home state, has no business running for President, imo.
Blue
No, I read this too. The main argument in this post is that Nader did not steal votes from Gore. The authors agree.
This is in the abstract of the paper:
This section also agrees with the post:
Also, this corroborates the exit poll findings that showed Nader supporters were not mainly leftists or Democrats:
If anything, this paper is more evidence that Nader did not steal votes from Gore.
So,
Will your next Part discuss the various tallies of the Florida vote done by news organizations that determined that even with Nader, Gore got more actual votes?
A very interesting Part 1, I thought.
No, I’m not going to go there. I’m just trying to dispel the fear that voting 3rd party is like voting for Romney.
I agree there are a million ways to debunk the theory, but I’m only going to touch incontrovertible facts. Not heresay, or counterfactuals.
Besides, I don’t have that data, only the final tallies. Could you share that data if it is available to you?
Only if (1) the poll is of all voters, which it almost nevver is and (2) the person responding is telling the truth.
Exit polls are interviews of people leaving the polling place. They are a statistical sample and cannot reflect complexities of geography beyond the granularity that the polling organization is willing to pay for.
They are compared to cross-tabs to see if demographic groups actually claimed to vote for the candidate that simllar demographic groups in pre-election polls said they were going to vote for.
Exit polls have margins of errors just like pre-election polls. As close as the election was after the disenfranchisement and deduction of third party candidates, exit polls are too blunt an instrument to draw any conclusions about the sources of Nader votes.
The truth is that the Supreme Court decided the election by a vote of 5-4. And had they ruled differently Gore would have won Florida and the election.
Jest @10
You buried the lead.
The conclusion of this study is that Nader cost Gore Florida in 2000.
I quoted this conclusion at comment #6.
Voting for a third party is like voting for Romney only in the rare instances where those third party votes flip a state to Romney. They are “make a statement” votes when third party votes carry states as George Wallace did in 1968. And they are most effective when the third party actually wins 270 electoral votes.
To a great extent, the state you are in and the organization and success of the third party’s campaign determine which of these situations apply.
What happened in 2000 is not likely to happen in 2012 and certainly not likely to happen in every state. The most likely tipping point states (per Nate Silver’s model) are Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Florida, and Colorado in that order–but that can change by election day. If you are outside those states, third party votes likely won’t swing it at all unless something very surprising happens.
The argument that a third party vote is a vote for Romney is much to simplistic.
But the final vote total is? I’m not arguing that exit polls are perfect, but there is no other method of determining the other factors mentioned here. Nothing presented here is even close to the margin of error typical of a poll.
Even so, the one paper that was presented as counter evidence also shows that the idea that Nader stole votes from Gore is incorrect.
The last disclaimer really says that Jeb Bush’s actions disenfranchising voters and the buttefly ballot fiasco made the election close enough that Nader votes mattered. So Jeb Bush, the election supervisor of Palm Beach County, and the Supreme Court made Florida atypical to the rest of the country. Given that Pennsylvania and Florida are trying to disenfranchise voters, it is possible for the situation to repeat itself in one or both of those states if they become atypical.
But they are most important for Romney. Romney cannot win without winning Florida, based on current polling. Putting together the equivalent number of electoral votes from multiple states would be difficult.
No, I didn’t.
The point of the post was to show Nader did not steal votes from Gore. Again, the paper you presented said this:
There is more to it than just this, the election was far more complicated. That is why there are future parts that will debunk this further.
Exactly, there was far more going on than this.
Voter disenfranchisement and voter turnout are far more important and critical issues than alternative parties. I agree that FL and PA might become a mess for those exact issues.
Nader got 1.63% of the vote. Exit polls would have to have a margin of error of substantially less than that number to draw any valid conclusions at all. Typical margins of error for pre-election polling are 3% at best.
The fact is there is no way at all to tell how the Nader vote would have split if Nader were not in the race. A portion of those people might have just stayed home, for example.
Tarheeldemocrat @
I agree that many things cost Gore Florida. Jeb Bush disenfranchising voters was one of them. The butterfly ballot was another. And, on and on, including Nader.
I would add that argument only holds water if third party voters are swing voters.
Even then, the question really should be why did they reject the other 2 candidates.
I’m not talking about the 1.63%.
I’m talking about the 10% of Perot supporters who voted for Nader, and the 75% of voters who would have voted for someone else had Nader not run. The margin of error doesn’t apply here.
TD hit the nail on the head with “The truth is that the Supreme Court decided the election by a vote of 5-4. And had they ruled differently Gore would have won Florida and the election.”
Jest, as for your contention that “This is the first of a series that will disprove this myth; a myth that can be debunked in a myriad of ways. I hope this info helps Firedogs in their efforts to keep other progressives from voting for their own oppressors, and will let people vote their conscience guilt free this fall.”
Go for it. Personally, I need no convincing. I refuse to cast another vote out of fear.
And, anyway, BAR’s Glen Ford may have it right, regarding his “more effective evil theory.” I’m still mulling over that one. I do know that a lame duck Congress, and a lame duck President, could mean bad news, when it comes to striking a “Grand Bargain.”
What kind of leverage can be applied, in this scenario? Steve Pearlstein has already suggested that the millions of dollars that the “Fix the Debt” CEO’s are going to raise, should not be used to educate the American public, but to fund races for D’s and R’s who are willing to be “courageous” and vote for a Grand Bargain.
CEOs and Simpson-Bowles [sic] 3.0, Washington Post excerpt:
“So it’s great that dozens of the nation’s top business leaders have decided to join this fight and put some serious money behind it. They shouldn’t waste their resources, however, trying to “educate” the public about the need to tame the deficit. For one thing, the country already gets it. For another, any advertisements they might run will get lost in the $2 billion tsunami of negative campaign ads that are about to break over an already cynical electorate.”
“To pull this off, my back-of-the-envelope calculation is that Fix the Debt will need to raise $278 million. That may sound like a lot of money, but it works out to one-third of one percent of the profits earned last year by the Fortune 500. More significantly, its enough to provide $1 million in political air cover in the next election to each of the 60 senators and 218 House members, Republican or Democrat, who have the courage to vote for a bipartisan budget compromise next year. And by the time the tea party, Grover Norquist and the AARP are finished with them, most of them will need it.”
Blue
I wonder if Mittens wins this election how some dems will spin this loss? Insted of correcting their weaknesses they tend to strike out at possible supporters and seek to transfer the blame. This seems quite self destructive and the attack on third parties verges on voter supression in my opinion.
I seem to remember Nader offering to drop out and recommend that his supporters vote for Gore if the dems would openly support a few of his Party Platform Planks, they refused and that’s ancient history.
You must also be willing to suffer a lot of abuse for writing this. Nothing gets progressive dander up like a discussion of Nader’s role in the 2000 election.
That said, I voted for Nader but had he not been on the ballot, I would have voted for Gore. It doesn’t make sense for a conservative to vote for Nader. It just doesn’t.
If Romney wins (unlikely, IMO), the D’s will say that it’s proof that the D’s need to move to the right. It has always been so, and it will always be so.
It is as justifiable to claim that Joe Lieberman cost Gore the 2K election as it is to blame it on Nader.
Combined with Jeb Bush’s and the FL GOP’s manipulation of the election itself, Lieberman’s wan, insipid campaign appearances left the impression that the ticket had no vision, no positive motivation, and was just plain dog tired. Had Joe campaigned in FL in 2000 like he did in his home stare in 2006, it might have been another story.
I’ve always wondered if he didn’t throw the contest on purpose, hoping for Sec of State.
Blaming Bush’s victory on Ralph Nader has always struck me as one of the more pathetic memes in recent American politics.
Oh, and if O wins, well that’s just proof that voters enthusiastically approve of how far the D party has already moved to the right.
The UCLA study that oldgold is so hot about (why?) merely theorizes. Given that the actual ballots were actually studied, there’s a far better answer available:
The study found that had a complete recount been underataken, Gore would have won, no matter what standard was used, be it full marks, hanging chads, or the various standards used in the various counties. Gore won, Florida just didn’t count the votes.
And beyond that, there was the butterfly ballot issue, and the purges of the “felons” from the rolls, and so on. To say that Nader cost Gore Florida is beyond stupid.
Nader got less than 100,000 votes, a majority of which were not from registered Democrats
Over 250,000 registered Florida Democrats voted for Bush.
(That said, Tony Schinella’s reading of that chart is all wrong. Blisteringly incompetent, in fact, given that he comes to the conclusion that the total of Nader voters who voted for Clinton, Dole, Perot, or nobody in 1996 was…19%. Tony, a TOTAL should almost always be 100%; that’s why you do a survey.
It’s not that “1% of those who voted for Nader in 2000 had voted for Clinton in 1996″, it’s that “OF THOSE who voted for Clinton in 1996, 1% voted for Nader in 2000″. And, if you read the chart correctly, you’ll see that 16% of the 1996 Clintonites voted for BUSH. Yes, Bush “took” SIXTEEN times as many “Votes by people who voted for Clinton in ’96″ from Gore as Nader did…
…but it’s all Nader’s “fault”. Because that’s the story the Money Party wants you to buy. Fuck them.)
Vote-
No, he is right. When I first read this, I was highly skeptical as well. I thought he was “incompetent” too.
Then I realized I was reading the chart wrong. The first column adds up for vote totals in 1996. After the 1st column, you need to add the numbers up left to right.
If you do that they add up.
And if Gore had actually received the White House in 2000 the Democrats would have become responsible for the war in Iraq (a mandate from the era of Bush senior) and the Great Recession.
I’d like to think that we can cost a right-wing democrat the election with our third party votes in 2012.
Obviously actually winning would be nice, but if we can’t get that, it would be nice to make Obama lose. Costing the democrats the election is a good way to get their attention (telling them they have shifted too far to the Right), so there is no way I want to back down from taking credit for “Nadering” Obama.
You know, I was always sympathetic to making “Nader” a verb, rather than a noun. Just to scare the shit out of the corporatists. I used to think it was a missed opportunity, but now I realize it’s based on a myth that does more harm than good.
Until the 3rd parties can individually get a percentage total higher than the statistical margin of error, it’s not really a valid meme because their effects on the races are statistically irrelevant.
Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s a bad goal. I read a study somewhere that if 10% of the population has an unshakable belief, the country will eventually be pulled in that direction.
If that’s the case, 10% should be the goal, not 51%; and at that point, yes we’re talking about really changing an election.
cassidorus @32
If Gore had won, there are 3 things I am certain would not have occurred.
1 Bush Tax cut
2 Iraq War
3 Roberts/Alito: Citizens United
Without those 3 things, the nation would be in a much better place today.
Yup. Consider also that Buchanan took, in Florida and nationwide, only one-sixth of the votes from Bush that Nader took from Gore. If what Jest says is true, why is it that the only people defending Nader in 2000 are lefties and not righties?
Another thing — Nader himself not only knew he could give Bush the White House, it was his actual goal:
By backing Bush over Gore, Nader was emulating the “Nach Hitler, Uns!” (After Hitler, Us!) stance of the German Communists of the early 1930s, who despised what they saw as the weak-tea compromisers of Weimar and figured that putting Hitler at the helm would cause the economy to do even worse than it was already, thus causing the people to rise up in revolt within a year, reject both right-wing and liberal solutions, and turn to the Communists.
It didn’t work in Germany then, and it didn’t work in America in 2000. What makes anyone think it will work now?
Exactly. Gore would have either stopped 9/11 before it happened (because he would have acted on the PDBs, not ignored them), or dealt with it the way Clinton dealt with the first WTC attack in 1993, as a crime and not a casus belli.
We’re back to imaginary Al Gore again?
If Obama had won in 2008 there’s 3 things I’m certain would not have occurred:
Trying to stay in Iraq longer than Bush’s SOFA; open-ended expansion of war in Afghanistan; expanded war in Pakistan, Yemen; war in Libya
Extension of the Bush tax cuts
Sending someone to argue Citizens United in the Supreme Court who had zero prior courtroom experience
The country would be in much better shape by now
… wait! What?!?
If folks spent as much time organizing third parties on the local level over the past ten years as continuing the argument about Nader, there would be a few states in which a third party candidate might have the chance of winning the state. And there would already be third party local and state elected officials.
Florida 2000 cannot be blamed on any one thing. So it’s time to call it history and get down to work.
Wow, that article was something. Comparing him to Lenin & Hitler in the same article? I think this was over the top.
Equating “he wants to maximize his vote in every state in hopes of attaining the 5 percent of the vote that will qualify the Green Party for $12 million in federal matching funds in 2004″ with trying to get Bush elected is silly.
This is absolutely true, but what is wrong with that? Why is changing the party his job?
Are you implying that digby is like Lenin & Hitler too?
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/if-only-it-was-just-campaign-rhetoric.html
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand why is this “shocking.” Further, it has been clear for some time that citizens are looking for alternatives to the two parties.
Kevin G wrote about this not too long ago:
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/08/21/in-the-throes-of-election-madness/
That Slate article presents quotes that are consistent with what he’s said all along. But they were put into a Hitler/Lenin context that makes him look like some electoral extremist conspiring to have Republicans take over the country.
And even if that was his intent, he failed. There was no election where he had any statistical impact (see above, he did not take votes from Gore), and no evidence in the article is presented to the contrary. There were more important factors than this myth; if you feel that is not the case, please present facts, not accusations.
That whole article reads like a “Reductio ad Hitlerum” hit piece from digby or something.
THD is correct that if all the votes had been counted, Gore would have won. Therefore, and listen closely now, it cannot be Nader’s fault that GWB was selected. Revisionists like to claim that you must win an election by a margin that is too big to steal. This is not only wrong, but self-servingly stupid. Your villains lie elsewhere.
The strategy which Phoenix Woman derides in her tirade against Nader is one which I have heard expressed here at FDL, which is that when the opposition is in power the Democrats seem to develop a backbone. We saw that under Nixon, when this country experienced a teachable moment with the Watergate hearings. For a candidate who has a realistic view of his own chances, I put these efforts of Nader’s in a far better light. That he has not succeeded in making the Green Party part of the national scene electorally isn’t because he didn’t try – and why should it be considered criminal to want to replace the do-nothing Democrats?
I resent the language which calls running for office ‘stealing votes.’ We know what stealing votes really is, and to call being an attractive alternative to the status quo ‘stealing votes’ – even to suggest that such a candidate ought not to challenge in states where the big guys are evenly matched – that stinks! A candidate is a candidate is a candidate. And last I heard, you voted for the person that most reflected your views, in order of the importance you the voter give to those views.
I’m proud of my vote for Nader in 2000. He represented my views. I wish he had won. I did not strategize on whether it would effect how the vote would go for Gore.
The next time I voted for the ‘lesser evil.’ I am ashamed of that vote. I should have stuck with voting for Ralph Nader, who represented what I believe in. And the last time I voted for a sham. I am not ashamed; I voted my views; I do, however, feel supremely betrayed. I will only ever vote for whomever stands for what I stand for, as best I can determine that, even if that person has no chance whatever in the general scheme of things.
A person running for office doesn’t ‘steal’ votes unless he actually backs a truck up to the polling place and makes off with them.
Juliania–
Your say: ” I will only ever vote for whomever stands for what I stand for, as best I can determine that, even if that person has no chance whatever in the general scheme of things.” and,
“A person running for office doesn’t ‘steal’ votes unless he actually backs a truck up to the polling place and makes off with them.”
Hear, Hear!
Blue
The period from 2006 to 2008 was not noted for Democratic backbone.
And I agree. Stealing votes is what rigged voting machines do and what corrupt election officials do. Having a margin too big to steal has to do with frustrating a single or a few dozen rigged machines and one or two corrupt election officials. For “corrupt election official”, see Palm Beach County Fl 2000, and Waukesha County WI 2012.
Third parties compete for votes; they do not steal them. “Sending a message” is not competing for votes; it is some other motive. In 1968, George Wallace was not about sending a message, he was about winning the election; he thought he had more Northern urban ethnic support than he did, primarily because the Nixon campaign competed for the those same urban ethnic voters. And the Nixon campaign tried to shut the Wallace campaign down through nudge-nudge co-option of some of his message. In part of the South, Nixon’s Southern Strategy worked. Wallace was contained to Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Oklahoma (is OK west or south?). Humphrey took Texas.
I harp on the 1968 election because it set up the party reorientation and political direction that we are still struggling against. And because it was Wallace’s campaign that reoriented the parties.
Then you are what election analysts would call and “independent” or “swing voter”. Where analysts buy into the duopoly is the perennial assumption that not enough swing voters will swing to a third party to make a difference in the election. And that comes from the perception that most third parties are ad hoc efforts for a particular election and really have not cross-election base of support. So analysts don’t poll third parties until they actually make some waves.
“Steal” implies that the votes somehow “belonged” to Gore, that he had a “right” to them. If not enough people voted for Gore, that is not Nader’s problem, it is Gore’s.
I’m bemused by people who voted for Nader (as I did) but don’t want to own it.
“…most third parties are ad hoc efforts for a particular election and really have not cross-election base of support. So analysts don’t poll third parties until they actually make some waves.”
It is not just that analysts don’t poll third parties, TarheelDem. They don’t even mention them. This used not to be the case. When the League of Women Voters was running the debates, for instance, third party candidates did have a chance to have their voices heard.
I was surprised and heartened that our local CBS affiliate last night actually did a piece on a husband/wife team who are separately running as write in candidates for Senate and House in New Mexico. The piece was informative; it told us what these two worthy people (no party affiliation) stand for. I can’t vote for the wife, she is not in my district, but I will vote for Bob Anderson – New Mexico has elected a write-in candidate in the past, though the circumstances were considerably more favorable.
I suspect also, TarheelDem, that there are people who are nominally either registered Democrats or registered Republicans who could be considered under your definition of my attitude also ‘swing voters’. For it is both those parties which have swung, away from what we consider, have always considered, to be the important issues. Our issues haven’t changed; the parties definitely have.
You should get Sam Seders podcast for today where he interviewed Jill Stein. As the interview went on, Sammy just couldn’t resist fear mongering anyone voting third party. Sam, it appears, wants to effect change by everybody joining local precincts and transforming the Democratic Party (in I guess not more than 10 to 20years or so I guess). I wish him good luck with that, but I just don’t think that would be as helpful as progressives getting an edge on 5 to 10 percent of the vote. In effect, this would Europeanize politics in this country and move us toward multiple parties and a real chance to have input into policy. Or maybe the voting machines have already blocked this alternative.
As long as there is a Congress elected the way it is, American politics will not be Europeanized. The US system has worked as two coalitions, one ruling and the other oppositional. Those coalitions until the capture of the Republican Party by movement conservatism in the 1960s-1990s were cross-ideological and together represented a broad and diverse center of public opinion. Those folks left out of coalitions formed third parties (or during the collapse of the Federalist party and later the Whig party, second parties). Under one-party Democratic-Republican rule after Jackson, the Democratic party was riven by divisions that functioned as separate parties and even resulted in sectional Democratic candidates.
An edge of 5 to 10 percent of the vote only changes things if it results in a third party taking at least one state in the electoral college. If that begins to look like it is going to happen, one or the other of the established parties will seek to coopt the third party.
There have many proposals for changes in voting procedures to unblock this two-party duopoly. None have delivered progressive victories even in progressive jurisdictions yet. It will take a big tent progressive-left-anticorporate coalition of parties to get any political traction and there must be some geographical and ideological diversity in it in order to create a large electoral base. Libertarians could find a home in it if they ever understood corporations as a government creation that turns out to suppress the very liberties they seek. As long as there is unity and a consensus on coalition candidates, parties within the coaliton could maintain their identities and operate independently.
A strong alternative coalition is such new ground that consultants and those who would rig voting machines would not know the first time around how to game the system. And any coalition would have to field and train its own poll watchers and election lawyers. And have a rapid response system to any attempts to disenfranchise voters or rig the vote.
SCOTUS gave Florida to Bush, not Nader.
To assume that those voting for Nader “would” have voted for Gore had Ralph not been in the race is a remarkable leap. Gore, by refusing to take a stand on off-shore drilling, burned any tentative link to the Greens way before any votes were cast.
Do you ever tire of being wrong?
I’m a slow learner. I finally figured out why my CBS affiliate was being so generous towards my write-in candidate. Heather Wilson, their fave, is doing (I am happy to say) abominably in the polls – so they want to wean away her Democratic opponent’s voters by offering an alternative. That’s the strategery.
The only thing they don’t factor in is – I wouldn’t have voted (nor would others) for the Dem anyway, since he is simply obediently spouting the party line. And we should well know by now where that is going to take us. (Carramba! she would have not voted!)
Instead of not voting, given the write-in option, I shall vote, for Bob Anderson. Pundits and politicians can fuss about strategery all they want; if voters follow their consciences towards the best candidate when the alternative is “not voting”, strategery goes down the drain.
Great post, jest!
What impresses me is not so much that true believers would promulgate a myth that supports their ideology, but what contempt for democracy they demonstrate by insisting that citizens vote only for one of the two major parties. You know, one of the “serious,” “legitimate” ones that has a chance of “winning.” It is like when supposed champions of freedom of religion say one can follow whatever faith they choose, so long as they pick a Christian church to worship at. Folks like this don’t give a shit about representative democracy. They only care that their team wins.
One of the other interesting things about Dems who think Nader robbed them of victory is that such a myth reveals a concomitant myth about the legitimacy of the “democratic” system in the US and an unwillingness to challenge that system even when a Presidential election gets stolen–if what took place in the US in 2000 had happened in a poor country, everyone would have called it a coup, which is what it was. However, it is easier to blame Nader than to question the articles of faith that got taught in seventh grade civics class.
The thinking here is that the system of representative democracy in the US is fundamentally sound and equitably pluralistic, and that the citizens get to decide who the President is. No that is a serious myth.
I see your point, but I think it presupposes a level of self-reflection that party members are typically incapable of. Re WOW and YSD @25 and 27: I suspect that if Obama loses that the Dems will move more to the right and respond in about the same way that Reps did after the 2008 election.
“If Gore had won, there are 3 things I am certain would not have occurred . . . 2 Iraq War”
The Iraq War?! Clinton/Gore bombed the shit out of that country throughout the 1990s–1996 was an especially heavy year.
I am not sure that an election has to be close in order to be stolen.
I think it would depend on why Obama is perceived to have lost.
How could anyone be certain of anything about a Gore presidency?
Who would ever have predicted that people in the Clinton White House would brag about “ending welfare as we know it,” and that Clinton himself would demand repeal of Glass Steagall be on his desk ASAP and fail to kill Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance.
Not to mention getting a blow job in the Oval Office and perjuring himself about it, thereby finally giving the Republicans what they had been seeking for so long, namely a reason to impeach him.
I don’t even know what would have happened during my Presidency, had I somehow become President in 2000, let be certain of what would have happened during the Presidency of a man with whom I’ve never so much as had one telephone conversation.
True.