{"id":701,"date":"2004-03-17T11:24:34","date_gmt":"2004-03-17T19:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/03\/17\/nader-did-so-cost-gore-the-white-house\/"},"modified":"2004-03-17T11:24:34","modified_gmt":"2004-03-17T19:24:34","slug":"nader-did-so-cost-gore-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=701","title":{"rendered":"Nader did so cost Gore the White House"},"content":{"rendered":"

My “Alas” co-blogger PinkDreamPoppies argues that Nader did not cost Gore the election<\/a> in 2000. With respect, I disagree. I think that Nader’s run (among many other factors, such as Gore’s mediocre campaign, the press’ weird hatred <\/a>of Gore, Republicans playing racist games with the voter rolls <\/a>in Florida, five members of the Supreme Court, and the fact that the Dems just didn’t fight as hard as the Republicans in Florida) caused Gore to lose (or, rather, caused the race to be close enough so that Bush was able to steal the election).<\/p>\n

Aside from the vote-counting issue PDP focuses on, there’s the fact that in the final weeks of the campaign Gore was forced to shore up his left wing by campaigning in states that otherwise would have been “safe,” such as Oregon. If Nader hadn’t been running, Gore would presumably have spent that time and money in increased appearances and ads in swing states like Florida. Although we can’t know for sure, it’s likely this would have made a 600 vote difference.<\/p>\n

I voted for Nader in 2000, although I’m not planning to vote for him in 2004. I don’t understand why so many other Nader voters are invested in arguing that Nader didn’t make a difference to the election’s outcome. Of course he made a difference – in an election this close, everything<\/i> made a difference!<\/p>\n

I think the 2000 election showed that the Democrats can’t win a close election without wholehearted support from progressives; the outcome refutes right-wing Democrats who say that the best way to win elections is to ignore progressives. Nader’s run in 200 shows that the progressive voters (and, perhaps more importantly, progressive activists) do matter. Why is that an interpretation that so many Greens resist?<\/p>\n

That said, I do agree with PDP that “the Democratic party has only itself to blame for Gore losing the 2000 election.” Yes, they would have done better if the Greens hadn’t run a candidate; but no one has a right (legal or moral) to run unopposed, or to run only against their chosen opposition.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Postscript<\/i>: If you’re anti-Nader or anti-Green and want to criticize me in the comments for how I voted in 2000, then welcome! All I ask is that you keep it polite, and that you read this post <\/a>and this post <\/a>first, so that you can understand my views a bit before critiquing them..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My “Alas” co-blogger PinkDreamPoppies argues that Nader did not cost Gore the election in 2000. With respect, I disagree. I think that Nader’s run (among many other factors, such as Gore’s mediocre campaign, the press’ weird hatred of Gore, Republicans … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}