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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
 Posted - 02/28/2008 : 09:38:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by chaloobi
Originally posted by bngbuck
@tomic.....
To HE CAN NOT WIN, you ask |
Nader is operating under the concept that voters are loyal to policy and not to people. He is effectively saying to the Democratic party brass: If you want to keep the voters that like my ideas, you better prove you are serious about supporting my ideas. You can't take them for granted, you have to earn them. He's hoping to pull the Democrats to the left a bit.
IMHO I think a 'lefter' democratic party is a good thing. The US is far too right these days and the nation is declining as a result. Nader's candidacy, if it threatens the Democratic win, should have the effect of pulling the party to the left a bit, lest the party lose. Whether it does is questionable and if they Democrats stay conservative, lose the Naderite vote, then good. They deserve to lose because they don't appeal to the left most Americans.
EDITED some grammar and more expostulation
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To some extent, you're right. But in 2000 the result of that kind of thinking was a disaster. It seems to me that if he really wants to be affective in pushing the party to the left, he should have run as a Democrat. If his message is as popular as he thinks it is, running as a Dem should have the same result as the one you talk about.
Syphoning off liberal votes in a general election is counter productive, if your goal is to have a more liberal government and the outcome becomes a much more conservative government. And I am starting to wonder if the denial of that is some kind of cognitive dissonance on the part of some of his defenders and those who voted for Nadar in the past. (No, not all of you. But if I lived in Florida and voted for Nadar and got Bush as a result, I too might be doing a whole lot of rationalizing...)
I wish things were different. Hell, I'm an old school liberal and darned tired of the way things are today. But I can't change reality by willing it so...
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 09:45:16 [Permalink]
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Marf.....
| But right now, the Republicans are much worse by comparison that the scales have been tipped for me. |
Marf, all is forgiven. I love you (figuratively, Marf, don't panic)
I will genuinely sleep better tonight knowing that at least one former dereistic visionary has landed on terra firma and may well direct considerable persuasion to other über liberals! |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 10:00:03 [Permalink]
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Kil.....
Hurrah for Kil! Despite our frequent ideological clashes, we are integrated at the ischium on this one! Bravo, and well-said! |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 10:49:55 [Permalink]
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Dude wrote: The bottom line is this: There are a finite number of votes. They are nearly evenly divided into two groups, liberal and conservative. There is a smaller group, but big enough to impact elections because of the nearly equal distribution of the other two groups, called independents.
So, when you have two liberal candidates, and one conservative candidate, if one of those liberal candidates gets even three percent of the total vote he/she is drawing from the same pool of voters as the other liberal candidate.
The consequence, in our electoral system, is that neither liberal wins.
If you can't understand that, then I don't know what else to say. |
I don't see anyone arguing against your point that the consequence of liberals who would have voted for the Democratic candidate, instead voting for Nader, is that the Republican is more likely to win the election.
What I do see from people like chaloobi is discussion about the perfectly rational reasons why some people would vote for Nader anyway. Voting for candidates is a guessing game. None of us can know for sure what challenges in what degrees will face our country in the next four years, much less beyond that. All we can do is look at the issues and candidates and weigh it all in our own minds by our own conscience. I know a lot of people, well-educated and opionated about politics, who have very dark views of the direction of the USA. And yet Reaganomics is still incredibly popular and Libertarianism is on the rise. More than once I've heard liberals say, "It will have to get a lot worse before people wake up." Someone with this mentality could rationally come to the conclusion that Green votes tipping the scales for Republican candidates could be good for the country in the longterm, even if it really hurts in the short term. Like I said, this is all a guessing game. It ain't science.
Had the Ohio votes for Nader spoiled a win in that state for Gore (which they did not) my vote would have been a mistake for me, but people make mistakes. And on a personal level, it is better to make a mistake while being informed and rational than it is to be right out of dumb luck and ignorance. But that wasn't a mistake for me in 2000 since, as I've said, Ohio would have gone to Bush regardless of the Nader voters. I in fact made a very calculated decision and was right. I'm proud of that decision because it did involve me going out and learning and thinking more, rather than just going with the flow of my upbringing and social crowd. And isn't that what critical thinking is all about?
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 10:55:19 [Permalink]
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Kil wrote: | To some extent, you're right. But in 2000 the result of that kind of thinking was a disaster. |
Many Nader voters (not me, but others) intended to cause a disaster that they hoped would ultimately help politics in the country in the long run. That thinking could continue today. For instance, when I'm honest with myself, I admit that I think the economy is getting worse and it will be a miracle if the next President isn't blamed for what is to come. And yet I will still vote for a Democrat even though I know it is possible that if Obama/Clinton win, they will be a one-term president with little ability to do anything, and then the country will just go Reaganite on us again.
In case anyone is interested, two of my columns from the 2000 election:
Here is where I express my disillusionment with Clinton/Gore
Here is where I finally gave full support to Nader
Edited to say: Would a moderator fix my links. I swear I keep trying to do them correctly but my efforts to fix this problem have failed. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. If you do, please drop me a note telling me. Sorry.
[Edited to fix links - Dave W. For everyone interested, our automatic link-maker looks for "www" without an "http://" right in front of it. So if your URL has a "www" in the middle of it, like "http://media.www.thelantern.com/," our automatic link-maker jumps on it even if you've made it a link with the [url=] tag. The solution to this problem is simple. "%77" is Website-ese for "w" so you can simply change a single W to that, as in "http://media.w%77w.thelantern.com/," and by so doing, the automatic link-maker won't see the "www" buried in the URL.] |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 02/28/2008 10:58:29 |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 10:56:55 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
We need to go way too far left for a while, |
Or reasonably left - extremes in just about anything are bad, especially politics.
| But, chaloobi, your thesis that Nader might pull the victorious Democrats further to the left, although probably correct, is very dangerous in these times. Not because of the movement to the left, but because the election may be a lot closer than optimistic liberals are fantisizing right now. And the Democrats may not be victorious and in a position to celebrate and practice their new "leftness"! |
If the Democrats lose it will be the fault of the democrats, not the Naderites. One of the qualities that most weakens the Democratic party is their unwillingness to put their foot down and stick by their ideals. They're always trying to beat the Republicans at their own game, for example by talking tough on security, and they conversely pan the lefter bits of their taken-for-granted constituency. The result is the whole damn nation shifts to the right because all we hear in the media is conservative talking points from both parties with no real left rebuttal.
I see the Nader problem as just this: the Democrats are too weak-kneed to openly embrace some of Nader's ideas so Naderites will not vote for the Democrats. But the alternative - Nader sit down and shut up - is a continued slide to the right of the party and the general public. Hell, today's Democrats are as conservative as the '80s Republicans in a lot of ways. Appeasing the right, pretending to be rightish, and hiding your left is a failed strategy because in the end you become more right.
| No matter how much Democratic politics may be moved to the left by Nader's barking on the sidelines of the main event, that badly-needed new position à gauche is totally impotent if it is not also the choice of the electorate! The Dems may deserve to lose it all right, but it most definitely would not be good! It would be a disaster! |
Every great nation that can't get it's decadent head out of its collective ass is doomed to decline. We won't get our head out of our own ass by merely opposing republicans. This nation needs serious election reform. As it is now the two parties are absolutely entrenched and have discovered they don't have to be truthful even a little bit in their electioneering and consequently do not feel bound to serve the citizenry as much as their key economic constituents. If we don't fix that, then it doesn't matter in the long run who gets elected. |
-Chaloobi
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 11:07:11 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
To some extent, you're right. But in 2000 the result of that kind of thinking was a disaster. It seems to me that if he really wants to be affective in pushing the party to the left, he should have run as a Democrat. If his message is as popular as he thinks it is, running as a Dem should have the same result as the one you talk about. |
Maybe. Hard to say. He might end up like Ron Paul - ignored.
| And I am starting to wonder if the denial of that is some kind of cognitive dissonance on the part of some of his defenders and those who voted for Nadar in the past. (No, not all of you. But if I lived in Florida and voted for Nadar and got Bush as a result, I too might be doing a whole lot of rationalizing...) |
I didn't vote for Nader - I didn't want to risk a Republican victory. However I think he's right in principle to do what he's doing, but because the US electoral system is so broken, the effect is spoiling a democratic victory. And as useless, corrupt and stupid as the democrats are, they walk on water compared to republicans.
| I wish things were different. Hell, I'm an old school liberal and darned tired of the way things are today. But I can't change reality by willing it so... |
I don't think it's possible to change the state of US politics without going through a lot of pain first. The system is far too entrenched and the absence of integrity, hell the lack of a need for integrity, ensures congress will not do anything collectively that is not in their own personal and immediate interests. |
-Chaloobi
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 12:12:54 [Permalink]
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marf said:
I don't see anyone arguing against your point that the consequence of liberals who would have voted for the Democratic candidate, instead voting for Nader, is that the Republican is more likely to win the election.
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Then you aren't paying attention.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 12:17:32 [Permalink]
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| Yeah well I voted for Nader in 2000. Of course, I live in Alabama, so there was no way Nader or Gore was going to win the state. Nanny nanny boo boo... |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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Ralph Nader...
