I no longer blame Nader for the loss in 2000

[dansolo]

First off, I want to make it very clear that I neither support nor endorse Nader. I think he is an asshole, a hypocrite, and an egomaniac. But, for all his faults, he is not the reason that Gore lost in 2000. So Nader lied about Gore. Big deal. So did people like Tim Russert, Chris Mathews, and Wolf Blitzer, not to mention countless others in the media. I can guarantee that their lies had a lot more influence on voters than Nader's did. Nader didn't force anyone to vote for him. The problem was not Nader's lies, or even Nader's presence on the ballot. It was a misinformed populace. If Nader was lying about Al Gore and the Democrats, then it was their responsibility to get the truth out.

However, there is one person who is very much to blame for the 2000 loss. That would be Katherine Harris. While you can decry the influence that the media and Ralph Nader had on gullible voters, she actually illegally prevented people from voting. That trumps all other considerations.

[redqueen]

1. Great post

I agree that Nader doesn't deserve the treatment he's getting.

[vi5]

2. I agree with you.....

I still can't stand the guy and I can't stand many if not most of his supporters. I fail to see why they are any different than Larouche supporters.

But that being said, I'm done pointing the fingers about 2000. There is and was enough blame to go around for that debacle and unless any of us have a time machine, it doesn't do any good to continue beating it. Let's just make sure it doesn't happen. And one way to do that is to essentially ignore the whole Nader thing.

[togiak]

3. Sort of agree

I agree to a point that it wasn't Nader's fault that Gore lost. It was his race to lose and he ran a terrible campaign.

But, with Nader in the race you had the left split into two parties. The Green and the Dems. While I don't think that all Nader voters would have voted for Gore, the exit polls showed that a good % of them would have. I can state with the utmost certainty that of the almost 100,000 Nader voters in FL, more than 600 of them would have voted for Gore and that would have put him over the top in FL. If Nader hadn't run then Gore would have won, therefore one can say that Nader cost him the Presidency.

[ShimokitaJer]

8. Better make that three parties

Don't forget that 20% of registered Democrats in 2000 voted for Bush. There were thirteen times the number of Florida Democrats voting for Bush as all those who voted for Nader.

If Gore had focused on the vast differences between himself and Bush rather than arguing for many of the same issues, then they would not have done so, therefore one can say that Gore cost himself the Presidency.

Or, if you prefer, if the centrist New Democrats had not put pressure on Gore to appeal to the center rather than the base, then Gore might have been free to condemn Bush's agenda rather than agreeing with in, therefore one can say that the centrists cost Gore the Presidency.

Want to keep playing?

[library_max]

22. The 20% of registered Democrats who voted for Bush

weren't Democrats. We've been through this before. In many parts of the South, you have to register as a Democrat to have a meaningful vote in local elections, even if you are the Republicaniest Republican who ever walked. The people who voted for Bush wanted Bush. It's foolish to complain about them making the kind of mistake the Nader voters made.

The nonsense about the Gore campaign "forcing" voters to vote for Nader is the old Games-People-Play game called Look What You Made Me Do. It's nonsense of course - people are responsible for their own actions.

Had Gore not appealed to the center, he would actually have lost the election rather than winning it by too narrow a margin, just like every candidate before him who failed to appeal to the center.

Want to keep playing?

[ShimokitaJer]

23. It's hard to play with no data

You have a bad habit of making blanket statements and failing to support them. For example:

Interesting statement about the south, but unfortunately the 20% of Democrats who voted for Bush did so nationwide. Do you have any data suggesting those 20% also voted for Bob Dole in 1996? If so, I would delight in seeing it.

No one said the Gore campaign "forced" anyone to vote for Nader. But what Nader did was accuse the Democrats of failing to champion democratic issues, and rather than proving him wrong, the Gore campaign attempted to show just how true it was. And yes, Gore, like all people, is absolutely responsible for his own actions.

IF Gore had not appealed to the center, he would have lost even bigger. Putting aside for the moment that these hypotheticals are always impossible to prove, I invite you to supply ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that suggests this would be the case. Polling info? Demographics of Gore voters? Magic Eight Ball? Do you have any evidence at all that this is the case, or do you think that saying it often enough will make us believe it.

Now, you are responding to a post of mine in which I gave SPECIFIC DATA in support of my point. You deny it using nothing but blanket statements, with no evidence of any kind mentioned. Before you do the same to this post, I would encourage you to find some kind of support for your statements if you want anyone to take you seriously.

[library_max]

26. Reread your post three times.

See no specific data there. Suggest that you look up the words "specific" and "data" to find out what they mean.

What's your point about Dole (assuming you actually have one)?

You said that Gore's "failure" to champion what you choose to call "Democratic" issues (opinion, not fact) was what caused some voters to vote for Nader. I am pointing out that people decided for themselves to vote for Nader - nothing Gore did or didn't do forced them - and that they need to take responsibility for their own actions, which, in Florida, put Bush in the White House.

If Gore had failed to appeal to the center, he would have lost the election rather than winning it too narrowly to fend off Bush v. Gore. My evidence that this is the case is the history of American presidential elections, especially since the turn of the 20th Century. Every candidate of either party who ran to his base lost in a landslide - Stevenson, Goldwater, McGovern, Mondale. Candidates who go for the center don't always win, because usually both candidates go for the center and they can't both win. But candidates that don't always lose.

[ShimokitaJer]

30. Fine, if you can't read, I guess I'll quote myself

"Don't forget that 20% of registered Democrats in 2000 voted for Bush. There were thirteen times the number of Florida Democrats voting for Bush as all those who voted for Nader."

The numbers "20%" and "thirteen times" constitute what we refer to as "data." They are numbers derived from actual occurrences, and they are verifiable. If you like, I can give you multiple links to them, in various sources. If someone were to come by and say, "six times the number of Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader," one could point to the data and say "No. You are wrong. Your statement does not accord with this data. In fact it is thirteen times" This is the reason why data is generally considered more reliable than opinion.

On the other hand, something which does not qualify as data is a statement such as "My evidence that this is the case is the history of American presidential elections, especially since the turn of the 20th Century" or "The 20% of registered Democrats who voted for Bush weren't Democrats." These are broad statements which involve opinion (some registered Democrats aren't "real" Democrats) and suggestion (Democrats who appeal to their base -- ie, presumably "real" Democrats -- always lose) which are not only vague, but seem to use different definitions for the same term. But only someone with an impossibly faulty understanding of language would refer to either statement as either "specific" or supported by "data."

Here's a hint. All those campaigns you mentioned would make great sources of data, if you only provided some. Instead, you prefer to make an overarching statement and simply imply that some data is there to back it up. Similarly, you suggest that the 20% of Democrats who voted for Bush is actually an ongoing phenomenon, yet you dismiss the possibility that this phenomenon might have had any effect on the previous election.

Now, I'm getting tired of treating you like an idiot, and I'm sure you're tired of being treated like one, so let's make a deal. You provide ANY evidence at all of what you are suggesting: a link, some objective data, anything. Then, I will reply to you again. I will not be replying to more empty statements without support. If you haven't learned the lesson by now, you aren't going to.

[library_max]

32. Really? You promise?

You say 20%, with no source, no link, no nothing, and that's "data." I cite US elections that every high school history student knows about and that's "opinion."

Tired of treating me "like an idiot"? Remember that every time you point a finger, three fingers are pointing back at you.

[MadHound]

31. Yes, we have been through all of this before

And people keep bringing up that tired old point that you HAVE to register as a Dem in the South. Sorry bub, that dog don't hunt, or haven't you heard that the Dixiecrats went over to the 'Pugs back in the sixties, and the Reagan Dems went over to the right side of the aisle officially in the '80s. So, that leaves us with 380,000 registered Dems who voted for Bush, and 190,000 self-described liberals(what, you now gonna tell me you HAVE to describe yourself as a liberal if you live in the south?) who also voted for Bush in '00. And you want to know WHY these 570,000 votes went to Bush in '00? Because of Gore's stance vis-a-vis offshore oil drilling in the Gulf. Gore lost 580,000 votes in FL because of his need to please his corporate masters over at BP(by the by, the same corporate masters who are paying him the big bucks to mine Gore's back forty, and in the process destroy the surrounding area with the toxic runoff).

Hell, even Al From admitted that Nader didn't throw the election to Bush in Florida: "The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race." From BluePrint Magazine, the house organ of theDLC <http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?cp=1&kaid=127&subid=179&contentid=2919>, on page three.

And then there is the matter of voter disenfranchisement. Greg Palast handed Gore and his staff the entire voter scrubbing scandal on a silver platter, well before the Supremes made their selection. Think about it now, you have the means with which to banish the Bush cabal to the political wilderness forever, win the election, and uphold your sworn oath of office, all in one fell swoop. What would you do? Well Gore decided to sit on the story, let the process meander to it's illegal and unconstitutional end. Some much for fighting for the office, so much for upholding your oath of office(see Palast's book "The Best Democracy That Money Can Buy" for the whole sordid story).

No, the only ones to blame for the FL fiasco is Gore and his staffers. They were inept and bumbling, with the collective spine the consistency of wet noodles. The Greens weren't spoilers, Gore and his DLC handlers were.

[togiak]

33. Good Points

But one flaw....... this topic isn't about a two man race. It is about whether or not Nader cost Gore the WH. I say that because the race was between more than just Gore, Bush and Nader. The exit polls showed that if it were a two man race Nader voters would have voted for Gore by a 2 to 1 margin (what brain dead Nader voter would have voted for Bush?). Had Nader not been in the race Gore would have won off of the Nader pickups.

http://www.msnbc.com/m/d2k/g/polls.asp?office=P&state=N1

But that doesn't change the fact that there were many contributing factors to Gore's loss. And Gore himself is the biggest factor in that loss.

But what bothers me is that Nader voters take no responsiblility for that loss. Every single Nader voter who would have voted for Gore bears some responsibility for Gore's loss and they need to take ownership of the fact that their vote helped undermine their own cause.

[newyawker99]

35. Hi togiak!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[togiak]

37. Thanks

:)

[Ysabel]

4. gore didn't lose...

let go of that too...

[ShimokitaJer]

14. He didn't lose. He surrendered.

But how can we blame Nader for the DLC's insistence that Gore recount only certain counties rather than the whole state as Gore wanted? How can we blame idealistic liberal voters for the Democratic party's unwillingness to challenge the legality of the purge of voter rolls and the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters? How can we blame a third party for the Democrat's ignoring of the numerous violations of election law committed at every level from the local precincts to the Supreme Court?

Answer? We can't. But why is it now treasonous to suggest the Democrats bear some of the responsibility for folding to the GOP in the 2000 debacle?

[Ysabel]

15. you're correct...

i agree with that...

[redqueen]

16. Who knows

Excellent points.

As for why no one wants to speak ill of hallowed Democrats, blame Reagan. Seems a lot of people want to start using his 'never speak ill' commandment on this side of the aisle as well.

Seems stupid as hell to me. Look what it did for THAT party! But then, if winning at all costs is all that matters to you... :(

[library_max]

34. The "certain counties" thing was because of Florida state law.

In the "contest phase," manual recounts are allowed only at the request of the voting boards of the individual counties. The only four voting boards that requested a manual recount were Dade, Broward, West Palm Beach, and Volusia. Not the DLC's fault, not Gore's fault. It was in the "protest phase" that Florida state law allowed the courts to "craft any measure" to assure that the election results were valid.

The purge wasn't illegal, or at least not illegal enough to be actionable. "Challenging" it would have accomplished nothing except to make those doing so look like "sore losers." It certainly wouldn't have allowed an electoral "do over."

When the Supreme Court violates election law (Article 2), which I agree it did, to whom exactly are the Democrats supposed to appeal?

Not treasonous. Just wrong.

[PVnRT]

5. Exactly

Let's not forget massive voter fraud and the "impartial" Supreme Court, all of whom were complicit in the 2000 theft.

[tom2kpro]

7. Voter fraud

The Supreme Court part is obvious, but what are some examples of the Repubs' voter fraud that I could cite in conversations?

[KuroKensaki]

11. Lots of sources for that

The basic story is, Katherine Harris used a company called ChoicePoint to purge the voting lists illegally of voters who should have been allowed to vote, and the way she asked them to go about it unfairly singled out minorities, especially blacks, and reformed convicts; both of which are routinely a very strong Democratic base. 90,000 people were purged this way. If only half of them voted and only half of those voted Dem, that still would have been way more than enough to win Florida.

[ShimokitaJer]

12. What about the purging of African Americans from voter rolls?

Or the accepting of military absentee ballots that were past the deadline, unsigned, or otherwise invalid (but only of those which supported Bush).

The refusal to allow voters who made a mistake with the butterfly ballots to correct the mistake.

Go check out the documentary "Unprecedented: How Bush Stole the Florida Elections." You'll be shocked by the extent of the GOP corruption.

[bicentennial_baby]

36. Read "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"

by Greg Palast. It's all in there...

[littlejoe]

6. He may not be the sole reason that Gore lost, but......

he was a major contributing factor. And I do dislike him immensely for that.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Why Gore Lost

Bush cheated.

Bush and his radical GOP faction stole the election.

The fix was in from many fronts; Florida was only one of four or five states that had severe voting problems, all of which broke for Bush.

But Nader and the "rad d00d left" have a special, and unfathomable, animus against liberals. They claim it's because Vietnam was a "liberals' war", but that was a '60s press cliché. The real reason, I think, was a territory war.

Nader -- as well as many of the Counterpunch and Nation partisans -- denounced Gore with a ferocity that should have been reserved for Bush. Even Michael Moore said a number of, ahem, immoderate things about Gore.

Moore, to his credit, has come clean. Nader has not.

The recent surge of Nader-hating is purely emotional. There's a lot of people who resent being called fascists for voting for Gore. (I myself was nearly evicted from my apartment by my Naderite landlord.) Regarding Nader, these are the scars which still ache. But the vote was in jeopardy even before Nader went negative on Gore and the Democrats. If Florida had instead broken for Gore, you can bet that the Republican Party would have opened the gates of Hell to overturn the vote.

Fear not. It will happen again this November. And this time, Team Bush has had four years to get the voting-machine industry on board, get a number of court decisions that will allow corrupt cops to intimidate voters, and possibly even to engineer another terrorist treat.

Sorry, I meant to type "threat".

--bkl

[KuroKensaki]

13. I am a rad d00d left..

I am a Green. And I am a liberal. I don't hate liberals. I have an animus against centrists and triangulators, neoliberals such as Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore.

However, it does not run deep enough that I say there's no difference between the parties. I support more stuff that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore come up with than I don't support. And I know Gore would have been a far better president than Bush*.

Nader is using exaggeration and hyperbole to drive his point home--that while the DNC and the moderates are in control of the Democratic party, the voters really only have the choice between an evil and a lesser evil. Whether or not he's correct, people need to stop ignoring his message just because they have a personal vendetta against him...

PS: I supported Nader in 2000. I do not support him this year. The stakes are far too high.

Oh, and--I remember taking a politics quiz to see what candidates I most resemble.. I got a 5% with Bush* and a 62% with the lowest Democratic candidate, Lieberman. 100% with Kucinich. I'm not a fan of Lieberman, but if it had come to it, I'd have voted for him, too. 62% is a lot better than 5%.

[lancdem]

10. I'm no fan of Nader, either

But I can't disagree with your analysis. Interestingly, I've read that anger over Florida and the Supreme Court is a big factor driving Dems this year. Good!

[jonnyblitz]

17. I would never vote for Nader and I don't blame him for 2000

I find it kind of curious to blame the folks who voted for Nader and ignore the THOUSANDS of Florida DEMS who voted for Bush.

[JI7]

18. it should not have come down to Florida

i have problems with some of the things nader says about the 2 parties being alike and other things. but i didn't like the way al gore campaigned. i didn't like that al gore ignored bill clinton's record and didn't allow clinton to campaign more. i didn't like the way al gore was in the debates. bush got away with a bunch of crap in the debates and gore did nothing. i remember bush kept claiming clinton/gore administration did nothing while in office and al gore just stood there. didn't even try to respond. it was really frustrating. i get a lot of disagreement when i say this, but it's how i felt during gore's campaign and how i still feel.

[pippin]

19. No one wants to blame Gore himself

I am not enarmored of Nader, but I am frankly tired of democrats (and DUers) making him the scapegoat for Gore's loss in 2000 and the suggestion that he could torpedo the chance of a democratic ouster of Bush. If we haven't already forgotten, Gore, or, if you can believe this, his daughter, ran a lousy campaign especially in his own home state. He should have won his own state hands down. Gore had NEVER lost an election in 24 years as a representative--so much for the crap I get from DUers who talk about Tennesee being a fundie conservative state. (Look up the list of since 1829 of the govenors of Tennessee and you will find there have been Democrat governors than repbulicans.)

The turn around to the republicans didn't happen until 2000.

Since 2000, Gore and McAuliffe have loused up practically every election where democrats should have won and it's time we place responsibility where it needs to be placed. it's stupid-- and cowardly --to lay it on Nader--he's an outsider and it's too easy to scapegoat him. There were 750,000 votes that Gore should have taken in Tennesse but didn't. Had he won that one,Florida, Katherine Harris and chads wouldn't have mattered.

As for Nader today, if it was so easy to eliminate Dean from the running why are we bothering about Nader?

Whatever we want to think of Green party, I think we should ask what kind of democracy is it if we don't even have a real two, not to mention multi-party system any way? Right now frankly the Democratic party doesn't resonate with many long time loyalists and the only thing that's keeping a lot of us together is the desire to get Bush out of the white house. However, that's not going to be enough for the long term survival of the party if there is no center to hold on to.

[Stuckinthebush]

20. We cancel each other out

I used to blame Gore, now I blame Nader.

Oh, well...there is enough blame to go around, I guess.

[library_max]

21. The legalities of the voter purge are debatable.

It's also debatable how the vote would have come out if there had been no purge, or if it had been done more legitimately. More to the point was the USSC decision in Bush v. Gore, which completely trampled on Florida state law and the federal legalities of the situation as established in Article 2.

However, all the other side-issues have one thing in common - they were perpetrated by people who wanted to see Bush in office. So there's no point in complaining to the perpetrators that they put Bush in office - they know that, and they're glad.

Did Nader and the Nader voters intend to put Bush in office? If not, they made a mistake, and it is to be hoped that pointing out that mistake may induce them or some of them not to make the same mistake twice.

The Scalia majority may have stolen the election, but the Florida Nader voters left the door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. If even 5% of them had voted for Gore instead, it would be President Gore now, and all the Republican chicanery would have been for nothing.

[ShimokitaJer]

25. Are you actually defending the voter purge?

If so, you are wrong. The legality is not debatable and nor are the results had there been no purge. Assuming a turnout of those purged from the rolls roughly equivalent to the percent participation among registered voters, or even that among voting-age Americans which is much lower, the votes cast for Gore would have made far more than the difference. Who exactly is debating this and why would you conceivably give them credence? Do you have any link for this?

And it's okay that the Bush cabal stole the election because they were on the opposing side and we thus can't complain about it? Well, I suppose the Democratic Party must feel the same way, since they certainly failed to complain about it. You seem to be very willing to forgive everyone in this little escapade except Nader. I think you should look back over your post and decide if it is really saying what you think it is.

[library_max]

27. Please calm down.

It is not illegal to take steps to see that felons, who are not legally eligible to vote, do not fraudulently do so. The point is that the Florida purge went far above and beyond what was necessary or sensible to keep felons off the voter rolls. At best, assuming that it was motivated as the people who did it said it was motivated, it was swatting flies with a cannon. But how would you go about proving in a court of law that they weren't motivated the way they said they were motivated? What is obvious to you and me isn't legal evidence. I'm talking about the law here, not morality. Lots of people looked into legal challenges to the purge - it isn't actionable.

Maybe I needed to delineate the difference between complaining and whining. Complaining is when one expects at least the possibility of a positive result. I might complain to my supervisor about my work schedule, for example. Whining is when one is simply venting one's feelings and expects no improvement to result. One might whine about the weather, but complaining about it is ridiculous - to whom should one complain? Therefore, there's no point in complaining about the majority decision in Bush v. Gore, the purge, Kathy Harris, the DeLay thugs, etc. One may point out that they were wrong, immoral, in some cases contrary to law (but not actionable or in one case not appealable), but complaining has no object - the perpetrators know what they did and are glad of it. But many Nader voters have already acknowledged that voting for Nader in Florida in 2000 was a mistake, because it put Bush in office. That's what separates complaining from whining - the possibility of a positive result.

[GreenPartyVoter]

24. You got it. Blame the broken system and the people corrupting it

not the folks who made an honest run in an election.

[library_max]

28. The system is what it is and it ain't gonna change.

We don't want to muff another election over a repeat of Florida 2000. It's not so much a matter of blame as a matter of admitting a mistake and not doing it again.

[GreenPartyVoter]

38. Baloney

The great experiment is not dead, but it has stagnated. Saying the system is what it is and ain't going to change would put us all singing "God Save the Queen" at cricket matches.

Change can and does happen. It is needed now, and it is coming.

[library_max]

39. "It is coming." How?

Are the thirteen colonies going to send out their Minutemen to repel the foreign rulers and their representatives? No? Then perhaps the American Revolution reference is a little off.

But how do you propose to get this change you want? The real obstacle is Buckley v Valeo, which established as the law of the land that campaign contributions are constitutionally protected speech. As long as that stands, campaign finance reform is going to be meaningless, easily evaded and easily manipulated against the good guys. And under that state of affairs, we are stuck in one-dollar-one-vote, which means the big money interests will decide.

So how best to get Buckley v Valeo overturned? The best hope is to get Democrats into office to appoint more reasonable Supreme Court Justices to replace the mostly whackos we've got in there now. We're not going to accomplish that by declaring war on the Democratic Party and kicking them in the crotch every chance we get.

But perhaps you have even a bigger target in mind - getting rid of our winner-take-all system which has confined US politics to two relevant parties at a time for more than 200 years. In that case, I'd like to remind you that the only way to change the Constitution is to start in Congress, each and every member of which was elected under winner-take-all. I estimate your chances of success in that endeavor at zero. Maybe you'd better start oiling up that musket.

[GreenPartyVoter]

40. Unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen

Yeah, Buckley v. Valeo could actually get overturned, or the Congress could enact a change to ranked voting.

Or it could happen state-by-state or even city by city. Maine has clean elections. 3/4s of our legislature was elected with them. And we are considering ranked voting (albeit IRV) as an alternative for plurality voting.

So guess what, you get enough municipalities and states to make these changes, then they will trickle upwards to the federal level. Someday the Congress may be made up of enough reps and sens elected by stated which already passed the reforms that getting it to pass at that level is no longer a tough sell.

Grassroots change is effective and it does work. It can be slow, but that's ok. I'd rather see this nation change so that my grandkids have a better chance at getting a decent government in place than to just shrug my shoulders and say "ah well, that's the way the cookie crumbles" and leave them to the likelihood of some other Bu$h getting in office.

But that's just me. You seem pretty pleased with the staus quo so obviously it's not in your interest to do anything to change it.

[library_max]

41. So how is it helping to splinter the left, a la Nader?

You still haven't explained that one.

[GreenPartyVoter]

42. I don't think the left is as splintered as last time

The fact that I and other Greens (and socialists etc) are voting Dem this time obviously means that people on the left are interested in gettign $hrubco out of office.

Doesn't sound like the left is all that fractured this time around.

However, don't expect the Dem party to turn into one big happy tent of liberals for the rest of eternity. I doubt that will happen.

So I still say we are better off reforming the system. Maybe have the House be a proportional representation system you could get a lot of folks joing the progressive caucus under other political stripes that way.

Or are you one of those folks who would vote for the world's most conservative democrat over a progressive running under another party just because of the label issue? Because if the answer is yes, I can tell that anything I have to say to you at this point would probably not mean diddly to you.

[library_max]

43. We're actually much in agreement.

We're just concentrating on different things. And as a matter of fact, I'm not happy at all that the party has moved to the right. But the country has also moved to the right, which doesn't leave the party much of any choice. If it was up to me alone, Nader would have been president in 2000. But I'm enough of a realist to know how far that fantasy is from political reality.

If the system was different, I wouldn't get hung up on the Democrat label. As it is, I think it's important to vote for the more liberal of the two candidates, even if neither one makes me entirely happy. And if the Republican were really the more liberal, I'd vote for the Republican, but that's not going to happen in our lifetimes.

You think the system can be changed. I don't, but I have no personal objection to the idea. Go for it, by all means. As long as its also understood that a choice between the major party candidates is the only choice we have at present, I've no objection at all.

And as far as the left not being as fractured this time, I hope you're right. I still am more in sympathy with the people who object to taking the risk after what Nader did to us last time.

[GreenPartyVoter]

44. Yeah, I think if I can count on you to back my election reform ideas

and you can count on me for a Dem vote for Prez, then we have just built a mini liberal coalition. And I bet there are more like-minded folks out there, not just on DU but all over the place.

So at least we have a place to start working from. Let's build on that, and see where it takes us! :)

~Jen

[QC]

29. My two cents on the matter.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1149614