Best scenerio for taking down Bush in 04....

Here is what we need to win:

Dem nominee: Al Gore
Greem nominee: Ralph Nader
Reform nominee: Jesse Ventura

Both third party candidates would take away for Bush this time. Plus more greens would vote for Gore seeing the way Bush has done the economy and environment. Ventura would definitly shake things up up north, espeacially in MN. Ventura is more aligned with Gore rather than Bush so more support would be sucked from Bush. Plus younger people would love Ventura. Lets say Nader gets 3% of the vote and Ventura gets 4%, that is 7% out of 100%. Now if Gore could win some key states along with most he won last time that would put him on top. With the third party candidates taking votes away from Bush and the ressurgance of Gore we can win.

Um....

Ralph Nader and Jesse Ventura are not going to be stealing any votes from Bush. As you said, Ventura is more Goreish than Bushy, and Nader is far, far left... They would steal votes from Gore, not from Bush. It's called splitting the vote... There are some people who love Bush, and will vote for him. There are some people who hate Bush and will vote for someone else. But if there are -several- alternatives to Bush, and no one agrees on a very clear single candidate alternative, then the left will all vote differently, and we'll end up losing, not winning.

The problem with Gore getting the nomination is that politically he's one of the right-most candidates on the field, next to Lieberman anyway. He follows 'new liberalism' which is really more a new term for libertarianism. Now, I'm not saying that libertarianism or Al Gore are bad--but it could cause problems.

Nader has declared he may run for Prez again in 2004. I think he's going to try to Leftify the Democratic candidate, whoever that might be. The Democrats know that if Nader runs, they lose a good deal of their leftmost constituents, and if he doesn't run, everyone who would have voted for Nader will likely vote Democrat. So if someone far left like Kucinich or maybe Dean gets the nomination, Nader won't run, because he'll be happy with the political stance of the candidate on the ballot.

If he's unhappy with the political stance of the candidate on the ballot, he'll announce his candidacy as an idealist platform.. "Vote for me if you don't like Republican and Republican Lite." And then he will try to barter with the Democratic candidate, get that candidate to change some of his positions, in exchange for Nader stepping back down and endorsing the Democrat.

If Gore is the one Nader is bartering with, it will be unsuccessful--Gore is as proud of his middle-to-right economic stance as he is of his middle-to-left social stance. Gore will refuse to budge, Nader will run, and the Dems will lose a small but still significant portion of their constituency.

This is why I think Gore, Lieberman, and to a lesser extent Kerry, Edwards, etc., would be bad choices for the ticket, because their views are fairly far to the right of Nader's. And in this rather close political battle, Nader is a very important player, not as a true contender, but rather as a vote splitter or lack thereof.

I'm not just saying we should please Nader because I'm a huge lefty (I am a huge lefty, and I love Nader, and Kucinich whose platform is basically identical), but rather just for realism's sake. Unless we really collect our constituency and convince every registered Democrat in this goddamn country to go out and vote, and make sure those votes are Democrat, Bush will win. And much as some on the left disagree with some on the farther left and the center, every one of us can agree that what we DON'T want is for Bush to win.

So, in short (sic), our game plan should be this--Try to cut down on as many of the left third parties as we can, especially ones with the sort of name recognition as Nader and Ventura. If this means pandering, so be it, if this means voting in a huge lefty, so be it. Hold grassroots get-out-the-vote campaigns. Convince EVERYONE to vote, and convince EVERYONE that their vote counts. And for God's sake, if you live in Florida, when you get back from the poll write a handwritten, signed, and dated letter to Jeb Bush that says "I VOTED DEMOCRAT. DO NOT STEAL MY VOTE."