*still* got 'em in a bunch over Nader after seven years? please read.

We hear a lot about Ralph's ego here, and I'll admit that he's hardly perfect. But it wasn't about him. Get this - if his run in 2000 had simply been about his ego, he would have gotten, oh, maybe a couple thousand votes and we wouldn't still be talking about it. The fact is that he did get the votes of a lot of folks who normally vote for the Democrat (including myself), and that was so, not because he entranced people with his hot looks or the "dime's worth of difference" rhetoric, but because a lot of people were tired of almost eight years of capitulation to business interests under the guise of "triangulation". If you hate Nader, you really ought to hate the DLC, because without them, Nader 2000 would have been a non-entity.

They could have had Gore.

fewer had voted for nadar, but it is the stolen, caged, chadded, military etc votes that put * in power


people in this country have a right to vote for whom they choose

if the votes are not tallied correctly it doesn't matter who they actuallly vote for


please drop the nadar blame game-

at many different parties. The fact is, if Nader hadn't run Gore would have won. Its indisputable. I've yet in all these years see one Green defend what THEY did. Just point fingers at everybody else.

One can complain about purged voters or other problems with the way the election was run, but the final vote cast was within the margin of counting error. I've never seen any real evidence that the Florida vote count was fixed. I doubt it was.

Wild stories that go along with the finger pointing are just excuses for the Greens. The Greens said right up front that they wanted the Democrats to lose. The Greens said that if the Democrats lost they'd learn to fear the Greens and the the Democrats would be forced to all become radical leftists. What we got were four of the most sheepish years for Democrats ever. What do the Greens say now?

"Oh, gee, officer, we were all just standing here and the window just broke."

The Greens brought us George Bush and they want to do it again. They really anger me because they sanctimoniously act like they are so much more caring than everybody else, when in fact their actions demonstrate that they don't care one bit how things turn out.

you disagree with.

Really?

Greens controlled the Supreme Court?

Your assertion is patently ridiculous.

Come on now, you know better than that.

There wouldn't have been a supreme court case if it wasn't for the Green Party. Examine your own conscience. If not for the Greens, Gore would have won. You can't refute that. You can't defend the Greens either.

Again, there are NO Greens on the USSC.

instead of an anti-Gore theme and if he had kept his campaign away from swing states like Florida and Iowa.

voters would learn a bit about risk matrices, and why America's government yields a two-party stable system, and why American third-parties function as spoilers at the National level.

I wish we had a parliamentary system, where multiple parties could contribute. But we don't. Voting for third parties under our electoral system throws elections to the party most opposed ideologically to that third party. It's just how the electoral mechanics plays out.

Third party candidates like Nader have every right to run, but it's very bad strategy to vote for them at the National level. This works in both directions, of course. Ross Perot gave us Bill Clinton in 92, but Nader gave us Bush in 2000.

The Democrats are to blame for Bush. Not Nader.

Gore couldn't win his own state. Why not? WHY FUCKING NOT?

Blaming Nader is tired fucking excuse by people who don't the fucking will to change the direction of their own misguided party.

Nominate Hillary Clinton.

Go for it.

If she and her corporate agenda get in the White House, she'll probably damage the party's core principles more than her husband did.

For instance:

a) Gore would have won if the media hadn't decided to pull their "Heathers" routine on him, and prop Bush up by buying into his "salt of the earth" marketing.

b) Gore would have won if the Supreme Court hadn't killed the Florida Recount.

c) Gore would have won if the GOP hadn't pulled so many voter-suppression tricks.

d) Gore would have won if Nader hadn't run in 2000.

All those are true statements. (d) is true, even though (a) thru (c) are also true. Life is complicated that way.

And speaking of "tired," I'll tell you something else that's "tired." The utterly unsupportable claim that "there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans."

Tell me, do you think we would have invaded Iraq if Gore had been president? Do you think we would have rejected Kyoto? Do you think we would have a "department of homeland security?" Do you think a putz like Brown would have been in charge of FEMA when Katrina hit? Do you think a Gore administration would have pissed on our Constitution for seven straight years? I think there's a substantial chance that 9/11 would never even have happened if Gore had been elected, because Gore wouldn't have appointed a posse of neocon freaks to his cabinet, who were so fixated on Cold War boogiemen that they ignored the report that warned the attacks were about to occur.

Do you think a Democratic administration in 2008-2012 will be the same as another 4 years of GOP administration? Do you think things would have been the same if the GOP had retained control of Congress in 2006?

Even with all the Democratic fuck-ups of the last 7 years, the difference is night and day.

I actually prefer Edwards to Clinton. But any of the Dem candidates will be a breath of sanity compared to whoever the GOP candidate will be. And one of the two is going to be president. Not a 3rd-party candidate.

talk about falling for corporate sound bites. He dared to try to make a difference in the corporatocracy that is destroying us...shame, shame on him.

it's about reality..."Who among our Democratic candidates can win"! Nadar never had a chance and that is the reality isn't it?

Let's do a comparison...do you think if the Rethuglicans if they were in the same situation that the Dems were....Do you think they would have allowed a splintering of their votes...which would have caused them to lose the election?

This time it's for real...there is no turning back...if any of the Retuglican Candidates are elected President you can take the Constitution and put a match to the corner of it....They are intentionally weakening the Constitution and they want a one party rule that is dictated by theology.

The Democratic party "Must" win to save what's left of the Constitution and our rights as Americans.....and the Democratic party "Must" prosecute all of those who would dare committ Treason against our Country and our Constitution.

The Democratic party must restore regulation in "All industries" to make sure that these mega corporations are broken up.

Just sayin...Vote as you will...but the mantra "Vote or Die" , "Vote or be dissapeared".........isn't funny anymore.

I would like to be able to vote for some one, not against the other one. If one of they would just say "Lets get to work." You know I would follow.:cry:

but I would also like to hear a candidate say that "he or she will clean up all Government organizations and get rid of non-qualified personel"..

That's what I want to hear...

Perhaps not for you, but it most certainly is for others here at DU. We have one poster whose avatar is "Fuck Nader". That makes it pretty clear.




They were in the same position: Pat Buchanan. Buchanan cost the GOP critical votes in key states.

Everyone is allowed to voice their liberal opinions.

And my question still remains....did Nadar have a chance of winning?

And are you talking about Buchanan's 1996 Republican campaign or 2000 Reform Party Campaign?

Which Buchanan campaign -- 2000 Reform Party.

And, yes, it's great to have a civilized debate on this issue. They're rare.

Do you think they would have allowed a splintering of their votes...which would have caused them to lose the election?

"Allowed"? What do you suggest they might have done to prevent it in a similar situation (which I think they may face next year)?

The Democratic party "Must" win to save what's left of the Constitution and our rights as Americans

As thin as that has kind of talk has now worn after the FISA vote, I'm planning on being a good Dem through next November. We'll see what comes of it.

word...

Anyhoo...

The Fisa Vote....allowing this administration to turn the spy satelites on American citizens....this is "1984"..... I am sure that what we have heard is just the tip of the iceberg.....

I with you will be a good Dem through next November....and you are right we will see what comes of it.

but mind your election systems and mind the DLC. :(

/on the other hand, people who can't type shouldn't shout :rofl:

The DLC is almost folding now and the folks who want to keep the White House in Republican hands are screaming louder than ever. Anything those folk don't agree with they call DLC. By their definition, everybody who isn't an extremist is DLC.

No presidential candidates showed up at the DLC convention. Its still "They are all DLC!"

:shrug:

Thank you. I'll continue to hate his lying guts.

Folks who lived in the swing states had their heads in the clouds if they thought they were voting for progress by voting for Nader... because in those states they were effectively voting for Bush, period.

who couldn't be here tonight.

:rofl:

Oh and again, fuck Nader.

Oh and again, fuck Nader.

Original.

I wonder how many Nader voters wish they could have a "do over" on their vote in 2000? I'm sure most felt they could throw their vote away, knowing Al would win the WH, anyway.

No "do overs" necessary.

election fraud. :shrug:

But for DLC strategy, most folks who voted for Nader would never have given it a second thought. Yes, I consider it the fault of the DLC...and the Supreme Court, and those who blocked minority access to the polls, and...

Gore wins NH, Florida doesn't matter. But if it feels better blaming someone else for your decision to vote for Nader, by all means, rationalize away!

I'm just pointing out the why of the vote. You can accept it or not.

All I can say is, Nader isn't the problem. They were going to steal it no matter what.

I didn't vote for him but it wouldn't have mattered because our federal elections are corrupted and we need to deal with that fact.

in the Clinton WH behind welfare reform, and did little to distinguish himself during the campaign from Clinton's legacy. The irony is that I'd have supported the Gore we saw in 2003, and wouldn't at all mind seeing him get into this race.

before the 1992 election year began. It was in his little booklet he put out at the beginning explaining his candidacy. I never heard of Al Gore having anything to do with it.

Gore is the same guy now he was then, except he's more emotional and vocal. Gore never was slave of the corporations or anything remotely like it. They fear Gore like they fear death. Always have.

I know BC was big on it - it's why I voted for Nader the first time in 1996.

You said Al Gore was the biggest force behind welfare reform and its not true. You never did explain what the "DLC strategy" in 2000 meant. Was it the part about matching funds for retirement accounts for the poor? Was it about making global warming a top priority? What?

Hate the game.

Gore won, even with Nader. If the ballots would have been counted and counted accurately then none of this shit would have happened.

The question I pose to all of you is this. Will you support a candidate who believes in paper trails and paper ballots, Dennis Kucinich, or do you still want to play a game that does not work for the good of the people?

The choice is simple. www.dennis4president.com

1. Samuel Alito
2. John Roberts

not by big enough margin to keep the election from being stolen by the biggest bunch of lying thugs that ever disgraced American politics. And it's really disingenuous of people who voted for Nader to constantly flail around hurling blame in every direction but their own.

but way to miss the point.

You're just spouting more of the old 'it ain't our fault, it's everybody elses fault' shit that always comes from Naderites.

The GOP generally supports regressive policy positions, and as a result, I don't support them. The DLC somewhat less generally supports somewhat less regressive policy positions...and as a result, I don't support them. Spin it how you like.

ever to run for president, if he couldn't win enough to make the election uncheatable, whose fault is that?

Whose fault is it that three days before the election, 30% of voters were undecided? (I can't remember that ever happening before.)

That can mean only one thing: The difference between Bush and Gore was not plain enough to them. I cringed when Gore basically said "Me too" to just about everything Bush said in the debates.

Gore ran a lousy campaign. I cringed every time he opened his mouth, and I came within a couple of days of voting for Nader, until I decided that Bush was too scary.

I'm not going to fault Uly though, since Bush was going to win Georgia no matter what.

Yes, Gore would have been better than Bush, but it's not clear to me how much better. He would have continued with the military buildup, pushed "free" trade, and talked about how "something needed to be done" about various countries.

There would have been about three million of them silently surrounding the SCOTUS on the day after the Bush v Gore decision was handed down.

With thousands more showing up every few minutes..


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010205/bugliosi


None Dare Call It Treason

Vincent Bugliosi


In the December 12 ruling by the US Supreme Court handing the election to George Bush, the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law. If you doubt this, try to imagine Al Gore's and George Bush's roles being reversed and ask yourself if you can conceive of Justice Antonin Scalia and his four conservative brethren issuing an emergency order on December 9 stopping the counting of ballots (at a time when Gore's lead had shrunk to 154 votes) on the grounds that if it continued, Gore could suffer "irreparable harm," and then subsequently, on December 12, bequeathing the election to Gore on equal protection grounds. If you can, then I suppose you can also imagine seeing a man jumping away from his own shadow, Frenchmen no longer drinking wine.

From the beginning, Bush desperately sought, as it were, to prevent the opening of the door, the looking into the box--unmistakable signs that he feared the truth. In a nation that prides itself on openness, instead of the Supreme Court doing everything within its power to find a legal way to open the door and box, they did the precise opposite in grasping, stretching and searching mightily for a way, any way at all, to aid their choice for President, Bush, in the suppression of the truth, finally settling, in their judicial coup d'état, on the untenable argument that there was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause--the Court asserting that because of the various standards of determining the voter's intent in the Florida counties, voters were treated unequally, since a vote disqualified in one county (the so-called undervotes, which the voting machines did not pick up) may have been counted in another county, and vice versa. Accordingly, the Court reversed the Florida Supreme Court's order that the undervotes be counted, effectively delivering the presidency to Bush.

Now, in the equal protection cases I've seen, the aggrieved party, the one who is being harmed and discriminated against, almost invariably brings the action. But no Florida voter I'm aware of brought any action under the equal protection clause claiming he was disfranchised because of the different standards being employed. What happened here is that Bush leaped in and tried to profit from a hypothetical wrong inflicted on someone else. Even assuming Bush had this right, the very core of his petition to the Court was that he himself would be harmed by these different standards. But would he have? If we're to be governed by common sense, the answer is no. The reason is that just as with flipping a coin you end up in rather short order with as many heads as tails, there would be a "wash" here for both sides, i.e., there would be just as many Bush as Gore votes that would be counted in one county yet disqualified in the next. (Even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that the wash wouldn't end up exactly, 100 percent even, we'd still be dealing with the rule of de minimis non curat lex--the law does not concern itself with trifling matters.) So what harm to Bush was the Court so passionately trying to prevent by its ruling other than the real one: that he would be harmed by the truth as elicited from a full counting of the undervotes?

whether Nader jinxed the 2k election or whether the pig woulda stole it anyway seems almost academic. Surely to despise the big corps, the government, bureaucracy, the mass media etc, which anyone with decent sense must do, cannot be a sustainable(?) way to live! bush has exposed the brute, the greased carrion monstrosity that (thinks it) runs this world. Maybe we should just, ahem, let's put it bluntly, smash the goddam thing!
if there's a 'survival instinct' in the world then the righteous death wishers must be fairly inconsequencial, you'd think, despite two generations of schemeing and killing and sneaking around in the dark. keeeerrist man, why all the gloomy faces? Nader's a good guy

They will be completely fux0red.

Ralph's pretty well played out now - he's becoming Lyndon Larouche under a different banner. Besides which, I doubt most people will even consider voting for a progressive third party next year, much as the Dems are trying to get them to.

2012 could be a different story if we don't see an end to the current idiocy, though.

then what the hell WAS IT ABOUT? Nader knew he didn't stand a chance of winning, he was just trying to "buck the system". He handed the election to GWB. Not once, but twice. No repuke is going to change parties to vote for someone like Nader. Dems, on the other hand, are willing to try something new (not that I blame them for that, but at WHAT COST?!!). When the stakes are that high, you do not bet on the underdog, period.

Not once, but twice

What, you're saying that '04 was his fault too? :D

Dems, on the other hand, are willing to try something new (not that I blame them for that, but at WHAT COST?!!)

The cost was what the OP was about.

I'm saying that anytime an Independent throws their hat into the election ring, knowing they don't have a frigging chance of winning, they are doing so to "make a point". Trouble is, enough of the electorate DOES NOT "GET THE POINT". Repukes never change party. And if they ever did, it would not be for someone like Ralph Nader. Don't get me wrong, I respect Nader's many wonderful qualities. I do. But to siphon votes from the Democratic Party ( when you KNOW you can't win), is just ego massage.

Is exactly what caused Nader's candidacy.

When a political vacuum is created then someone is going to fill that vacuum.

The vacuum in question was caused by the Dems moving right en mass and leaving the left gapingly empty.

*Any* politician running for POTUS is egotistical.

You have to have a big ego to think you are the very best man for that job.

to run if you know you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting more than 10% of the vote. He siphoned votes from the Democratic Party, NOT THE REPUKES. If that makes Nader, or you, sleep better at night...well, I wish you the best. But, rest assured, I am definitely NOT having anything close to sweet dreams.:scared:
The power is about to go out at my house (HUGH STORMS). Again, :scared:

You completely ignored my point.

The point being that if the Democrats had not continually moved to the right then Nader's candidacy would never have happened in the first place.

Put the blame where it truly lies, on misguided "centrist" chasing Democrats who abandoned their base to go after voters who would rather vote for a real Republican than a Dem trying to act like a Republican.

you are right, I really did not address you point, per se. I also have a problem with the left moving to the right to "get votes". I wish every one of the Mother F*ckers would stand up for us. I wish Clinton or Edwards would say they are fine with gay marriage, for instance. But we cannot ignore the fact that that would cost them millions of votes. If Clinton, Edwards, or Obama want to pretend they stand for centrist values to get elected, so be it. With "values voters" where they are today, it is almost inevitable that Democratic candidates take that stance. Repukes did the same thing during the last election cycle ( we will keep you safe, we are uniters, not dividers). I can only hope once they are elected, they will do what is necessary to get this country back on track. Maybe it is not the high road, but look where the high road got us last time...swiftboated into obscurity.:hi:

Aren't all that likely to vote Democratic anyway.

Chasing those voters is a will 'o the wisp that will never pay off.

Dance with the one what brung ya' is an old and wise rule.

And it's for more than just his ego. It's also because of his ignorance, deceitfulness and stupidity.

He got the votes he had only because in every election, there are lots of either temporarily or permanently stupid people that vote.

I blame the rubes that believed his baloney. He caters to the politically naive and the elitists that think their political principles and votes are much too special to be shared with the rest of us pedestrian Democrats.

But it wasn't yesterday.

And at the time I agreed with Nader.

Particularly on economic issues there wasn't all that much separating the two parties, I'm not sure there is now really.

Then 9/11 came along and threw everyone's calculations out the window.

Even now the Democrats are trying mightily to prove Nader to be correct after all.

One acronym: FISA

One word: Impeachment

One country: Iraq

He's a grown man and can take care of himself. All I'm doing is pointing out why more than a couple of folks, myself included, voted for him.

Some so called Democrats think that we owe them our vote and support, and view having Republicans in office as the whip that keeps us obedient. They must realize the obvious, that if you view the people in your base with contempt, they won't be enthusiastic to help you. But they simply don't care, as they don't want anyone but themselves having any role in deciding the Party platform.

For the record, I don't like Nader or the DLC, but the DLC knew what a threat Bush would be, so they've got one up on him in the brains/compassion/progressive department.

and he sucked even more in 2004. I don't blame him for ALL of it, but I do blame him for SOME of it. He should've known better in 2004. And, the leadership of the Democratic party should have known better than to take impeachment off the table, write a blank check for the war, and pass the crazy FISA bill.

I don't vote Republicans, even when they register as Democrats

...Gore would have had it in a walk.

Christ, Nader-haters are fucking pathetic. Keep it up, assholes, we may just lose in '08 yet! :eyes: