Nader in 2004? And an insight into Michael Moore's politics

Nader becomes extremely irrelevant if Gore doesn't run the most inept presidential campaign in history. But Gore did.....and couldn't win a state that elected him Senator, a state the elected Clinton twice, and a state that would have won him the Presidency. I don't blame the Green's for trying to get their 5%.

 

I will confess I didn't read the entire article -- I refuse to subscribe to Salon, even on a trial basis -- but taking your word for it, here are some comments.

--The Greens/Naderites know that effective political campaigning in this country is about the money. No money, no message. Simple as that. That's why their prize was the 5%. Moreover, getting the matching funds leads to all kinds of free PR.

--The Greens, like most fringe parties, are as much intersted in ideological purity as they are effectiveness. Exchanging bodily fluids with the Democrats would mean entering the poltical boudoir with guys like Joe Lieberman. I don't think they're particularly keen on that.

--I am not quite sold on the assumption "Nader throws his votes to Dems, Gore/Next Dem Candidate Wins." It sure sounds plausible, and just looking at the arithmetic, it seems obvious. Yet that would soil the ideological purity, and would the Green voters move over to the Dems like lemmings?

On this issue, it appears that Michael Moore is a practical realist, yet I don't know whether you can ascribe the same inclination to the Naderites. I think many if not all of them are in for the long haul, and therefore won't engage in the kind of parliamentarian horse trading Moore wants.

 

You have to admire Nader for sticking to his guns and believing more in principle that America needs a third party, that the Dems and Republicans are stagnating and an independent movement is the only way to breathe new life into the democratic process in this country. Nader's dislike for Bush is well-known, but I never got the sense that he was all that impressed with Gore either, maybe too Washington for him, I don't know. I voted for Nader for that reason, and I don't regret it. I'm not sure that I would have voted for Gore anyhow. At the time, I was living in Colorado and the state was clearly set for Bush by a considerable margin before the election. Unfortunately, Nader didn't get the 5% that he was hoping for and in doing so, gifted the presidency to Bush.

I think maybe Nader simply repaid the favor that Perot did for Clinton in '92. Everything is coming full circle and we are looking at the same thing in '04 that we saw then, a wide-open campaign on the Democratic side and an incumbent Bush. Will a quasi-conservative a la Perot come out of the woodwork to trump Bush? I doubt the Dems will be so lucky this time around.

 

One person, admittedly, but not surprising.

 

Hey, the Clinton presidency was no fluke. He and his henchmen were some of sharpest political operatives around.

Again, I am not so sure the analogy you lay out here holds. I also think that W. will, like Clinton, leverage the advantages of first term incumbency to the max. Green votes, even if they flooded to Gore, which I doubt, might be a pinprick in '04.

 

All fringe politics is about 2 things: Either it's ideological purity, as Karl said, or it's about moving the middle. On the face of it the two seem to be mutually contradictory, and I think's that problem with Nader in 2000. While their talk about getting 5% suggests a desire to appeal to the great middle of American politics (it's where most voters are), they clearly weren't paying clear-eyed attention to indicators of whether or not they would get there. At no point, even after the election, did the Naderites seem to acknowledge the reality suggested by their failure to get 5% in nearly every state.

A thought on the quality of Gore's campaign: As I remember it, most or all of Nader's criticisms of Gore related to Gore's positions and the influence of the DLC (of which Gore was a prominent member back in the day) on the party as a whole. Nader only started criticizing Gore's tactics after the election; then it just looked like back pedaling.

 

Yes this is right.

Of course, Nader couldn't say "Everybody, let's give your votes to Gore to stop Bush" after he spent a lot his political currency slamming Gore.

I don't think he'll do it this time around either.

That kind of compromising would leave quite the sour taste for many Greenies.

 

Not a Green.... but more of an observation than a factual claim. No one will really know what exactly would have happened without Perot in '92 and I would not consider the Clinton presidency a fluke based solely on the '92 election. Polls may reflect some of what might have happened, but without Perot involved in the debates, or blanketing the country with his infomercials, the entire campaign would have been different. Perot's involvement doesn't negate Clinton's election, it simply demonstrates (as does Nader's example) that when third party candidates get involved, the election process is altered.

 

If Gore ran the "most inept presidential campaign in history" and still got 500,000 more votes than Bush, what does that say about Bush's campaign?

 

First, I voted for Nader and have no regrets. Gore could have had my vote -- I have always liked and respected him as a person and officeholder -- but he ran a weak, cynical worthless campaign and he did not earn my vote. That was always Al Gore's weakness, he always wanted it so bad that he was afraid to run any risks, take any stands that deviated from the percentages. Basically, he is the Gerald Houllier of American Politics. Ha! A soccer analogy.

Second, I see where Moore is coming from in his ciriticism of Nader's campaign. I like Moore too, he is my favorite loose cannon. Every movement needs one. The Republicans have Rush, we have Moore. Our guy is more entertaining, but that's just one man's opinion. But the Green Party's strategy was self-consistent with its two stated policies in the campaign; 1) Get to the 5% threshold 2) Act as if the Democratic party was part of the problem, not a potential ally.

If you look at it that way, focusing on states with large undecideds -- states that were "in play" for both major party candidates -- is your smartest move. The Greens were good to go in all of the states where Gore was strongest. The Dems strongholds are also the Greens. But to make their magic nut they had to go to the same places that Gore and Bush did. The fact that this would possibly rob Gore of the plurality in those states and toss the Electoral College votes to Bush was irrelevant. They already said they weren't interested in the consequences for the Dems, that was for the Dems to worry about. So it was all internally consistent and classic strong-arm third-party strategy, even if it didn't work out in the end.

As for Moore's statement that the Greens need to concentrate at the grassroots... Well, duh! And I think they know that. Green parties that have been successful in Europe built themselves up that way and, as far as I know it is the only route available for the creation of an third-party in this country. No-one is going to take on faith that bunch of whacko tree huggers can run the country. The presidential campaigns of the Greens are merely a recognition-building excersize and a training ground for party organizers and they need to really take that to heart. Not until the Greens can get people elected at the municipal, county and state levels -- and have politicians with a track record of good service and non-whacko agendas -- can they begin to think about competing at the national level. But once they do the first, the second becomes doable. Because by then they have a big cadre of party faithful, donors and name-brand politicians to carry the banner.

QED my friends. It ain't rocket science.

But first the Greens have got to let go of the ideological purity thing. That has been the Number One Problem for Greens across the world, the transition from movement to political party and the infighting between the "Fundis" and "Realos."

 

Re: Re: Nader in 2004? And an insight into Michael Moore's politics

Why not? It happens all the time in politics. Hell, Bush even got McCain's endorsement after Bush trashed him in the primaries. Why is that any different than a hypothetical endorsement of Gore by Nader?

 

The McCain - Bush analogy is not applicable IMHO.
Superdave, I think you are misinterpreting or misunderstanding Greens motivation.

If you ask a real Green party stalwart they would argree with point "a" above but vehamently disagree with "b." Now, Green voters on the other hand might have been trying to send a message to the Democrats, but the message was not fundamentally different than that of the Greens, to wit: "The Democratic party is a sick, sad shadow of its progressive self. If it cannot get back to those roots, and stop pretending to be Republican Lite no matter what the electoral cost, it is time to turn away from the power-hungry greedheads running that show and start anew."

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Nader in 2004? And an insight into Michael Moore's politics

True. Bush, on the other hand, is doing a pretty good impersonation lately.

 

Dude, Perot garned the most votes for a third canidate ever. He got something like 20 million votes! You can't say that didn't cost Bush Sr.

 

According to dave's post, that would mean it cost Bush Sr. 10 million votes.

It also cost Clinton 10 million votes.

That's what "evenly split" means.

 

I've heard somewhere that Republican voters tend to be less likely to sway from voting the party line as Democrats. I know my dad, a lifelong Democrat, voted for Perot in '92, not Clinton.

 

No. He ran the worst CAMPAIGN ever. He wasn't worse than Mondale or McGovern or some of the other amazing losers in Democratic history. How he doesn't win states like Tennessee (the state that he was a Senator from) or West Virginia or Ohio or Missouri is amazing, considering that Clinton won all those states in both of his elections.

The popular vote doesn't matter in this country. If it did, both candidates would have structured their campaign strategy accordingly. Bush wouldn't have wasted as much time in West Virginia as he did, because campaigning in Illinois or Michigan or wherever could have netted him more popular votes. But by campaigning in West Virginia, he won a state that was not traditionally Republican (heck, even GHB didn't win the state in 88), and that state was key to his victory.

As for the left fringe candidate getting many more votes than the right fringe candidate, that really doesn't matter to all that much, considering both combined got a whopping 3.7% of the vote.

Yes. That's why Gore is President and we have a Democratically controlled Congress.

 

It says that Bush knew that you needed electoral votes to win the Presidency, not popular votes, which is why he won EIGHT states that had voted Democrat for the last two elections, while Gore won ZERO states that voted Republican in the last two elections.

 

Change "Bush" to "Karl Rove" in the above and I'll tend to agree with you.

 

Whatever. It's a lot more than Al Gore or whoever his inept advisor knew.