The injustices and justices (and Justices) of the 2000 Presidential election will likely be debated for years to come. Hopefully as time goes by, things will settle down some as the repercussions of the event are less immediate and the partisan stakes feel less important. Eventually the debate will be an intellectual one held chiefly between Presidential scholars and history majors. History will judge the extent of Ralph Nader’s role in the election and, if history is fair, that judgment will be different than the one commonly passed today. There are many who believe that Nader’s campaign was largely, if not quite solely, responsible for Bush’s winning the 2000 election. At its heart this argument is predicated on one key false assumption and is, much more importantly, contemptuous of democracy and of the complaints made by the Green party and its supporters.
The false assumption is that all of the people who voted for Nader would have, if Nader hadn’t run, voted for Al Gore. Aside from there being a small degree of ideological overlap between the Green and Democratic parties, there’s no evidence that this is the case. Considering the rightward drift of the Democratic party under the Presidency of Bill Clinton, it’s not entirely unreasonable to believe that some of those voters who voted for the Green party would have stayed home rather than vote for a party they believed to be ideologically identical to its opposition. The so-called “spoiling effect” of Nader’s run is an intellectual exercise that is interesting to contemplate but cannot be proven. Even exit polls that asked voters to rank the candidates in order of preference cannot prove how many of Nader’s voters would have voted for Gore because, again, it’s not certain how many of those voters would have even been to the polling booths in the first place if Nader hadn’t been running. The Democratic party, after all, had little to offer them.
It could be argued that, considering that George W. Bush’s official margin of victory was 537 votes, it’s possible to assume that a handful of Nader’s voters could have swung the election to Gore’s favor this misses the underlying nature of the argument blaming Nader for Gore’s loss: it’s glib dismissal of the Green party’s concerns for partisan points. Every vote cast for Nader was, on some level, an indictment of both the Republican party and of the rightward drift of the Democratic party. To Green party voters, there wasn’t a difference between the alternative candidates they were being offered and so they exercised their democratic right to vote for who they felt best represented them. In response, Democrats who complain that Nader lost the election for Gore are saying that the Green party thwarted their attempt to beat those dastardly Republicans by voting their conscience. The view of these Democrats is that their candidate and their party, rather than their ideology, must win the election; no matter how conservative Gore was he had to win because he wasn’t a Republican and progressive desires or complaints of a rightward drift be damned. Should no third party candidate ever run because he or she might prevent the “correct” big party candidate from winning? That wouldn’t be democracy and yet that’s what many Democrats seem to wish for.
In essence, the Democratic party has only itself to blame for Gore losing the 2000 election. It did little enough to appeal to progressive voters and so shouldn’t sulk when it didn’t get enough of the progressive vote..
Thank you. I’ve spent 4 years defending myself from snarky comments about my 2000 vote for Nader. You were much more articulate than I ever managed to be – I usually end up saying, “Gore took Illinois, so it was a safe vote”, but it still doesn’t shut people up.
I really think a 3 party system would be much better than the one we have now…
There is one other major problem with expecting Greens and other Nader voters to align themsleves with Democrats. Once Green voters start to vote in order to keep the Republicans out of office–to vote the lesser of two evils or whatever, they get caught in a neverending loop of either keeping the Republicans out of office or protecting the gains of the Democrats. When do Greens ever get the chance to vote for their own politics?
Of course, if it was really all that important to keep Bush out of the White House, all those pragmatically minded Democrats could have taken the bullet and voted for Nader. Especially considering how quickly the Democrats rolled over for the Republicans after the election I feel Nader voters were right in rejecting Gore.
Remember, a vote for Gore was a vote for Bush.
It amazes me that we’re even still having this fight. I’ve stopped dreading the moment in various and sundry “Stop Bush” tirades in which some supposedly well-meaning Leftist or Dem will call me a “sheep,” or worse and have learned to simply accept it part of the landscape that must be maneuvered around or cleaned off on a daily basis. Y’know, like dog doo. I just wish they’d stop acting suprised that insults like this (no lie, a KBOO hostess a couple of weeks back smugly intoned that the only bigger sheep than Mel Gibson’s fans were Nader voters. How sweet) don’t exactly make me feel like I’m welcomed or loved by their party or the men at its helm.
It’s worth mentioning that no Democratic candidate except Kucinich seemed to pay any interest at all to campaign finance reform, IRV, and a host of other issues dear to Greens. The Democrats as a whole want to keep that door in particular firmly shut because it doesn’t serve their purposes. We are not to have any hand in the electoral process at all if it happens outside their purvue. No, just hand over your vote and open your wallet, Stupid. Half a loaf is better than none, blah blah blah…
Shoot me.
I’m tired of chasing the Democratic Party. I want the Democratic party to chase me. Like it chases big money and “NASCAR Dads.” I don’t appreciate it when Democratic representatives chastise me, a progressive, for voting for progressive candidates. The Greens chase me, the Libertarians chase me (nice try). They offer policies and platforms that appeal to me. The Democratic Party fails to do so, consistently, while at the same time feeling entitled to my vote because I am liberal.
I want the Democratic party to offer me something. Court me. Obviously I’d like my political desires to be embraced by a party with the clout of the Dems. I’m willing to make a deal, as long as there’s some give and take. How about a Senator or a cabinet post? How about a progressive head of the EPA or OSHA or hell, a progressive AG? Even a token progressive who can’t do any “damage.” Right now all the Democratic party is offering me is a Bushless White House which, while tempting, might not be enough. So what else have you got? Let’s deal. Let’s talk. I have a vote and I have money. It’s not much but it’s no less than most folks have.
Why Nader? He sounds like a great guy, but why him? Serious question.
The fact is–and I wish it weren’t, but it just is–Nader isn’t going to win in 2004. (Which isn’t to say that’s an acceptable reason not to vote for him; I firmly believe everyone should vote for whomever they want whyever they want. That’s, you know, the point of an election.) Taking into account the fact that he doesn’t have much of a chance, why vote for him and not somebody else who doesn’t have much of a chance, somebody who perhaps represents your values and beliefs more than he does, if such a person exists?
Full disclosure: I voted for Nader in 2000; I don’t plan to do so this year.
I voted for Nader in 2000, because there was a realistic chance of victory. I don’t mean that he could win the election; I mean something much more acheivable: I wanted him to get 5% of the popular vote so that the Greens would have federal matching funds and thus more clout in 2004. I live in California and the risk of Bush carrying the state was very, very slight, so it seemed a useful way to use my vote. *Then*.
I can’t see any point at all to voting for Nader when he’s running as an independent. No matter how well he does, he won’t win matching funds for his party in the next election; he doesn’t have a party. There’s no party structure that he’s supporting by doing this.
I’ve been defending him for three years against irrationally pissed-off democrats who called his run in 2000 “egotistical”, and I’m irritated to have to agree with them now. Nader’s 2004 campaign has no realistic potential for a positive outcome, and at least an arguable potential for a highly negative one, so what’s the point of him doing it?
It seems like the Green Party has been more successful internationally when they’ve teamed up with another party: Green-Socialists, Green-Democrats, and so on. I wonder if there’s any way for the U.S. Greens to make a similar maneuver. Massachusetts is trying, with Green-Rainbow; they got something like 7% of the gubernatorial vote, but I don’t think they got anyone elected in any of the races. Perhaps they need a party with more clout than the Rainbow Coalition.
George Washington warned against the party system in his farewell address:
It serves to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration….agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one….against another….it opens the door to foreign influence and corruption…thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Clinton probably wouldn’t have been elected if Perot hadn’t ran. If fact, I don’t believe Clinton ever got a majority of voters. (43% and 49% I think).
Anyway, if we are going to play the woulda game:
If Buchanan hadn’t run: Huge advantage Bush.
If the media hadn’t projectected Gore the winner before the western time-zone polls closed: advantage Bush.
If Gore from the start had called for a complete statewide recount rather than cherry picking certain ones: Not sure but I would say, advantage Gore.
If the Florida SC had set statewide standards by which all punch cards would be judged: advantage Gore.
If certain Florida voters would have been smarter (or more careful): advantage Gore. (honestly, a young child could have been able to read that ballot)
I am sure there is plenty more. But as is it, Bush won every recount that took place. Including the media run recount.
You know what the “Nader voters are evil” brigade misses, every freakin’ time:
Something like 51% of the eligible voting population turned out for the 2000 Presidential election.
Maybe if everyone turned out, Gore would have won by a landslide. Or maybe it would have been Bush. Or maybe it still would have been close–and then, and only then, would I say that Nader drew votes away from the Dems.
If we’re going to blame anyone, let’s blame the people who didn’t bother to vote.
The false assumption is that all of the people who voted for Nader would have, if Nader hadn’t run, voted for Al Gore.
Actually, my assumption differs from this one: I would say that the problem was the Nader campaign saying that Bush and Gore were indistinguishable, as though the conventional presentability of them didn’t, in fact, mask huge difference in competence, in honesty, in leadership (as in, decisions not being made by a shadow government), and in a huge range of policies on matters social, environmental, and fiscal. I’m sorry, but the last three years have shown how completely these two guys were not the same (do you think Gore would have dismantled the EPA? filled the government with right-wing wackos? made religious faith a central tenet of national policy?), but the “Tweedle-Dee/Tweedle-Dum” meme became so widespread that I think it actually discouraged voter turn-out, let alone critical examination of the candidates.
Not the same assumption, not the same resentment. Our political system may be too beholden to monied interests, but the two parties are not the same beast, and Nader did us no favors by pretending otherwise.
acm
I would say that the problem was the Nader campaign saying that Bush and Gore were indistinguishable, as though the conventional presentability of them didn’t, in fact, mask huge difference in competence, in honesty, in leadership (as in, decisions not being made by a shadow government), and in a huge range of policies on matters social, environmental, and fiscal.
Kindly stop infantilzing me and other Greens, acm. I didn’t Nader to let me in on the fact that the Democratic party is corrupt and likely beyond redemption;that it uses me for a convenience and leaves me to twist in the wind at most times save Election season. I was grateful that he did it, but nonetheless it wasn’t news to me. I figured it out on my own. Nader took advantage of a schism that has existed in the Demcratic Party for a good long time and ignited a keg of anger that had been sitting and gathering force for decades. But he didn’t need to create it. The Democrats did. I could not be brainwashed into “betraying” a party that betrayed me a long time ago, so you can stop implying that that’s what happened. Thanks.
I’m writing this as a voice of dissent and I hope that having the views you do, you will include this voice and if you choose try to convice me to come to your side. I believe that Nader supporters need to unite with Independents, Greens, and Democrats to defeat George Bush, and so I also believe that Ralph Nader (whom I have the deepest respect for) should drop out. Before I go any further I will mention that I am not your average Democrat, but am in line with your views on so many issues. I am a senior at Penn State University where I was one of the leaders of the anti-war movement at my school, a fighter for diversity in student government, the founder of a domestic poverty awareness group, and a member of my school’s Global AIDS Initiative working to get further aide and generics to AIDS ridden countries in Africa. I’m also an immigrant from Iran who came to this country in utter poverty and have thus fought for immigrant rights and rights of the poor for a long period and am as progressive as they come. At the same time, during these last four years I’ve seen poverty numbers the last four years sky rocket, I’ve seen an administration that has appealed to people’s worst fears and in so doing brought citizens hate upon Middle Easterners, and held back two thirds of the AIDS relief funding it had promised to the third world. My Pell Grants have gotten cut the last four years, which have made the lives of my family and tons of middle class families across the country trying to pay for college miserable. Who knows… the country of my birth, Iran, could be the next one attacked.
Do I agree with everything the Democratic party stands for? Absolutely not! But I’m not going to pretend that the consequences of having another four years of Bush aren’t real, nor will I concede that the differences in the positions of Kerry and Bush are too abstract. The differences are real, the consequences are real, and the pain myself, my family, underpriveleged people across the country, and yes even you yourself have felt over the last four years are very real. Right now the Republicans have all three branches of government. That is both democratically not sound and indeed very frightening. For that reason, I will vote for John Kerry and ask Ralph Nader (who again I admire very much) to drop out. I will work once Kerry is in office to affect the change Ralph talks about on issues I also feel are important but are not being addressed once he is in office and I will force Democrats to take those positions. However, I will not be selfish in working for an abstract principle when so many people have needlessly been added to the poverty total, our environmental legislation has been treaded upon, and so many other issues that Bush has supported have taken us in the wrong direction.
Let’s unite right now before it’s too late. Bush’s right wing republicans really are trying to divide us and helping to get Ralph on the ballot in only battleground states. In the words of former asshole conservative Republican Majority Leader, Dick Armey whose organization got signatures for Ralph in Oregon,”liberals are tying to unite but we could divide this base of support by signing up for Nader.” This Republican help is happening in every state and it’s documented on this site that I found http://www.thenaderfactor.com/press/072304/. Let’s not let them fool us. Let’s not let them divide us. In these last two weeks let’s unite, take back our country, and kick Bush back to Crawford!
Very stirring, Ace. (poster formerly known as Amy S. reporting in here) I’m still voting for either Cobb or Nader, but I look forward to (metaphorically) seeing you on the streets after 11/3, no matter which warmongering asshole walks away with it.
[Useless sidebar:] Hey !! Ace is a college student voting Kerry and I’m a 38-year-old ex-Democrat clerk who wouldn’t consider voting Democratic unless someone removed Kucinich’s brain and stuck it in Kerry’s body before Election Day !! That’s one more perfectly good stereotype down the tubes, if nothing else. [\Useless sidebar]
One of my major problems with Nader is that he hasn’t done the work of building a party structure from the ground up; he’s just waltzing in at the top. I realize that national elections create visibility for third parties, but I also think that candidates like Nader or Ross Perot tap into voter discontent with the two-party system without really having a plan to seriously challenge it at the roots.
I’d much rather see concentrated efforts by the Greens and other third parties at the local level, along with serious efforts at electoral reform to break the stranglehold of the two majors. Independents and third-party candidates have won statewide office, but how many have managed to keep their movement going? Third parties need to do the work at the local level so that they build strength, give voters the chance to get comfortable with them, and establish a truly viable alternative to the majors.
zuzu, local action is already happening. Whether it can be sustained is up in the air, but it is happening.
I was sorry that Nader broke with the Greens, or vice versa. While he was with them, I think it’s indisputable that he brought the party national visibility, without which there could not be the seeds of local action because people would not have known of the party’s existence.
The more I read from both Greens and Nader’s own site, the more I get the feeling that the break had more to do with disputes over tactics, not platform. I wish I could vote for both Cobb and Nader. Neither is perfect, but both have a lot I admire. Much more so than Kerry or Bush. :(
First it was Michael Moore and Cornell West, now those who have decided to unite against the front against George W. Bush and his destructive policies includes Winona LaDuke, the vice presidential choice on Ralph’s ticket in 2000. “I am voting my conscience” and not supporting Nader
In the following statement, Winona LaDuke, Nader’s 2000 running mate, announced:
I am voting for John Kerry this November. I love this land, and I know that we need to make drastic changes in Washington if we are going to protect our land and our communities. I’m voting my conscience on Nov. 2 I’m voting for John Kerry. He wants to move federal policies to support Native communities, whether Native farmers, businesspeople or tribal governments. We are on his radar; this is a beginning. Kerry offers other reasons for hope. He opposes converting Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste dump. By Nov. 2, 2004, John Kerry will have earned my vote.
I love Ralph Nader and I agree with most though not all of what he stands for. At the same time I love my country more and the destructive Bush policies need to stop now! We need to unite with Kerry and the dems now and then change their policies from within, but make no mistake about it, it is crucial to get Bush out of office. Go to http://www.thenaderfactor.com to learn more.
zuzu, local action is already happening. Whether it can be sustained is up in the air, but it is happening.
Oh, I know that, and I think it’s great, a very healthy sign of democracy. But as anxious as people are for a change at the top, it’s going to be a long, hard slog to make a dent in parties that have been around for over 100 years. I’d love to see more parties reflecting more closely the full range of the political spectrum. Most particularly on the Republican side. There are a hell of a lot of moderate, true-fiscal-conservative types who feel bound up by a sense of loyalty to remain in a party that includes rabid right-wingers and far too many wingnuts who have an unhealthy fixation on sex with dogs and box turtles.
[sigh] You just HAD to drag the damn box turtles into this, didn’t you zuzu ? Tsk.
Ace, I acutally admire LaDuke a lot. Her journalism at the Multinational Monitor (to name one source) is first rate. But on this, I can’t agree with her.
Todd Chretien Responds To Pro-Kerry Progressives:
(Bolds are mine: )
“Hang On, Citizen Paine…”
…In Los Angeles in 2000, Democratic Party leaders stood on the balcony of the Staples Center and watched the LAPD tear gas thousands of protesters. It seems to me that if we can’t build a movement that learns not to vote for a party that directs police assaults on us, we don’t have much hope of ever building a political challenge to corporate America. No doubt, the debate over presidential tactics will sharply separate many of us who have worked closely together in the past and will again in the future. While all those of us who want a better world should argue respectfully, debate we must because the stakes are too high to hold our tongues.
Norman Solomon wrote last month that he was registering Green precisely because its national convention nominated a candidate who promised not to challenge the two party system where it counts. He joins the chorus of liberal voices who warn us that “this is not the year.” But he is wrong. Like Paine, Douglass, Parks, Lewis, Malcolm, Mario, Gurley-Flynn and countless others understood, any movement that ever aims to win, must learn to stand up for itself precisely when it is darkest. That’s the only way the millions of people who hate the system that oppresses them can ever gain confidence in us to join us and transform our movement from a minority affair of protest into a majority tide of power. For whatever my effort is worth, I am registering Green this year because most of the people I know in the Green Party refused, and are refusing, to submit to the duopoly blackmail. Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo can’t change the system by themselves, but every vote they receive will show the world that there are millions here in the United States who intend to conquer the hell of corporate power and the tyranny it rains down on the planet.
Hang on Citizen Paine, we’re coming.