What We Should All Learn From The 2000 Elections and Al Gore's Loss [View All]

Many people love nothing more than to beat up Ralph Nader voters over the 2000 election since that election gave us the worst president of my life time. And why not beat up Nader and his voters? They are certainly an easy punching bag when your main interest is to protect the Democratic party establishment.

I fell for this line of thinking myself. I was fairly young during the 2000 elections and didn't pay much attention to them. It wasn't until Bush invaded Iraq that I started paying close attention to everything that was going on around me and all the lies that were being told. As I watched Bush destroy the country I could never understand how people could have voted for Nader and given us the disaster that was Bush.

That was until recently when I started to develop similar feelings to those I imagine Nader voters had. Turns out that when you support someone with your heart and soul then that someone turns around and pisses all over the key issues you believe in and the issues they said they were for you start to feel angry and betrayed.

With Clinton and Al Gore you have an entire list to pick from on where they betrayed their base. On equal rights you had them screw us over on DADT and DOMA. On freedom of information you had them implement a telecommunications act which allowed the type of media consolidation not seen in our history. They also tried really hard to censor the internet which the courts eventually struck down thanks to the ACLU. On the death penalty they did everything they could to expend it. In the name of "national security" they limited Habeas Corpus and were perfectly okay with the 500,000 Iraqi children that died as a result of their sanctions. In fact it was the Iraq liberation act that Clinton signed in to law that Bush later used as one of the justifications for invading Iraq.

But what probably put a lot of people over the top was their disastrous economic policies. They gutted welfare programs on just about every level. They signed NAFTA in to law which caused millions of our jobs to be outsourced. And lets not forget that it was their policies that helped wall street create the largest economic disaster since the great depression. Clinton and Gore thought it was a great idea to have people from Goldman Sachs be in charge of this country's financial regulation which is why they repealed Glass-Steagall and fought tooth and nail against any form of derivatives regulation which people in Clinton's own cabinet were pushing for.

So when elections came around the Gore campaign was shocked people weren't buying the argument that they have to vote for them because the other guy was way worse. They couldn't believe that this wasn't a good enough argument to convince just 527 additional people in the state of Florida to vote for them.

Today we are seeing the same thing. Barack Obama (at least in relative terms) was one of the most liberal democratic candidates during the 2008 primaries that had a shot at winning the nomination. In his presidential campaign announcement speech he even called for the withdraw of all troops from Iraq by March 2008. After he had won the primaries Obama moved to the "center", embracing such policies as offshore oil drilling and extending his deadline for Iraq troop withdraw by many years. Then after he had won the election he decided to move even further to the right to the point where on many issues he made Richard Nixon look liberal.

Public option? Gone (don't give me the bullshit about there not being the votes, they used reconciliation and only needed 50).

Wall street reform? Watered down.

The mandate he ran against? Signed in to law.

Promises on lobbyist influence in the white house? Broken.

Cuts to social security? On the table.

Standing up for worker rights? He was just kidding about that.

Hiring millionaire wall street fat cats that were mainly responsible for crashing our economy to run his economic agenda? You betcha.

And now with the 2012 elections gearing up the argument once again is being made is that everyone needs to fall inline and vote for him because the other guys suck worse. How did that argument work out for the democrats in 2000?

Don't mistake this as a post in support of a 3rd party candidate or even a primary challenge to Obama in 2012 on my part. My only point is that the argument that we all need to fall in line no matter what Obama does isn't all that compelling. You can scream this as loud as you want on as many internet message boards, street corners, and other avenues as you'd like. But that argument isn't going to convince all that many people that feel angry and betrayed. You can dedicate as much energy as you'd like in to painting these people as the problem, but if history is any judge that won't work out all that well for you. Maybe it would be more worthwhile to take that energy and use it to pressure the white house in to supporting social security. Or pressure them to stand up for worker rights. Or pressure them to hold wall street accountable starting with the people in their own administration.

The 2012 elections are still over a year and a half away. You can use that time to guilt people in to getting in line or you can use that time to demand real change from this administration. I'm sure there are people that will buy in to the argument that they must support Obama no matter what he does, but don't be surprised when it turns out there are many people out there that won't.

Sorry about this long rant and thank you for reading.