American Posters: Who did you vote for in 2000?

meant to vote for gore, accidentally voted for buchanan

I was too young or otherwise Ineligible to vote (US citizen)

I was living in Florida and voted for Gore, but not in one of the counties that fucked everything up.

Nader. I was 18 in Texas and knew how the Electoral College worked. Bush was a lock to carry, so I did my part to try to get the Greens to 3% or whatever the minimum was in the popular vote to get matching funds for '04.

10%

That much? My, how badly we were shitting ourselves that year!

I was/am in Oregon, a swing state in 2000, and voted for Gore in exchange for a Gore-supporting of mine in NY voting for Nader (my choice at 19 years old).

Lived in Michigan. Voted Nader in november and McCain in open GOP primary

Lived in Maine. Voted for Gore.

I lived in Miami-Dade County, voted for Gore, was almost chased by angry Cuban septuagenarians outside voting poll when I indignantly shared my choice.

Voted a straight Democratic ticket, old-fashioned like. Not that I beat up Naders or anything.

Registered Democrat in Maryland. Voted Nader with the understanding that Gore was a lock in my state.

Nader. I was 18 in Texas and knew how the Electoral College worked. Bush was a lock to carry, so I did my part to try to get the Greens to 3% or whatever the minimum was in the popular vote to get matching funds for '04.

This, except I was 31 in Tennessee.

Nader/LaDuke in MI

Nader

Nader

Lived in Virginia, voted for Gore.

too young!

I can't remember! It was an absentee ballot from NY, so I voted for one of the socialists.

Started this poll mostly bc I was curious how many of us voted for Nader. I did, too.

Lived in CA at the time, voted Gore.

A day before the 1996 election, someone on the street handed me a Xeroxed copy of an article from The Nation, outlining the case for giving Nader a vote. Especially since Clinton seemed to be in the clear, the appeal made sense, and I voted.

2000 felt too close to call--particularly after watching Bush debate, the way he spoke of showing no mercy when executing a woman in Texas who was pleading for her life, as well as a few lines that suggested that he relished the idea of battling our country's enemies.

This was also the era when Starbucks was talked about The Great Evil, and so of course whether this was true would affect someone's vote. If other industries were more evil, then voting for Gore made sense.

I like Starbucks' brownies.

I was living in NC at the time and did not vote.

was 14

Jean Chrétien.

One of the 5708 vote margin for Gore in Wisconsin, had many heated debates with Nader supporters, and as I'd just moved up for grad school from Texas, could inform undecideds about what a puppet of special interests Bush was, quoting Molly Ivans liberally.

Eligible, didn't vote.

I didn't vote. :( I had moved to Atlanta earlier that year and didn't get my registration or an absentee ballot sorted out in time. I was planning to vote for Nader.

gore.

1st election / jersey / nader

Nader

19/TX/Nader

22/ca/nader

voted for nader in 9th grade mock elections

14/TX/gore supporter

lotta curses on yall from the compassionate wing of the Democratic Party

22/GA/Nader, who wasn't on the ballot in GA so I wrote him in lol

gore

2000, first year eligible to vote. voted nader, never regretted it.

what option is "too stoned to remember to register to vote while at college"?

but yeah I was planning on voting for Nader

i was in prison and couldn't vote

but really i was 11

I was aja

Nader. I was 18 in Texas and knew how the Electoral College worked. Bush was a lock to carry, so I did my part to try to get the Greens to 3% or whatever the minimum was in the popular vote to get matching funds for '04.

― 50 Shades of Greil (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, October 20, 2012 3:44 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

10%

― balls, Saturday, October 20, 2012 3:46 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That much? My, how badly we were shitting ourselves that year!

― 50 Shades of Greil (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, October 20, 2012 3:57 AM Bookmark

I was 19 and voted on this logic (in Georgia). I remember an Election Night clip of Nader confidently expecting to get "eight or nine percent" or some similarly improbable guesstimate; this was the source of much extremely sophisticated mirth in the dorms ("He meant eight or nine percent... of his immediate family!").

As was recently observed on one of the eight or nine active politics threads, I wonder how things might have gone if it were more apparent that Nader's "they're both the same" contention, while basically the same in reference to Campaign Bush and Clinton/Gore, was completely and totally off the mark as far as Bush's neo-con coterie and the out-of-nowhere insistence on the Iraq War.

What'd people do in the primaries? I was pretty jazzed about Bradley, who now seems like America's Forgotten Candidate.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1999/1101991004_400.jpg

I held my nose and voted for Bradley in the primary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdpNq5upqrU

wow, is this really what his ads looked like? (and sounded like, for that matter?)

I would be pretty stoked to see a genuine lefty Dem actually come out swinging in a primary again, even if horribly doomed. Kucinich was great for this, and I voted for him, but it was not with any sense that he would actually come close to the nomination. In my deluded, high school viewership in 1999, it seemed like Bradley might actually have a chance at the nomination.

Howard Dean would have been cool at the time, too, although I couldn't really spell out a lot of the details of his policies - just remember that he was against the war and in favor of health care. At least he had some zip. Pretty much gave up on him once he became a top-level party apparatchik though.

yeah, my dad was a Bradley supporter, I was 13 at the time. I vaguely recall that at some point he announced that Henry Kissinger was advising him on foreign policy matters, and then we were somewhat less excited about him.

I was excited about Bradley, but he was dunzo by the time of the Florida primary.

Lived in MN, voted for Gore

distictly remember having an argument w/ this dude abt how i "wasted my vote" on nader. came to find out that dude didn't even vote. that was odd.

gore's 1988 campaign for dem nomination was pretty right-wing (at least in dem terms) so never even considered a vote for him
liked bradley but he was a pretty terrible campaigner

Voted Nader with the understanding that Gore was a lock in my state.

― beatboxing for lou dobbs (how's life), Saturday, October 20, 2012 8:24 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel vaguely embarrassed about it now though

i was too young but i spent a LOT of time explaining to other ppl in high school about how gwb and gore were essentially the same

my cousin worked for the gore campaign and my grandfather was a big bradley supporter and they used to get in weird pass agg fights at family functions like my grandfather would put a bunch of bradley signs or bumper stickers on the table or something

I wonder how things might have gone if it were more apparent that Nader's "they're both the same" contention, while basically the same in reference to Campaign Bush and Clinton/Gore, was completely and totally off the mark as far as Bush's neo-con coterie and the out-of-nowhere insistence on the Iraq War.

it was apparent then and it's apparent now. everybody gotta serve somebody. who and how matters plenty.

i wonder how things might have gone if all those dems hadn't voted for the iraq war

rogermexico - wait, it was apparent in 1999 that Bush wanted to start a war in Iraq? I must have missed that ad.

did you miss when he picked dick cheney to be his veep (or rather when dick cheney picked dick cheney to be his veep)? also, from gop platform in 2000: Perhaps nowhere has the inheritance of Republican governance been squandered so fatefully as with respect to Iraq. The anti-Iraq coalition assembled to oppose Saddam Hussein has disintegrated. The administration has pretended to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, but did nothing when Saddam Hussein's army smashed the democratic opposition in northern Iraq in August 1996. The administration also surrendered the diplomatic initiative to Iraq and Iraq's friends, and failed to champion the international inspectors charged with erasing Iraq's nuclear, biological, chemical, and ballistic missile programs. When, in late 1998, the administration decided to take military action, it did too little, too late. Because of the administration's failures there is no coalition, no peace, and no effective inspection regime to prevent Saddam's development of weapons of mass destruction.

A new Republican administration will patiently rebuild an international coalition opposed to Saddam Hussein and committed to joint action. We will insist that Iraq comply fully with its disarmament commitments. We will maintain the sanctions on the Iraqi regime while seeking to alleviate the suffering of innocent Iraqi people. We will react forcefully and unequivocally to any evidence of reconstituted Iraqi capabilities for producing weapons of mass destruction. In 1998, Congress passed and the president signed the Iraq Liberation Act, the clear purpose of which is to assist the opposition to Saddam Hussein. The administration has used an arsenal of dilatory tactics to block any serious support to the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization reflecting a broad and representative group of Iraqis who wish to free their country from the scourge of Saddam Hussein's regime. We support the full implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act, which should be regarded as a starting point in a comprehensive plan for the removal of Saddam Hussein and the restoration of international inspections in collaboration with his successor. Republicans recognize that peace and stability in the Persian Gulf is impossible as long as Saddam Hussein rules Iraq.

yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh okay, okay, that was all in there. But you could also fairly read it as the same kind of meaningless crap Romney's saying right now, "we should be tougher on them than the current regime" with no idea what that means. Most people, if they noticed it, probably took it for "more sanctions." I just don't remember it as the Bush that Bush got up and sold himself as, Mister Compassionate Conservative. He certainly didn't "win" the election on a "let's start wars" message!

i do remember my dad saying to me the next day "well, hopefully nothing will happen".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzDGUblALVs

Because again, the larger point I was making was just that someone could reasonably think "oh, yeah, Bush and Gore would totally govern exactly the same way" in 2000, but to say that after the Iraq war is just nuts. Basically I'm just wishing I could go back in time and show Nader and maybe Zach de la Rocha the whole history of the last decade and how they packaged and sold this pet-project war and shoved it down America's throats through every lying scam-o-rama trick they could think up.

xpost yeah - in hindsight a video like that is a really grim preview of the bullshit rhetoric to come but it's not a smoking gun where a 2000-era voter would go "Oh, yeah, I was pretty convinced by that Rage Against The Machine video that these guys are the same, but if you read between the lines of what Dick Cheney said in this one debate answer, he's totally hatching a plan to fabricate a bunch of evidence and lie to the entire world to convince otherwise on-the-fence people to undertake a major ground war in Iraq, also by the way a major terrorist attack will have given the White House carte blanche to propose all kinds of fucked up bullshit and Congress will do nothing."

what was lieberdouche's response to that?

LIEBERMAN: It would, of course, be a very serious situation if we had evidence, credible evidence, that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. I must say, I don't think a political campaign is the occasion to declare exactly what we would do in that case. I think that's a matter of such critical national security importance that it ought to be left to the Commander in Chief, leaders of the military, Secretary of State to make that kind of decision without the heat of a political campaign. The fact is that we will not enjoy real stability in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein is gone. The Gulf War was a great victory. And incidentally, Al Gore and I were two of the ten Democrats in the Senate who crossed party lines to support President Bush and Secretary Cheney in that war. We're both very proud we did that. But, the war did not end with a total victory. Saddam Hussein remained there. As a result, we have had almost ten years now of instability. We have continued to operate almost all of this time military action to enforce a no-fly zone. We have been struggling with Saddam about the inspectors. We ought to do, and we're doing everything we can to get the inspectors back in there. But in the end there's not going to be peace until he goes. And that's why I was proud to co-sponsor the Iraq Liberation Act with Senator Trent Lott why I have kept in touch with the indigenous Iraqi opposition, broad based, to Saddam Hussein. The Vice President met with them earlier this year. We are supporting them in their efforts and will continue to support them until the Iraqi people rise up and do what the people of Serbia have done in the last few days, get rid of a despot. We'll welcome you back into the family of nations where you belong.

Too young to vote, spent that November staring across the state line at Florida and repeatedly mouthing the words WHAT IS FUCKING WRONG WITH YOU

I think 2000 was probably a turning point for politics in the same way it was the economy. the idea that any american election could not matter is pretty lol because there's so much on the line, always. whereas 4% unemployment, no wars, political debates about what to do w/ all that extra money the governmnt has...I mean I'm not defending that stance but if there's an election where people could get lazy w/r/t this type of thinking, 2000 was it. and it's prob gonna be the last in our lifetimes.

i'm not sure how a campaign saying 'we're going to take saddam out' requires you to read between the lines. anyone who was following the debate in 2000 or the few years prior really (always amazed ppl forget how close clinton came to committing to something beyond tactical strike in early 98 until some bad polling and a disastrous townhall made it unappetizing for an admin already dealing w/ lewinsky and then desert fox wiping out last of iraq suspected wmd facilities removed casus belli) knew what bush campaign saying they would 'take him out' and devoting several paragraphs to hussein (vs two halfhearted lines in dem platform about keeping him 'boxed in' and working toward removing him from power) meant. admittedly there might not be much overlap here w/ ppl who get their news from ratm videos.

See, I, putting on the hat of iatee's 2000-era voter, where the election really does seem to be about small differences of how to spend a surplus, exactly which tax credits for college we should invest in, etc, etc., hear Cheney saying not "we're going to take saddam out," but "we're going to take saddam out, if this unlikely chain of events were to take place, which it won't, because everybody watching this fully expects this to get resolved through those 'sanction' thingies and/or some more of those cruise missile strikes they did a couple of years ago, why are they even talking about iraq, jesus'"

I mean, basically we are arguing over who exactly is the hypothetical 2000 voter who was sold on the "they're both the same" line. Are they well-informed consumers of the party platforms and the associated neo-lib and neo-con discourses that inform them? Are they subscribing to dozens of magazines? Or are they passing TV followers that form their opinions the way most people do, and then plague parties a decade later still insisting that "they're both the same" despite everything that's fucking happened right in front of them?

Because the latter is who I'm goggling at, and the former effectively doesn't exist unless you really think the electorate in 2000 was walking around going "oh yeah, that Cheney, if Bush wins we're going to war in Iraq come January!" I mean, was there any media attention given to those remarks at all? Beyond him generally being called "hawkish" or w/e, did this get featured in editorials or magazine cover stories or, well, anything?

voted for gore, but i throw enough of a fit when someone does the "thanks a lot, nader" thing that i sometimes i forget i didn't vote for nader

Voted Gore in MO.

unless you lived in florida in 2000 yr hypothetical vote for nader had zero impact. considering the margin in florida was <500 votes and that nader received ~97.5k votes it's pretty straightforwardly true that had there not been a high profile left third party run in 2000 (ie if nader had received as much attn from the media and grass roots support as say buchanan and browne did and theoretically only 'stolen' as many votes as they did from bush) clearly gore wins florida outright. that said it's somewhat ridiculous and unfair to blame nader voters for 2000 - there are many many decisions gore made during the campaign and during the recount that deserve blame first. i would give nader voters, o let's say 2.74% of the blame, well short of 10% nevermind a majority.

i've always thought we should prob blame the people who voted for bush

imagine by what a margin gore would have won had it not been for them!

lived in Texas and considered voting for Nader but decided he would actually be a terrible President so the symbolic statement didn't really make sense

five of them specifically
http://airforcephotos.togetherweserved.com/233211.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Antonin_Scalia,_SCOTUS_photo_portrait.jpg/220px-Antonin_Scalia,_SCOTUS_photo_portrait.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Sandra_Day_Ohttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Anthony_Kennedy_official_SCOTUS_portrait.jpg/220px-Anthony_Kennedy_official_SCOTUS_portrait.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Clarence_Thomas_official_SCOTUS_portrait.jpg/220px-Clarence_Thomas_official_SCOTUS_portrait.jpg

yep

Oh god, I forgot all about those gold stripes...

GORE: We have to keep a weather eye toward Saddam Hussein because he’s taking advantage of this situation (in Israel) to once again make threats and he needs to understand that he’s not only dealing with Israel, he is dealing with us.
BUSH: The coalition against Saddam has fallen apart or it’s unraveling, let’s put it that way. The sanctions are being violated. We don’t know whether he’s developing weapons of mass destruction. He better not be or there’s going to be a consequence, should I be the president.
Q: You could get him out of there?
BUSH: I’d like to, of course. But it’s going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the pressure on him.
Q: You feel that as a failure of the Clinton administration?
BUSH: I do.
GORE: We have maintained the sanctions. I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Some say they’re too weak to do it. But that’s what they said about those opposing Milosevic in Serbia.
Source: Presidential Debate at Wake Forest University, Oct 11, 2000

the larger point I was making was just that someone could reasonably think "oh, yeah, Bush and Gore would totally govern exactly the same way" in 2000

got that, except for the "reasonably" part.

i know this is kind of a pointless thing to wonder but i am not 100% sure that gore wouldn't have messed with iraq.

Messed with, maybe - more stuff along the lines of Clinton in 1998 I would assume. Not to say that that wasn't also destructive and dubious policy, but it was nothing compared to the Cheney war, and I just don't see that kind of obsessive desire to make the war happen coming from Gore. If anything, Gore's screwed-up psychology and campaigning instincts would have made him more hung up on Getting Bin Laden (assuming 9/11 happens in a Gore presidency).

oh, agreed. you can even see the pattern in the debate excerpt above -- gore's basically taking the clinton approach, and bush can't see it more complexly than 'let's go in there and fuck some shit up.'

I don't think Gore would have gone to war with Iraq because we had pictures of aluminum pipes and some trucks

Let's call a spade a spade - the pictures of the aluminum pipes and trucks, for all intents and purposes, existed only because the Bush administration wanted the war. To entertain the prospect of Gore administration even looking at these essentially imaginary images is to already begin to privilege them with some kind of truth value and underplays the sheer depth of the crimes committed by Cheney et al.

Sorry - - - the fact that these fuckers are still walking around free seriously makes me want to go Morbius sometimes.

voted gore in ny. thought he was a lame candidate, memories of his clumsy 88 run. i was relieved he didn't have to face mccain :-/

even thinking about the 2000 election and its fallout gives me hella anxiety/seething rage to this day.

i was 25 and living in NC, disgruntled with my choices, and idealistically inclined. i voted for nader.

even thinking about the 2000 election and its fallout gives me hella anxiety/seething rage to this day.

ME TOO. Jeff is fond of documentaries about recent political history - 2000 election, war in Iraq, Blackwater - and I can't watch any of them without risking a rage-induced brain aneurysm.

If anything, Gore's screwed-up psychology and campaigning instincts would have made him more hung up on Getting Bin Laden (assuming 9/11 happens in a Gore presidency).

I think that's quite likely. also I think the republicans would have been extremely cynical w/ 9/11 from day one and try to make the 2004 election about 'al gore can't keep us safe'.

If anything, Gore's screwed-up psychology and campaigning instincts would have made him more hung up on Getting Bin Laden (assuming 9/11 happens in a Gore presidency).

otm. He would have vowed to "put Bin Laden in a lockbox."

that frontline iraq documentary is the best thing ever, theatres should have just subbed it in for the print of stone's w

not partic hard to be more hung up on getting bin laden than bush iirc

I remember the last months of the election and then the gap between the inauguration and 9/11 - Bush was just such a punch line, even after stealing an election he seemed like he couldn't be that bad. No one around here could believe that the yuppie shitbird who used to own the Rangers was President.

I'd always had this impression that it was a kind of an aimless, jokey presidency until 9/11 gave them the freedom to do anything they ever wanted - cf. "That's My Bush," "Bush-isms" etc. But I'm not really sure history bears that out - He got No Child Left Behind in that period for example. And his approval ratings were solid:

http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval_files/Approval_27267_image001.png

Wonder how much I just mentally insert the first year or so of Reagan's presidency and mix them up.

eek at that post-Katrina plunge.

Matthew Dowd, the only honest GOP hack, said that the Bush presidency ended in October 2005: "Nobody cared what he said from that point on."

The main things I remember about Bush's presidency pre-9/11 are the first round of tax cuts and the diplomatic incident with China.

also the strenuous mental lifting that led to his decision on stem cell research

xp - Jeff is fond of documentaries about recent political history - 2000 election, war in Iraq, Blackwater - and I can't watch any of them without risking a rage-induced brain aneurysm.

I usually read a book like this every...third book or so. One after the other and I would have a heart attack, but periodically? A good eye opener. If I hadn't read that book about Blackwater, I wouldn't ever have known (or remembered, more likely) the connection between John Schmitz and Mary Kay LeTourneau; I believe my life is richer for knowing that so hey, why not have a heart attack every now and again. I can always just tell you the best parts, which is what Jeff does, I'm sure!

Honestly though -- I've noticed a lot of anxiety going around these weeks before the election. Just general anxiety -- people posting about random outbursts of tears on facebook (>3!), extreme drama on ilx last week...I'm just saying that I have observed that people around me are wound up. Not just me. Lots of people.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow!

in all the Nader chatter over the years I never hear any discussions of what a Nader presidency would have even been like.

nothing would have happened

Unless I missed some upthread, not reading it tbqh.

ILX in responsible for W shocker

seriously lol-ing at these results. ile back in the day was more anti-nader than al gore probably ever was.

too late for this poll and to no surprise of any long-time ILXors ... i voted for Gore (in NJ) and i do not regret it.

i also voted for Jon Corzine for US Senate, and that i do regret (in light of his post-politics shenanigans).

and i never seriously entertained voting for Bill Bradley in the primary. since i basically grew up w/ him as my US Senator, i knew that he was just basically NJ's version of Pat Moynihan (not as much of a self-important blowhard [though he had that trait, too] but just as equally inept at actually, you know, legislating and shit) -- if you wanted shit done, you looked to Senator Lautenberg (or Torricelli before he was forced to resign).

http://www.salon.com/2000/08/02/bush_cover/

haha

So, though he fired Valentine, he did it in the nicest possible way. (Bush later told me he considers Valentine one of the smartest people he has met).

So I am planning to vote for George W. Bush because he is a nice guy. As a nice guy he will attract and retain the loyalty of outstanding administration officials, and together they will promote policies that are smarter and bolder than we ever would expect, just from looking at Bush himself. As a nice man, he will prove remarkably adept at working with Congress, with Democrats, with the media and with all the other different people you need to handle as president. He will set a tone of bonhomie that will grease the machinery of government; things will actually get done in Washington again.

incredible