General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It's not 3 dimensional chess. It's a kick to the gut. [View all]caseymoz
(5,763 posts)The SCOTUS wouldn't have gotten near it without Nader. If you take Nader out of the race, do you think Bush v. Gore would have happened anyway? How? Take Nader out of that race, Gore wins.
Nader says a lot of right things, but he was wrong about one thing. (And who isn't wrong about at least one thing?) Our Constitution isn't set up to accommodate political parties. Remember, the Founders wrote the Constitution to have no factions. In other words, they had in mind what's now known as a one-party state. We're lucky we've got two. Other countries will deal with political parties in their main operating documents. Not the US.
This problem cannot be addressed by forming a third party and trying very hard. It has to somehow be addressed on the Constitutional level.
Nader's failure to see this was a gross miscalculation at the very least. Whether it involved dereliction for emotional satisfaction is a matter of conjecture. The failure of his followers to grasp that his victory was hopeless, and the consequences of voting for him anyway out of "principle" is indefensible.
Except it's much more apparent in hindsight. Really, the only defense I can think of for Nader supporters is they had no way of knowing just how awful W would be, and just how many people paid not only with their livelihoods but by their very lives by having him in office. I'm guessing a lot of people were too dazzled by the light of the greater good to give the opportunity for the greatest evil much thought.
No matter what you thought of Gore, however, I don't think he would have ended his years in office with a wrecked economy, 7,000 or so Americans dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis dead, many more wounded, maimed and/or disabled, people being imprisoned with no charges . . . I can go on and on. Gore did not have that kind of potential evil in him.