Did Nader Help GWB* steal the 2000 election?

[Q]

- Whew. I've seen dozens of posts on DU that make this very claim. The claim in and of itself doesn't bother me as much as the exclusion of the other factors that gave W the election.

- This type of thinking doesn't reflect the whole truth and lets the real culprits off the hook. The problem is: those who blame Nader seldom if ever bring up any of the other factors that helped install Bush* in our White house.

- It's nice to have a convenient scapegoat...but other things were more instrumental in the theft of the election than the participation of third parties: purging of voter rolls, manipulation of absentee ballots by Harris operatives, discounting thousands of votes that would have been counted in any other election, Republican staff thugs sent to intimidate poll workers, Harris giving permission to some districts not to do a recount at all, media distorting the truth AND the Supreme Court's (illegal) decision to stop the (legal) recount. These are just some of the other factors that influenced the outcome of the election.

- Bash Nader and the Greens until your fingers fall off. But you do yourselves, your party and this country a disservice when you leave these other elements out of the dialogue and left to go down the memory hole. All Americans and future generations need to know about what happened in 2000 and shouldn't be left with the impression that the Bush* junta had nothing to do with it.

[Noordam]

1. No Q but I will always believe Pat Buchanan worked with Bush

to kill the reform party.


http://home.earthlink.net/~bartcopdisk/reform.html

[AP]

11. I totally agree with that. Remember the battle over getting their money...

...and then he got "sick" during a crucial stage of the campaign.

Who EVER got sick in Septmeber before a presidential election? Clinton lost his voice and STILL campaigned (and won).

Buchanan got sick because Bush wasn't doing well enough in the polls.

[baldguy]

2. Did Pat Buchanan help GWB* steal the 2000 election?

I agree with you. The Bushies succeeded in thier theft because they are evil anti-democratic facists. The fact is that Nader, Buchanan, the FL voting system, Jebs' purges, the brownshirts' intimidation, etc, etc, etc, mearly created the opportunity for them.

If you see a wallet laying in the street, you pick it up. If you turn it in to the police you're doing your civic duty and helping a neighbor out. If you keep it for yourself then you're a thief.

[Michael Harrington]

4. No way.

I voted for Ralph and aside from voting for Jesse in the '88 Primary, it's the best vote I ever cast for President.

[janekat]

68. Well thank you for giving us George Bush is all I can say...

I worked 7 days a week on the Gore campaign... I will never forgive Nader for "hornswaggling" a bunch of "naive" people into voting for him. What good did it do?

[Iverson]

72. no, thank YOU

Have a bipartisan day.

[Q]

6. As mentioned...I have no problem with "Nader Bashers"...

...but after so long on this board...I rarely read anything from 'anti-Nader' DUers about the many other things that went wrong in the 2000 (s)election.

- This contributes to the impression that the election was nothing more than a 'close race'...making BushCo* an innocent party.

[mikehiggins]

3. Nader no Perot

Ross did manage to cost George the First his reelection bid, though Bush did help out by screwing up the economy, etc. Nader was much less of a factor in 2000, especially when compared to Gore's manageing to lose his own home state and several others that went to Bush that should have been in the Democratic column.

Most of the blame for 2000 lies entirely with an inept and poorly conducted Democratic campaign, not with Nader. Had even one or two other states gone with Gore, Florida wouldn't have even been a footnote to the general election.

If there's one thing about the Clark effort that bothers me, its the presence of so many "veterans" of 2000 who worked on the Gore campaign.

All that being said, having the Greens run their own candidate this time will be absolutely the wrong direction to take.

This won't be a case of "sit down, you're rocking the boat." It's more a case of "grab a bucket and start bailing, cause otherwise we're all gonna drown." If Ashcroft can label Greenpeace a terrorist organisation, how long before the other environmental groups find themselves with the BATF storming their headquarters?

[Iverson]

7. a detail

"All that being said, having the Greens run their own candidate this time will be absolutely the wrong direction to take."

Failure to run a candidate would probably result in the loss of ballot access. I suggest as an alternative that Greens should run their own candidate, as opposed to an outside nominee.

[Hep]

22. What?

Is this an accurate paraphrase of what you just said: "He didn't have anything to do with it in 2000, but he sure as hell better not run in 2004."

Fortgive me, but I have to wonder if this is what you really believe. Here:

Nader often makes this "the worse, the better" point on the stump in relation to Republicans and the environment. He says that Reagan-era Interior Secretary James Watt was useful because he was a "provocateur" for change, noting that Watt spurred a massive boost in the Sierra Club's membership. More recently, Nader applied the same logic to Bush himself. Here's the Los Angeles Times' account of a speech Nader gave at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., last week: "After lambasting Gore as part of a do-nothing Clinton administration, Nader said, 'If it were a choice between a provocateur and an anesthetizer, I'd rather have a provocateur. It would mobilize us.' "

http://slate.msn.com/?id=1006380

[wildwww2]

5. Was Nader on the Supreme Court? No!

He had nothing to do with it. Bu$h stole the election with his pocket court. It is a fact. I am still here in Florida steaming because Bu$h was too much of a Wussy to count my vote. I don`t even consider the maggot to be an American. Americans count one anothers votes.
Peace
Wildman
Al Gore is My President

[Loonman]

8. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't

He's a jackass, anyway.

[Iverson]

9. What's next, Q?

I would think that Greens and progressive Democrats, among others, would be natural allies, yet on a supposedly progressive board, an awful lot of people have trouble even being civil to and about Greens.

Since we cannot cast votes in concert, we need to find practical opportunities to work together. These can be structural (e.g.- IRV, public financing of elections, strategic nomination and support) or issue-based (e.g.- environment, economic globalization, war, media ownership).

The only way we'll convince the party operatives to sit down and play nice is if we at the grassroots insist upon doing so.

I am aware that plenty discussants here would rather have a blood feud, but for those who desire constructive action, I'd like to know what your top choice would be.

Thanks in advance.

[Q]

14. As many are aware...

...I used to be one of the most rabid Green bashers on this board. I too blamed them for Bush* being in the WH...but then I woke up and realized there were many elements involved and few of them had anything to do with the Greens.

- One has to put things in context...beginning with the Clinton impeachment and the hostile takeover of the GOP by far-right extremists and zealots. And I finally understood that 2000 was not just a 'close race'...but a coup in the strictest definition of the word. It was fine blaming Nader right after the election...but things continued to go horribly wrong.

- Third parties on the left should indeed be a natural ally. But a division occured when the New Left in the Democratic party refused to recognize what really happened in 2000. This splintered the party into factions...one side wanting to forget the past and the other wanting to use the lessons of the past to fight the common enemy in the WH.

- You'll find that it's the 'NeoDems' that refuse to work with third parties towards a common goal. The liberals (all three of them) have no problem working with them because they realize we need all the help we can get...and that the Bushies represent a danger never before seen in the US.

- I frankly don't have much hope for the future. The party is now hopelessly polarized between the old and new Democrats. The 'old' Democrats are being pressured into giving up on Democratic values and principles...'encouraged' to adopt a new strategy of abandoning the poor and the working class in exchange for share of the New Right's corporate pie. Idealism is dead...replaced by plastic politics and fistfuls of cash.

- Before we can effectively fight the Bushies and bring third parties into the fold...the Democratic party must be brought back together under a common theme.

[Hep]

20. You make some good points

- Before we can effectively fight the Bushies and bring third parties into the fold...the Democratic party must be brought back together under a common theme.


That's not Nader's Philosophy. Just so you know.

"When lose, they say it's because they are not appealing to the Republican voters," Nader told an audience in Madison, Wis., a few months ago, according to a story in The Nation. "We want them to say they lost because a progressive movement took away votes." That might make it sound like Nader's goal is to defeat Gore in order to shift the Democratic Party to the left. But in a more recent interview with David Moberg in the socialist paper In These Times, Nader made it clear that his real mission is to destroy and then replace the Democratic Party altogether. According to Moberg, Nader talked "about leading the Greens into a 'death struggle' with the Democratic Party to determine which will be the majority party." Nader further and shockingly explained that he hopes in the future to run Green Party candidates around the country, including against such progressive Democrats as Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Sen. Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, and Rep. Henry Waxman of California. "I hate to use military analogies," Nader said, "but this is war on the two parties."

http://slate.msn.com/?id=1006380

[jonnyblitz]

58. I don't find this board overall all that progressive.

When I see people on here parakeet the same crap that freepers say on their board ( ie. "fry mumia") I wonder...

[KG]

10. no blow job, no bush.

St. William of Clinton himself cost Gore a slam dunk victory in '00, a margin so big that voter fraud and naders candidacy would not have been a factor.

but the loyalists, as they do with the many other failings of the dem. party, still have their heads in the sand about how that scandal affected who voted and how they voted.

[DiverDave]

12. WHA??

Man this is not happening. You posit that a consensual sexual act, between adults, is the reason that bush won?!
Um, I really don't think so.

[charlie]

13. A-Yup

Clinton and Gore could've tag-teamed Bush, which Clinton was reportedly dying to do.

Gore wouldn't have needed Lieberman's oily piety. The veep spot could've gone to someone more energetic like Edwards, or more electorally valuable like Graham.

You or I may not think the prez's weakness for hummers was a big deal, but Gore certainly did.

[KG]

17. countless voters found clintons weakness for hummers a big deal

and to think otherwise dellusional.

[JVS]

28. But he's right

[ShaneGR]

15. Well, I don't think he did it on purpose... but he still contributed

And anyone who contributed (By votes) to Bush's reelection in 2000 is guilty as charged.


Hey Q, I thought you were a Democrat? A Democrat who voted for Nader in 2000?

[charlie]

21. Stalking Q your new hobby, eh?

Can you read? He just said he was once a Green-basher. It's true. His unwavering defense of All Things Dem and open derision for Greens used to get on my nerves.

[Q]

23. You're missing the point...

...I don't really care if you blame Nader...especially if it makes YOU feel better. But to not even acknowledge there were other factors is tantamount to a lie.

- This...in essence...excuses all the fraud and manipulation that went on in 2000 and the theft of not only an election...but of Democracy itself.

- I voted for Gore in 2000...as you should well know.

[ShaneGR]

24. OK then, question........

Where was Nader during the Florida fiasco???

[Q]

27. Don't know...I was more concerned about the whereabouts of...

...Jeb 'the crow' Bush and Harris. Jeb was the brother of the would-be-king and Harris was cochair of GWBs* Florida campaign. Talk about a conflict of interest.

[Hep]

29. You are ultimately right, but

I haven't gotten past the fact that had 5% of Nader voters marked Gore on their ballot, Katherine Harris and her disenfranchisement gambit would have ben irrelevant.

I know, it's like saying, "Had that fan not tried to catch the foul ball, the cubs would have gone to the series". Well, except that one can be proven and the other can't, but it's close enough.

[Q]

30. You shouldn't 'get over it'...

...but on the other hand...we mustn't forget the past that brought us to this place. RWing Republicans had no problem with the 2000 election because their guy came out on top. They really don't care HOW he 'won'...but Democrats should...considering that we are the injured party.

[Hep]

33. True

Dog knows I'm fighting twice as hard as I did in 2000 to get the D message out. A whole lot of us are. I feel optimistic!

[LeahMira]

40. Do you really think so?

I haven't gotten past the fact that had 5% of Nader voters marked Gore on their ballot, Katherine Harris and her disenfranchisement gambit would have been irrelevant.

I sincerely doubt that. I think that had 5% of Nader voters marked Gore on their ballot, the Republicans would have pulled out Plan B, or Plan C, or whatever on down the alphabetical line to make sure that Jeb's brother won. I think we are kidding ourselves if we think that what we saw is all they had up their sleeves. I think they pulled out just what they needed for the moment and are saving the rest of their dirty tricks for 2004, maybe in some other states or maybe in Florida again.

I think Q is right in mentioning "the rest of the story" and I think the Democrats had better come up with a candidate and a plan that we can all agree to support. I'm getting sort of tired just reacting to each new Bush horror and I'm pleased when any candidate comes up with some plan that doesn't depend for its appeal on contrasting itself with the present administration.

[Hep]

42. Do the math

96,837 people voted for Nader in Florida in 2000, according to CNN's election results. Even by CNN's vote count, which I don't think is up to date, Gore lost by less than 2,000 votes. 5% of 96837 is 4841.

You can claim all you want that the Bush administration would have won despite that, but the numbers don't lie. I don't know what more you can do outside of wiping 50000 people off voter rolls. maybe you have some ideas?


I'm all about The Rest Of The Story, as my first post in this thread indicates. But we need to look at every angle. Anyone who is considering voting Green has to knwo what really happened in 2000, and the truth is that Nader preferred Bush over Gore and got what he wanted. He marginalized the effort on purpose. He can't do it again.

[Name removed]

45. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hep]

55. Calm down!

Allow me to demonstrate before that vein in your head explodes:

Nader often makes this "the worse, the better" point on the stump in relation to Republicans and the environment. He says that Reagan-era Interior Secretary James Watt was useful because he was a "provocateur" for change, noting that Watt spurred a massive boost in the Sierra Club's membership. More recently, Nader applied the same logic to Bush himself. Here's the Los Angeles Times' account of a speech Nader gave at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., last week: "After lambasting Gore as part of a do-nothing Clinton administration, Nader said, 'If it were a choice between a provocateur and an anesthetizer, I'd rather have a provocateur. It would mobilize us.' "

So I know it because Nader SAID IT. So why don't you calm down and wait for a response before you get all foamy at the mouth?

More:

When lose, they say it's because they are not appealing to the Republican voters," Nader told an audience in Madison, Wis., a few months ago, according to a story in The Nation. "We want them to say they lost because a progressive movement took away votes."

in a more recent interview with David Moberg in the socialist paper In These Times, Nader made it clear that his real mission is to destroy and then replace the Democratic Party altogether. According to Moberg, Nader talked "about leading the Greens into a 'death struggle' with the Democratic Party to determine which will be the majority party." Nader further and shockingly explained that he hopes in the future to run Green Party candidates around the country, including against such progressive Democrats as Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Sen. Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, and Rep. Henry Waxman of California. "I hate to use military analogies," Nader said, "but this is war on the two parties."

http://slate.msn.com/?id=1006380

[Terwilliger]

60. SAME CUT AND PASTE IVE SEEN FOR 2 YEARS

it means no more to me now then it did before.

Hell, Bush is in power and the Democrats are STILL toadies who don't seem to nbe able to effect anything. Nader was right.

[Hep]

70. I wonder

why it means nothing. He says he'd rather Bush than Gore, and it means nothing to you.

Why didn't you just say that even Naders own words wouldn't convince you of his goal?

[noonwitch]

16. No-he didn't help Gore, obviously, but

Nadar had nothing to do with the Florida bungle. Nor did he have anything to do with the USSC decision to stop the recount. Gore won Florida, thus the election, but was prevented from taking office.

If Gore had won his homestate, Tennesee, he wouldn't have needed Florida. There are a lot of reasons why Gore is not in office, but Nadar is not one of them.

[Hep]

18. Of course he helped

It was his plan, and continues to be.

Whenever I talk about Nader helping Bush, I make sure to mention that by no means is Nader the ONLY, or even the most IMPORTANT factor. He played a small role in Bush winning the election. But the biggest problem isn't Nader's philosophy of bringing down the D party. The biggest problem is that he fleeced a ton of people into thinking he was right, which he never was. So many people are still in denial about it. Everyone just needs to understand that yes, Nader played a small role, at LEAST in Florida. He got what HE wanted, a Bush term.

[jrthin]

19. I don't believe

Nader was the main or only cause for the loss of dems in 00. But, Nader was certainly a big part of the problem. Had he not been involved, the repubs would have had less cover for their stealing of the election.

[Skittles]

25. THERE WERE MANY FACTORS

But Nader was definitely one of them. And deep down when he hears the news reports of the dead soldiers, I know that bastard knows it.

[Iverson]

26. mind reading

Have a bipartisan day.

[Q]

31. Well, Iverson...

...how WILL the interested parties come together to defeat the Bush* fascists?

- How do we put an end to this 'family feud' and take back America from the corporate interests?

[JVS]

37. Pounding 2.7% into submission is the only path to victory!

:eyes:

[Iverson]

65. Well, Q ... (adjusts tie)

Those are two different questions indeed, but let me start out with one answer: first people must want to do so.

Basically, you're turning back upon me my earlier question to you, and I don't have a lot of great insight here, but it seems to me pretty basic that an effective coalition needs genuinely interested parties. Here on DU I see a little of that, accompanied by some interest that is theoretical only, also accompanied by outright hostility to the notion.

Any civilized person should want to defeat Bush. The problem arises when we consider the replacement. For some, simply defeating Bush is enough, and policy issues are wacky idealism that shouldn't even be on the table for discussion as long as a "D" follows the officeholder of the Presidency. For some, the major excesses of the current administration are problematic, and so technical adjustments to existing policies suffice. For some, the country's current political direction is so poisonous that any continuation is not on the table for discussion. Of course there are shades between these.

This bleeds into your second question. I am all for taking the country back from the corporate interests that have been strangling it. Unfortunately, this kind of talk makes many Dems and some independents uncomfortable. All of a sudden, you've got "Democrats for Nixon" or "Reagan Democrats" or other centrists who jump ship, even as they post on DU about the intransigence of lefties.

There has to be the political will to work together, or at least make working together more attractive than wasting time in front of the computer playing the recriminations game. I'll be working on it at the local level until other, better-placed and better-talented people get it together in the party apparatus(-es).

Cheers.

[Uzybone]

32. Well said

and isnt this topic tired anyway. Its been rehashed more times on this board than any other topic. Some say Nader wasnt a factor, sensible people know he was ONE of the factors. Either way lets forget about him and his die-hards and move forward.

[Q]

41. I brought up this topic...

...because just today I've seen several comments blaming Nader without the mention of any of the other factors.

- It's not a 'dead' topic until more Democrats can admit to what really happened before, during and after the 2000 election. They must pass on this information or risk more lost history going in favor of the other side.

[Zero Gravitas]

34. Yes of course

If only 10% of those who voted for for Nader in Florida had instead voted for Gore, Bush* would have been unable to get the Supreme Court involved and the Conservatives on that court would not have been able to commit their treason.

[MadHound]

44. Let's look at another 10% in FL, WPE

The ten percent of voters who were either registered Dems or self described liberal and didn't vote for Gore(due to his offshore oil drilling plans) and decided to double screw him and voted for Bush. That's right, 398,000 registered Dems and 197,000 self-described liberals were pissed off at Gore so much they decided to double screw him by voting for Bush.
Compare this to the 97,000 who voted Green in Florida. Then ponder the fact that if Gore wasn't in the pocket of oil companies(BP) himself(or at least wasn't so obvious about it) he would have had at least ten percent of those pissed off votes. Gee that works out to be 59,500 votes. There's your margin of victory.

I know, I know, people have said before that those weren't "real" Dems or "real" liberals. Well, I would submit to you that virtually all of the old time Dixiecrats switched to 'Pugs long ago(mid-sixties) as did the Reagan Dems(mid-late eighties). And what possible reason would one describe oneself as a liberal if you weren't one? That's a good way to get yourself killed, or at least harassed in today's poisonous political atmosphere. Besides, being pissed at a candidate over offshore oil drilling certainly sounds like liberal values to me.

[CMT]

35. No

I've never blamed the Greens for 2000. The best case for Gore's defeat was that he didn't carry his home state of Tennessee with 11 electoral votes or usually democratic West Virginia with 5 electoral votes. Nader was not much of a factor in either of those states.

[chiburb]

36. Blaming Nader is like Cub fans blaming Bartman...

One factor, yes. Deciding/major factor? I don't think so.
Continuing with the baseball analogy...
Ignoring Lieberman's pathetic showings against Cheney is like ignoring the Cub shortstop's error.
One of many "plays" that cost them the trip to The World Series/The White House...

[janekat]

38. He campaigned in swing states that were close between Gore & Bush

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,393674,00.html

-snip-
Over the past 10 days, liberals have been voicing shock and dismay at the imminent prospect of their old hero, Ralph Nader, intentionally throwing the election to George W Bush. A first, eloquent protest came 10 days ago from a group of a dozen former "Nader's Raiders," who asserted that their former mentor had broken a promise not to campaign in states where he could hurt Gore and begged him to reconsider doing so. Others, including Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, have expressed a similar sense of disappointment and betrayal.

-snip-

..... The Green party nominee is spending the final week of the campaign stumping in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington - the very states where a strong showing stands to hurt Gore the most.

[janekat]

39. Nader caused Gore to lose Florida. He campaigned there on the last day

http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/08/press.column/

Final lesson: Ralph Nader was the real spoiler in this election. As I write, the unofficial vote totals in Florida are: for Bush -- 2,909,136; for Gore -- 2,907,351; for Nader -- 96,698.

Simple arithmetic says it all. Assuming that most of Nader’s votes came from Gore -- a safe assumption if there ever was one -- without Nader in the race, Gore would be the clear winner in Florida and the next president of the United States.

So what did Nader accomplish for all his efforts? He didn’t get his 5 percent. He didn't qualify the Green Party for federal funding. He didn't succeed in building the Green Party. He only succeeded in destroying the Democratic Party and, perhaps, denying Al Gore the White House. And, of course, if that happens, everything that Nader supposedly supports -- environmental protection, worker safety, consumer protection, a woman's right to choose -- would be systematically destroyed by a Bush administration.

[Q]

43. Nearly 100,000 voters were purged from the rolls...

...and when you put this together will all the other problems in Florida...it's strange to see the main culprit always being identified as Nader.

- The Bushies are crooks and they manipulated an election in order to install George in the WH. Nader participated in Democracy and ran as a third party candidate. Which scenario is more dangerous to Democracy?

[Hep]

46. 100000?

I thought it was 50 thousand people purged.

[Q]

47. The number varies from 60 to...

...100 thousand. I believe Palast has the most accurate numbers...and he puts it up near 100 thou.

- I'll try to find more exact numbers...but the point is that thousands of mostly black voters weren't able to vote because they were 'mistakenly' purged from the polls for being 'felons'. As it turns out...a very small fraction of the list were actual felons. Keep in mind that this list was put together by GOP-friendly data base company.

[MadHound]

48. Initially it was 50,000 Hep

That was what Greg Palast first reported to the Gore camp while the recount was still underway. The Gore campaign chose, for whatever reason, to not investigate or publicize this clear case of voter fraud and disenfranchisement(so much for his oath to uphold the Constitution) and as Palast contiued his investigation the number went up. Ultimately the number came out to aprox 98,000.

[Q]

49. A correction to my numbers...

From Greg Palast:

Five months before the election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the removal of 57,700 names from Florida’s voter rolls on grounds that they were felons. Voter rolls contain the names of all eligible, registered voters. If you’re not on the list, you don’t get to vote.


If you commit a felony in Florida, you lose your right to vote there, and you‘re “scrubbed” from the rolls. You become a non-citizen, like in the old Soviet Union. This is not the case in most other states; it’s an uncivilized vestige of the Deep South.


My office carefully went through the scrub list and discovered that at minimum, 90.2 percent of the people were completely innocent of any crime – except for being African American. We didn’t have to guess about that, because next to each voter’s name was their race.


When I questioned Harris’ office about the high percentage of African Americans on the scrub list, they responded, “Well, you know how many black people commit crimes.”


But these people weren’t felons, so why were they scrubbed?


The Florida Republicans wanted to block African Americans, who largely vote as Democrats, from voting. In 1999 they fired the company they were paying $5,700 to compile their felony “scrub” lists and replaced them with Database Technologies , who they paid $2.3 million to do the same job.


There are a lot of Joe Smiths in the Florida phonebook. DBT was hired to verify which Joe Smith was a felon and which was not. They were supposed to use their extensive databases to check credit cards, bank information, addresses and phone numbers, in addition to names, ages, and social security numbers. But they didn’t. They didn’t use one of their 1,200 databases to verify personal information, nor did they make a single phone call to verify the identity of scrubbed names.


So where did DBT get their data?


From the Internet. They went to 11 other states’ Internet sites and took names off dirt-cheap. They scrubbed Florida voters whose names were similar to out-of-state felons. An Illinois felon named John Michaels could knock off Florida voter John, Johnny, Jonathan or Jon R. Michaels, or even J.R. Michaelson. DBT matched for race and gender, but names only had to be similar to a certain degree. Names could be reversed, and suffixes (Jr., Sr.) were ignored, but aliases were included. So the felon John “Buddy” Michaels could knock non-felon Michael Johns or Bud Johnson Jr. off the voter rolls. This happened again and again.

-----

- Note: this is an older article...so the numbers may have been revised.

[charlie]

54. Don't look now

but they're at it again in Kentucky, preparing to pursue a campaign of poor black voter intimidation like in Florida:

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/6499709.htm

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/kentucky.gov.pdf

[janekat]

51. He was ONE of the culprits not the only culprit

n/t

[janekat]

50. Nader said he prefered Bush to Gore. Used to be a Republican.

http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0011/0151.html

-snip-

Recently, Mr. Nader has said that: If given a choice between Bush and Gore, he would vote for Bush. Mr. Nader would happily throw the country to the Right, placing the Supreme Court and the entire executive regulatory system in the hands of the most retrograde elements in our political life.

.....The repeal of Roe vs. Wade would be of little consequence. Never a
champion of women's rights, Mr. Nader claims that abortion rights
might just as well be left up to the states.

-snip-

"Several months ago, Nader indignantly denied a quote attributed to him by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the environmental advocate and Gore supporter, to the effect that the Green maverick would actually prefer a Bush victory. But the editors of Outside magazine cited a transcript of an interview with Nader showing he had said just that in an unguarded moment." See: "Nader's hollow promise," http://www.salon.com/news/col/cona/2000/10/24/nader/

Every time Nader lies about Democrats he helps the Bush Republicans and he reminds me that he wanted Bush in the White House. Nader did everything he could to during Election 2000 to make that happen. Also, Nader said and did nothing to help defend our citizens’ rights as Republicans threw out our votes and tore up our democracy in Florida. The only valid, fair, constitutional solution was to count the votes. Nader's suggestion? "Flip a coin."

Maybe we should have seen this betrayal coming when Nader joined the right wing jackal attack against President Clinton. As recently as his 2000 campaign which Nader claimed was about fixing the system, Nader went on the CNN Crossfire show screaming that Bob Barr and Ken Starr were right: Clinton deserved to be thrown out of office. So much for cleaning up politics, moving the country to the left, and all the little people who elected Clinton President twice!

[Q]

53. It's fine to debate Nader's 'motivations'...

...but...like so many others...you seem to have no interest in the other things that went on in Florida to toss the election to Bush*. This is like giving Bush* and his operatives a free pass.

- Continue to ignore history and it will sneak up and bite you in the butt.

[janekat]

66. I'm concerned about BOTH factors. And they can bring us down again in 2004

I hope people are not fooled again into voting for Nader. He is NO friend of Progressives. He has his own agenda.

[Cat Atomic]

52. Nader did what he set out to do. He steered the the next set of

Democratic presidential candidates leftward. He helped point out that there are alot of people on the left who are sick of moderates.

[Hep]

57. If that's true

Then why are centrists leading in all the polls? Why is the green D candidate, Kucinich, among the bottom of the pack?

Nader failed at his ultimate goal.

[Cat Atomic]

62. Not a majority of Democratic voters, perhaps-

but a significant minority. The argument that Nader "lost" Gore the presidency is an admission that there are enough people disillusioned with moderates to cost them an election.

[Hep]

71. well

when you look at what percent of eligible voters turn out, yeah, it's tiny. And of course, Nader wasn't the only thing, and he wouldn't have been an issue had other things gone right, like the GOTV, or had Gores campaign captured the hearts and minds of our youth and disenfranchised. It would be wrong for me to say otherwise.

But I question if what we're dealing with is simply disillusionment or to some degree a combination of that and not understanding politics in general? Arnolds running in CA reminded me of the same kind of craze, the appeal of the outsider, as we saw with Nader in 2000, although it wasn't as rabid.

[sangh0]

56. No, Nader did not help the theft

He's still a s***bag in my book, but he didn't help Bush* steal an election.

And good work Q! People could use a reminder that there were other factors involved.

[Q]

59. Q falls to the floor...

...in shock and disbelief.

- But in all sincerity...it pisses me off that Bush* has seemingly received a free pass and most of America still remembers the 2000 election as a close race. This is dangerous for many reasons...but mostly because it makes it that much easier for the public to accept the NEXT time when election fraud is 'suspected'.

- We simply can't allow this to happen again...especially if it means another Democrat is prevented from taking an office that is rightfully theirs...

[Terwilliger]

61. Who is this person??

Sangha? You still in there??

[adriennel]

63. Independents

If the Democrats want to win more support from Independents, they need to lay off the Nader argument. This is one thing that really bugged me about MWO and led me to DU--their constant harping on Nader supporters. I am an Independent but not a Nader supporter. The main reason I am an Independent is because I don't think the US can see any real political progress until we break the two-party strangle-hold. In 2000 I thought asking people to change their vote from Green to Dem just so Bush wouldn't win was simply offensive. Everyone has the right to vote for the candidate of their choice for their own reasons. To ask voters to act otherwise is really no different than the countless system manipulations enacted by Mr Bush and the Repugs. I don't know how they managed to get all the planets aligned to actually win the travesty of the last election, but I hope to get that lucky one day. Cheers!

[Roark]

64. Yes

Nader took votes away from Gore and allowed the close count to happen. The close count was the only reason the Repugs were able to get away with stealing the election. If Nader's votes had gone to Gore, there would not have been the opportunity for the * to steal the election.

He helped.

[John_H]

67. Even I'M sick of this topic, but the important thing

is that all indications are that he won't be in a position to do/not do it again, even if the margin is razor thin. Huge numbers of his 2000 voters believe he helped chimpy and are thus coming back in droves, and that the media and the dem party are going to do a much better job making voters aware of just how authoritarian das greens platform is.

[Brian Sweat]

69. No

The idea that Nader cost Gore the election is based on the assumption that Nader voters (Greens) and Gore voters (Democrats) have a lot of common ground. I do not believe that this is the case. As Democrats, we have to give up the notion that we have the right to expect Green voters to vote for Democratic candidates. This idea is not only undemocratic, but it is based on faulty reasoning. We have no more reason to expect Greens to vote for our candidates than we have to expect the members of any other party to vote for our candidates (including the Republicans).

[mzmolly]

73. "Help" ... YES.

He helped.