DAMN YOU NADER!!!!!!

ps I know there's another thread on this but I'm too angry to find it

(And I VOTED FOR HIM in 2000! Jesus.)

I think he saw Bush's numbers fall below 44% in every major poll of the last week or two, including the Fox poll, losing to the Democrats in every one. And he saw Bush look pathetic and weak and dishonest on Meet the Press. And he saw Nascar dads getting pissed at Bush taking over Daytona. And he saw the new meme developing - Bush is a liar whose administration's attempts to cover up the truth are becoming subjects of ridicule. And he saw job figures and consumer confidence continuing to decline, at historic rates even. And he saw two strong Democratic candidates. And he figured that it's safe to run, because he can try to pull the Dems to the left while not hurting their chances.

Leadership and charisma is also crucial to winning such an election - and it's hard to get past his Sloth-esque look of one eye being bigger than the other, the way he talks out of the left side of his mouth, and worst of all, his slouch.

Check out this from http://phillyimc.org:

"to the naysayers: rev.nazaright speaks on nader running again;"
By rev. nazaright

also, here's my open statement on nader's upcoming decision whether to run: (there has to be an alternative, we cannot be extorted into the lesser of the 2 evils, this is the time to stand firm thru the process & break the democratic party down & educate them on democracy!!)

ou can't blame a good guy, or those that support a good guy, for the fact that you're too pussy & corrupt to stand up to the bad guy. you must ultimately make the stand to oppose evil, whether your chance for this was in 2000, in 2004 or sometime further down the road of your complicity in this treason against humanity.

that will be the testament to our fortitude, as we wait for you to grow up & join the fucking fight, so you better start to ask yourself where might your integrity be found. and make it snappy, will ya?!

but in the mean time, don't you fucking dare be pissed at me because i do the right thing in this sea of shit that you help currently to perpetuate!! i am blameless, and ralph nader has my vote again!!

if you assholes had the heart to nominate kucinich or sharpton then i would've went democrat this time around, but kerry & edwards are just a joke & you know it.

hopefully next time your hindsight will work a little bit quicker, maybe quick enough to act against the next illegal war, but whatever the case my choice is made righteous in the name of freedom & justice & god!!

love & peace to all

ps down with bush!! down with delegation!! down with the electoral college!! down with your complacency & fear!!
THANK YOU & GOD BLESS REV. NAZARIGHT
-----

The comment entitled "have you no sense?" is mine.

Yes, which is why I'm voting Democratic.

that said, he'll be lucky to get 1% this time around. franken-kerry or not.

amen.

ralphie should hook up with bill bennett and joe lieberman, and form the Sanctimony Party. won't get any votes worth a damn, but all that hot air and sanctimonious humbug in one place at one time would be some sort of accomplishment!

Albert Gore, Jr. made absolutely no attempt to appeal to my vote. Had he made even small, but clear, concessions, he might have had it. Instead, he moved relentlessly to the right as his major strategy. Kerry has, in contrast, moved left toward the Dean positions. That may reverse itself as soon as the delegates are in his pocket.

This is a new election and new decision to make. I am going to keep my powder dry and decide my vote in October. In any event, it will never go to BushCo. If it appears there is any chance Oregon might swing to BushCo, I'll move to the right (to the Democrat) to prevent it as best I can. If Oregon is hopelessly lost to BushCo already, or the Democrat is far ahead, that would change matters. I'll make my calculations when the time comes.

I will not compromise my beliefs for no good reason, out of a misguided sense of loyalty to the Democrats. They've shown little enough loyalty to me lately.

What gets my goat is that my mental laser beam of hatred and anger that I usually keep focused on Bush is being diverted to Nader now. We must all focus our hatred on Bush.

i'm not too enthused w/ john kerry, and i'm probably not enthused for the same reasons that a lot of folks (naderites or not) are not enthused. i think that he's the last of the old guard, a konstantin chernenko to howard dean's mikhail gorbachev. dean was my candidate, and presuming that his name is on the ballot during the primary i'll still vote for him in the primary (thanks, DLC, for making NJ the LAST primary) so that he and his delegates have some juice at the primary. but if kerry is the nominee, i will vote for him -- not some vanity candidate who's equally unsuitable to be president as bush. and if said vanity candidate thinks he's gonna peel away the majority of dean supporters, he's in for a really nasty shock.

What has Gore done that anyone cared about? Aside from backing Dean.

Grow a beard?

Tipper?

damn washington insiders!

and to answer milo's question, here's one thing that gore has done since election 2000. speechifying may not be much in yer eyes, but again i ask: what has nader been doing for the past 4 years? other than whipping up some more kool-aid which apparently you will gulp down again?

http://www.scripting.com/images/koolAidPacketGrape.gif

I voted for the third-party candidate with the best chance of hitting 5%. If it had been the Libertarians or Reform Party (with someone other than Buchanan), I probably would have voted for them.

I don't care about Nader, I voted against two corporate-owned conservative major party candidates. But claiming that Gore has been an important figure over the last four years (until he doomed Dean) is just a joke.

Then again, I lived in michigan, which was pretty obv goign to the Democrats back then.

I don't care about Nader, I voted against two corporate-owned conservative major party candidates.

with this:

I voted for the third-party candidate with the best chance of hitting 5%. If it had been the Libertarians or Reform Party (with someone other than Buchanan), I probably would have voted for them.

yeah, that's really sticking it to The Man ... potentially voting for (a) one party that would go farther in de-regulating everything and decimating the federal tax code than even bushco (though they WILL let you smoke yer weed); or (b) a party formed as a corporate executive's ego-trip, is openly xenophobic (even WITHOUT buchanan), and would squeeze the federal budget even tighter than a crab's ass. you che guevara or abbie hoffman, you.

All this Bush hate is kind of making me want to vote for Bush, but I think voting strategically is bad, so I'm thinking I'll vote for Nader.

you've got countless people blogging up political stuff, much more so than 4 years ago. nader is such a genius, and yet he couldn't figure this out?

nader could've picked up his fingers, started using them to type on wordperfect or ms word, sent the manuscript to half a zillion lefty journals and maybe even scored a syndication deal w/ a paper or two. yet he didn't.

he was all over the place in seattle in 1999. where was he in florida in november, 2000 (except making snide comments about flipping coins)? or during the anti-war protests? or ANYTHING?

Gee, you mean I wouldn't actually want to elect a Libertarian or Reform candidate? I'm shocked!

The idea was to break the monopoly on American electoral politics. Who gets to break that monopoly is unimportant.

Virginia may have some of the most conservative people in the Union but it's no longer one of the most conservative states, or at least one of the most Republican ones. In 2000, ~46.6% of Virginians voted for Gore or Nader. That puts Democratic support in Virginia similar to that in swing states Arkansas, Louisiana and West Virginia, in all of which Gore plus Nader got ~46-47%. It's also far better than in states in which they got below 40% - Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota - or states where they either barely beat or fell below 30% - Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming. Arguably the demographic trends in Virginia, in particular the growth of Fairfax County, favor Democrats in future elections.

Where did the Democrats stand up to any of Bush's abuses? They didn't. They've rolled over on tax cuts, healthcare, social welfare rollbacks, Iraq, PATRIOT, etc. etc. etc. Including, maybe especially, the new Defender of the Faith John Kerry.

If anything, the past four years have shown me that Nader is absolutely right.

What I'm getting at is that without a Bush in office, those items in the list you mention above may not even be up for debate.

The only difference is that we might not have seen a war in Iraq. Instead we would have had a continuation of the Clinton-led/backed sanctions that killed a half-million Iraqi children during the 1990s.

That's a bit of a wash, isn't it?

In general, areas of VA and NC are among the fastest-growing outside of the Southwest.

Fairfax County is among the top 20 in the nation for immigration growth, due in no small part to the growth of the tech industry there. Bush won there in 2000, but Gore plus Nader were over 50%. The growth there, in an area that's really a rich DC suburb, may favor Democrats.

Actually, we may be more favored by growth in Democratic Southeastern VA, where growth since 2000 in cities like Norfolk, VA Beach, Newport News and Richmond has increased at greater rates or reversed declines from the prior 10 years, perhaps consistent with the reported move (or return) of blacks to the area. I wonder whether the military presence there will be strong or weak (or not?) for Bush.

Also, the hispanic population of VA is exploding.

The problem is that the growth of Dem voters may be outweighed by the growth of Rep voters. For instance, NoVA's more Republican Loudoun County doubled in size during the 90s. In 2001, it grew by 13%, the second largest increase in the nation. Bush won Loudoun with 56%. But I don't know that the political trend of the growth is Republican.

xpost: haha! more Nader voters for Bush!

I don't necessarily agree. Bush wants us to see his vision of Homeland Security as inevitable in this post-911 world or whatever, but it never needed to be the case, nor does it now.

If it hadn't been seen as something desirable (or necessary), it wouldn't have passed the Senate with only a dissenting vote (or two?).

how can they "stand up" to "Bush's abuses" when they don't have the votes in Congress?

Also, can anyone here who voted for Nader because of some sort of disillusionment with the Democrats actually say they've participated in any way in their local Democratic Party, aside from just voting for Dem. candidates?

these are some of the things that third-party zealots don't seem to understand -- willfully or otherwise.

Even if you lose, at least you put up a fight, rather than acquiescing.

And no, I wouldn't get within a hundred miles of my local Democratic Party. I'd sooner join the Nation of Islam than work with a party that thought Ron Kirk and Tony Sanchez should run on a platform of "I Love Bush and the GOP, Really I Do." It will be a cold day in hell before I vote for a Texas Democrat.

Why would I? The Democratic Party isn't tied to volunteers or workers or activists, it's tied to money. The DLC owns the party, look at this election cycle. The one real candidate who wasn't coming from the inside got screwed.

Because they were misled about many things by the president, remember?

If you don't wanna be involved in the Democratic Party, then why do you complain so much about it? Vote Green! Cynics like you deserve Nader.

and since WHEN was ANY american political party NOT tied to money? even the greens, whose 5% goal in 2000 was to grab some of that federal campaign money?

well great, that Senator represents your view, representative democracy in action, hot shit you don't say. But did you ever think that maybe other Democratic Senators who voted for it maybe don't represent you, but perhaps their constituents? I wouldn't have voted for it either, and was disappointed with Schumer/Clinton voting for it (granted, I didn't vote for them - didn't live here yet), but that's how it works. I'd rather belong to/vote for/be part of a big party with lots of divergent views than either a big party dedicated to conformity (the GOP) or a small party with no realistic shot (everybody else).

Bullshit. Anyone who believed Bush isn't worth voting for anyway. It was obvious to everyone that he was looking for justifications.

wow, yikes! That's creepy. Well, I'm definitely not voting for him in the primary now.

That's a bit of a wash, isn't it?
So what would have your beloved Nader done to make things better if he won? In other words, were there any other options?

And once in every ten years, the hacks are right.

Democrats, by and large, are complete hypocrites on Iraq. Voted to let Dubya bomb away, only began to oppose the war when it became trendy, didn't give a fuck that Clinton was complicit in a half-million deaths.

Sym, what my "beloved" Nader would have done is irrelevant. I didn't vote for him because he was going to get elected, I voted for the best third-party candidate. Christ, pay attention a bit will you?

What would I do? End the sanctions. They did nothing to weaken Saddam and killed a half-million kids. Gee, that's a tough position to grapple with. "Oh, man, sanctions are neither effective nor humane - should I continue?!?!"

How is that even a question?

if that's yer philosophy, why not just cut out the middle(party)man and just write in yer own name?

What would I do? End the sanctions.
That would have gone over just great in a post-9/11 environment. So you think a dictator killing thousands of his own people should receive more money? How humane.

are any different than the arguments for supporting Nader in hopes of pushing Kerry left-ward? Or how voting for Dean doesn't conflict with not voting for third-party candidates with no chance of winning anything.

Also, milo, if sanctions weren't effective, where are those weapons of mass destruction?

to clarify, although Dean might've not had a realistic shot at winning in the general election (which is a questionable, but not unreasonable, premise), his campaign certainly shifted the emphasis and tone of the primaries. Clearly it caused other candidates, most notably Kerry, to pay attention to his message, and affected change within the party.

Why, because you want to have three parties that you can hate rather then just two? You could always vote for the candidate that has the most policies that you agree with, but I guess that would be too simple. (xpost)
And then we can just continue on into infinity with two right-wing parties, because one of them agrees with me about abortion.

See, the thing is, I'd have to find a candidate for one of the two corporate-sponsored parties that agrees with me. If the Democrats nominate someone who doesn't disgust me, I'll vote for him. I probably would have voted for Dean in the general (if I was in a state that mattered). He at least had some semblance of a backbone.

I'm looking for something more out of my politicians than "I agree with my Republican colleague, really I do. You should vote for me because I believe in bipartisan cooperation and think the Republicans have some great ideas, I'll be sure to co-opt them."

That would have gone over just great in a post-9/11 environment. So you think a dictator killing thousands of his own people should receive more money? How humane.
I don't care how it would have gone over, when it comes to dead children. But who's talking post-911 - the sanctions should have been stopped years before.

The last sentence is a joke. Did you even bother reading what I wrote? At all? It appears that these things aren't your strong suit (cf. "beloved Nader"), but at least try. The sanctions did nothing to stop Saddam Hussein. You might have missed the news, but eleven years of sanctions left him with dozens of palaces, millions of dollars and still in power.

While killing a half-million innocent children.

Would I have let a few more million flow in Saddam's coffers to stop what amounts to a genocide? Fuck yeah, without question, without hesitation.

Hstencil, Also, milo, if sanctions weren't effective, where are those weapons of mass destruction?

What? The weapons program was dead a decade before the sanctions ended (with, you know, the war). Stopping basic supplies and medicine from reaching the Iraqi people != combatting WMD.

I can't believe anyone's actually defending sanctions. Does it help you sleep better at night knowing Iraqi kids died on Clinton's watch, for absolutely no gain?

i also fail to see what's so frigging important about getting those 5% funds if all yer doing is just voting vanity anyway ... just write in yer own damn name, fuck nader or browne or hagelin.

and yer not answering hstencil's Q wr2 whether saddam hussein would've acquired weapons of mass destruction w/t the sanctions.

What? The weapons program was dead a decade before the sanctions ended (with, you know, the war). Stopping basic supplies and medicine from reaching the Iraqi people != combatting WMD.

The sanctions were put in place at the end of Gulf War 1 - at the same time that Iraq's arsenal of WMD was beginning to be dismantled because of the same reason the sanctions were put in place i.e. Iraq losing big time. The UN weapons inspections were a direct result of the agreements signed at the end of that war. And the sanctions weren't just "stopping basic supplies and medicine from reaching the Iraqi people" (questionable assertion at best), but also made his WMD program basically impossible to sustain (not that Saddam's scientists let him knew that).

Look, I'm not a big fan of the sanctions, or the war, or Democrats voting for the war - but I think they have slightly more defensible positions than either Bush or Nader or YOU. I mean, you raise a huge stink about their votes, but then claim that whatever Nader's position on the matter would be doesn't matter! That's insane!

When you look at mortality rates from the first 15 years of Saddam's reign, and you look at mortality rates for Saddam's post-sanction reign, and the difference is a half-million dead, something changed. The only difference is Desert Storm (another unnecessary war) and sanctions.

***
Anupama Rao Singh, country director for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), made the estimate in an interview with Reuters.

``In absolute terms we estimate that perhaps about half a million children under 5 years of age have died, who ordinarily would not have died had the decline in mortality that was prevalent over the 70s and the 80s continued through the 90s,'' she said.

***
Hstencil, you seem to be assuming things that I never said. You can have weapons inspections and certain sanctions, without the entire thing. And when, after a few years, you realize that the sanctions aren't weakening Saddam, only killing people you stop them.

Nader's position was irrelevant. It's only relevant if I cite him as someone preferable to the Democrats. I didn't. This goes back to sym not paying attention and referring to my Nader love, or Eisbar's kool-aid - I'm not sure how many times I need to say "I don't care about Ralph Nader."

I voted strategically, just like people are going to strategically vote against Bush in November, regardless of who the Democrats nominate. I knew Nader wasn't getting elected, so I didn't care about his effectiveness as a politician or President. Neither did anyone else I know who voted for him. I voted for a third-party name. If he hadn't been on the ballot and no one else had a shot at getting 5%, I would have voted for David McReynolds.

***

As to "changing ANYTHING" - 'scuse me. What have leftists in the Democratic Party changed in the last thirty years. Not a goddamned thing. All you've done is sat by and watched as the party moved ever rightward, and became less and less effective. Any progressive in the Democratic Party is as sidelined as any Green, only you get to pretend you matter. The modern Democratic Party doesn't care about you.

Screaming and hollering on the sidelines is the only path left. As long as you aren't bothering to punish the Democrats for pissing on you, they have no reason to care. Progressives haven't got enough money to buy their interest, so their only power is the vote. They have to make Democrats earn that vote, or the democrats can just keep on playing GOP-lite.

"Anupama Rao Singh, country director for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), made the estimate in an interview with Reuters.

``In absolute terms we estimate that perhaps about half a million children under 5 years of age have died, who ordinarily would not have died had the decline in mortality that was prevalent over the 70s and the 80s continued through the 90s,'' she said.

A UNICEF survey published in August showed the mortality rate among Iraqi children under 5 had more than doubled in the government-controlled south and center of Iraq during the sanctions."

What was the difference? Did Saddam suddenly become more of a monster? Or did Desert Storm and then sanctions lead directly to the deaths?

Since Saddam hadn't shown a great willingness to make life more difficult on his people previously (one of the higher standards of living in the area, no?), I have to think it's the second.

(* = this is NOT a slam on mcgovern)

What I said is that leftists have become useless as they threw in their lot with the Democrats, "to work from the inside." Working from the inside has gotten leftist/progressive causes exactly nowhere.

"The presidential election is about offering the american people a wealth of choices" says Pat

Pat supports Ralph running, surprisingly.

That's not surprising at all. One thing often unremembered about 2000 is that Buchanan was running as a third-party candidate as well (Reform) and that both were pushing for debate representation.

oops! now they're arguing! oh snap! TONIGHT ON CROSSFIRE!

it's astonishing to me that people will continue to assert the sameness of the two major parties, or seemingly conflate the notion that they are disappointed with the democrats (who isn't?) with the notion that that makes them no better than the republicans

politics doesn't take place in some platonic sphere, it takes place on earth

You want to bitch and moan? Bitch and moan that a sitting VP of a popular President during peacetime with a healthy economy couldn't beat a cokehead fratboy lightweight in his HOME STATE.

Amateurist, the sameness is there. Eight years of Clinton got us lower real wages, a wider wage gap, a stock market bubble that crashed the economy, no advances in civil rights, no cuts in defense spending, no national healthcare system, welfare rollbacks, on and on and on.

After Clinton, why on Earth would anyone who supports progressive causes back a party-hack Democrat or DLC stooge?

Dennis Kucinich's Congressional record shows that yes he actually DID stand up to the administration on these issues. The only Demo candidate (from Congress/Senate at least) whose voting record matched up with his campaign platform. Every day I get more and more pissed at America for not having taken him seriously.

Abortion rights - there you go, one issue where the Democrats in general are on my side. But then you have Al Gore and Dennis Kucinich, who jumped from pro-life to pro-choice because it impedes their careers. The Democrats would ditch a strong pro-choice position in a heartbeat, if it wouldn't cost them the women's movement.

Civil liberties - what were the PATRIOT votes again? Where have the fights been by Democrats? Who's Bob Barr working for again? Democrats really aren't better than the Republicans on-average about civil liberties, never have been (Asian concentration camps, anyone?).

For f*ck's sake.

What even the centrist Dems are not, however, is right-wing, and a vote for a Dem is a vote against the right wing.

No, Democrats don't have my vote. They have to earn it. You find me a candidate who actually makes me believe the Democrats aren't just going to roll over and continue to screw the working class (ie bring back Paul Wellstone), and I'll vote for him.

What's your argument, that I'm way out on the political fringe? Tell me something I don't know. Or tell me something I care about.

Why should I vote for a center-right party rather than the hard-right party? Why should I take part in that system? Why can't I, I don't know, hold out for a decent candidate - why is that wrong?

the greens ran a candidate against wellstone in 2002. and nader supported that candidate. who, it turned out, was to the right of both wellstone AND mondale.

I disagreed with his foreign policy goals.
I disagreed with his gun control stance. (But I can't stand the NRA, either)
I didn't respect his pro-choice position.
I disagreed with his stance on 'free trade.'
I disagreed with welfare reform.
I saw eight years of Clinton fail to bring about a living wage (or even move that way), saw a decline in real wages, saw an increase in the wage gap, saw the tech bubble (that I never trusted even then).

There has to be a better reason for a progressive to vote for Gore than "'cuz Bush sucked."

How do you make progress like that? By always voting for the lesser evil, aren't you ensuring that one of the evils is still running the show?

And Eisbar, I never said they should try to appeal to me, specifically. But yes, actually giving liberals and progressives a reason to vote would be important (ie winning in 2000). And maybe, just maybe, figuring out why half the people don't vote period. Appealing to the disenfranchised, a radical concept!

Actually Greenspan was warning folks that the dot-com bubble was a chimera at the time.

yeah, in 1996. two years later, he failed to raise margin requirements even when it was becoming apparent that investors were over-extended from dot.com speculating, thereby prolonging the bubble (and, arguably, leading to a greater crash than might've happened had he tightened the margin requirements).

There you go with that Ralphie stuff again. Do we need to cover my views on him again? But that was part of the point of going for 5% - a third party with some money has a chance to reach out far more than a third party with no money. (cf. Perot '92)

But anyway, a portion (1/3? I think) of Nader's voters simply wouldn't have voted at all.

http://www.mikehersh.com/Did_Nader_Help_or_Hurt_Al_Gore.shtml using poll numbers states:
1,326,159 (46%) would have picked Gore
   893,716 (31%) would have sat out the election.
   663,080 (23%) would have favored Bush.
2,882,955 (100%) total)

and blame greenspan as much for the dot-bomb as yer blaming clinton.
Which one was the Democratic Party's standard-bearer? Which one was elected?

and, of course, the fact that clinton had to face a GOP congress -- led by newt gingrich for 4 of those years -- had ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on what kinds of laws he could pass, or introduce.
Of course it did.

How is that an argument, though - "well, he had an opposition Congress, he had to roll over!" Bullshit. When it came to something that mattered to him (not being convicted in the Senate), he managed to put up a fight. What about the first two years, where was our great leap forward?

My mother has fallen out of love with Dubya, based on the weirdest things and nothing to do with him being a privileged fuckup and/or Iraq: a) the illegal alien amnesty, and not because it would create 20 million new Bush voters and b) the whole Mars thing, too expensive.

So, she might well vote Democrat for the first time (yeah I checked her label and it does say Made in Minnesota, WTF?) and is worried about Kerry being from privilege 'and more liberal than Ted Kennedy' plus 'the wife wants it more than he does'. She's liking the idea of Edwards 'knowing what it's like'. She misidentified the Independent candidate as George Nader.

Moms.

boo hoo

on all the issues i've cited they remain better than the republicans, often by quite a margin

they voted for the patriot act sure but would they have initiated such a thing? doubtful, though i'm thinking you'll disagree