I agree that Nader's run in 2000 was a disaster. He made a big mistake, and shouldn't have done it.

Nevertheless, I think Nader is a great American - and his overal policy positions leave most Democratic candidates in the dust. People should generally listen to what he has to say.

This post comes out of nowhere. Nobody seems to have noticed the Nader-Blitzer interview except for the Hillary Clinton rapid-response team that Todd Gitlin has apparently joined.

Everyone cool down. Nadar did a very bad thing in 2000 and may or may not have ego problems, but we went over that long ago. Todd did mention Clinton in passing, to make the point that Nadar's talking of running again, but it's not as if he pushed some Hillary button that should make us foam at the mouth. If he promotes her for the nomination in a post, I assume he'll do so less cryptically, so that the thread doesn't have to sound like The da Vinci Code.

It might be interesting to speculate on the impact of a Nadar run this time, but it might also be way premature, the kind of horse-race focus I hate. I'll say that it's harder to be a spoiler when the GOP is looking so pathetic, both thanks to Bush and given the image problems of its potential candidates right now. Then again, their fierce machine can do wonders. But for now, I'd rather not bog down on Nadar.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

I was neither a Kery support nor a Bush supporter and I'm glad that Nader was running. If Nader died, I would have stayed home and, like Nader said, not voted.

In fact, it was Kerry who sent his lawyers around-- and tried to knock Nader off the ballot. Thus, I lost respect for the Democrats because, instead of rising the bar, they lowered it.

The Clintons love Bloomberg and, in the last mayor's election in NYC, supported him instead of the Democratic candidate.

Nader may die, but most politicians don't bother to live.

Most of the problems, IMO, are from inbreeding...

A little below the belt there, MNPundit.

Ben Cronin

We don't have to be held hostage, to this two party, Capitalist System.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans serve the same Master. The system is gamed that way. Capitalism places Wealth creation over all other considerations.

If Nader wants to run, and he brings ideas to the table, so be it. It's better than the same old, same old, we've gotten in the last Presidential and the most recent Congresssional Races.

How many more times, must we hear, somebody needs to address the needs of the Working class, that anybody could have done it, but nobody did it.

I'm afraid, that Nader alone, won't be able to overturn the deeply entrenched Political system.

Let's hear Nader's ideas and establish those ideas as the standard or the bar.

Tell the Main Stream Media we expect them to quit giving us this horse race crap, I don't want Wolf Blitzer or Fox News to coronate, their favorite. We the people want the choice from all viable candidates, Not, just the ones the Murdoch's, Turner's or Moonies, give us.

If Nader's ideas, to solve our problems are reasonable solutions, let the other candidates prove they have better ideas, than Nader.

Throw it right back at the parties, if Naders ideas are wrong, what are your plans? (or what is your record?)

Let Nader or any other candidate, prove their worth.

Let the people decide, to select the most intelligent ones and not the stupid, show pieces the press falls in love with.

I think the MSM is just another biased lacky, of the Capitalist system.

Ralph Nader finally gets it: successful politicians "pander and flatter." For some reason though, he only seems able to see the pandering and flattering in Democratic politicians. Maybe if he did some more pandering and flattering himself, he's pick up more than 1% of the vote.

Does this "left winger" ever actually criticize the right?

You neglected to mention that the Repubs were the ones underwriting Nader's efforts to get on those state ballots. Gee, I wonder why ...

Looking back at Nader 2000 from the vantage point of 2007 is a little bit like looking back at Lindberg or others who were soft on the German government of the 30s.
Before Bush and Iraq, the Tweedledum-Tweedledee argument made more sense. It was not obvious that Bush would turn out to be off-the-charts worse than his father.
It would settle something inside me if I could hear Nader say "The campaign I ran in 2000 was sincerely what seemed the best for the country at the time, but if I had known what Bush would turn out like, I would have done things very differently. A lot of factors contributed to George Bush being elected, but to the extent that inadvertently I was one of those many factors, I am profoundly sorry."
In the beyond-Democratic-party left (or curious), I think we place a great emphasis on not being as centered on The Great Superstar, recognizing that as an unhealthy, un-democratic, and disempowering aspect of the culture at large. Yet, in Nader we wound up with someone so blinded by his righteousness that he acts egotistical. Is there anything for us to learn from this?

I'm amazed that people are still talking about this. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Al Gore may be the first candidate in history to lose his home state. Had he won that -- he would have won the White House. Gore is responsible for Gore's loss.

I have no idea why, but many of you need to put aside your partisan and ideological preferences to see the partisan and ideolgical realities of each state.

First, Tennessee is a conservative state; the issue wsa that, there was amount of conservatives that were Democrats. However, many of those Democrats have grown older, and therefore, lesser in number. The younger and middle-aged conservatives tend to be Republicans. Compound the fact that Tennessee has become both an ideologically conservative and partisanly Republican state means that Al Gore would have lost anyway.

Two, Nader's strengths are not in swing states; it's in liberal states. He could have conceivably won a chunk from the New England States. Of course, he would haven't affected the election then, but he could have at least attempted to build a Third Party there.

I don't blame Nader for what happened, though. I'm sure if he knew the consequences of his campaign, he would have certainly reconsidered. He may not say so, but I'm absolutely sure now, in 20-20 Hindsight, he would have rather have Al Gore or John Kerry over George W. Bush.

I just want to point out that Northeast is mostly Democratic, the Southeast is mostly Republican (except Florida), the Rim South is mostly Republican, and the Mountain West is mostly Republican (at least on the National Level), and the Pacific West is Democratic. The two areas in play are the Midwest (except Indiana), and the Southwest.

What the Democrats should focus on is to solidify their holds on the Pacific West like they did with Northeast, and then start targetting the Southwest and Midwest.

If Nader runs again, I recommend that he should try to run in the Northeast, where he can conceivably get a large minority of votes. I think his goal should be to gain enough so that he can be included in the debates.

I think some of the anti-Nader stuff is bitterness about 2000, but a lot more of it is concern about 2008. Nader is a nutcase, but he knows exactly what he's doing: he isn't trying just to beat the Democrats at the polls by being a spoiler -- he's also trying to influence the media's and the public's image of what Democrats are. Read the interview TGitlin linked to in the starter post. Quite consciously in my view, Nader reinforces negative spin points about Democratic candidates. These are the sorts of things that steal away votes you never even see -- people who stay home, swing voters who vote R instead of D because "credible" left wingers like Nader are attacking the Democratic candidate for being a "panderer" and all the rest. It's one of the reasons some of the media outlets spend so much time playing up Nader, when he is, in absolute ballot box terms, a non-entity. By interviewing Nader they get to attack Dems without doing it themselves.

I'm not a true believer. I voted for Gore in 2000 have never voted for Nader for anything. But the fact is that Todd Gitlin has now made three successive posts that all have included a defense of HRC against some very recent attack.

If it quacks like shill ...

56,964 FL voters voted Nader. Bush won by 512.

He also cost Gore NH.

Any questions about Nader's effect?

Yeah, the home state thing is designed to make Gore seem like a total loser, as if he didn't really win the election. Heck, any outcome is overdetermined. We can wrack up 50 reasons other than Nadar. Throw in Frank Bruni's sucking up to Gore in The Times, the focus on Gore's sneer at Bush's idiocy in the debate, Lieberman's incompetence in running or debating Cheney, a public itself too stupid to realize that peace and prosperity actually meant a plus for the incumbent rather than that votes no longer matter in a happy world, failure of the press to take serious Bush's record, etc., etc. Why not even blame God for washing Evian up on shore, just in time to galvanize enough Cuban American voters to win Florida? (The same lucky SOB got 9/11 to salvage his presidency.) 

But alas, the fact is that if a mere 1% of Nadar voters in Florida changed their mind, Gore would have won. And the Nadar supporters who decided that class in America is more about NAFTA than regulation, taxation, and the military industrial complex have found all sorts of excuses for not making their pathetic case.

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

"Release his Florida voters?" They weren't under mind control, you know. People voted for him because they liked him. Maybe they made a mistake. I'm open to that argument, and am pretty sympathetic to it. But, left leaning voters don't owe their vote to the Democrat.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

That is a really good observation. But, isn't it possible that Nader is harder on Democratss than Republicans because Nader has stronger views about what a Democrat should be?

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Excluding third party candidates from debates is one of the reasons that people believe that the Democrats and Republicans are in it together. The two parties really do work to make sure that only their own voices are heard. The media, which could just refuse tro broadcast debates without more participants, is complicit.

I love the notion that you should have a certain amount of polling support before you can get in on a debate. Maybe if some people with outside the mainstream ideas were able to express them ind ebates, they'd have that polling support!

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Normally, the burden of proof falls upon the accuser than the accused. That doesn’t change just because you are a liberal Democrat and you are very, very angry at Ralph Nader. Gitlin makes no attempt to rebut Barry Burden’s statistical argument that Nader focused primarily on large-population states in 2000 rather than swing states, which was further supported by Micah Sifry:

“If you look at Nader's campaign schedule for the last 30 days of the election, it is clear he spent more time in safe states than battleground states. Interested readers can get all the details on this from pages 207 through 210 of my book, Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America.”

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/11/letters-s-11-04.html

Rather than argue the evidence, Gitlin tries to make Nader prove a negative and relies on precisely what he accuses Burden of: mind-reading. He tries to argue that Nader is guilty regardless of the exculpatory evidence provided by his actions, because he was happy during his press conference the day after the election. Since he was happy, therefore he was happy because Gore didn’t win.

This is pure speculation on Gitlin’s part. My speculation that Nader was happy because he had taken the first step toward putting the Green Party on the political map is every bit as valid, as is speculation that he was happy simply because the campaign was finally over. “Evidence” of this nature reminds me of the “spectral evidence” that was used to obtain guilty verdicts in the Salem witch trials.

Sorry, but even Jack McCoy couldn’t find a way to prosecute this case.

"They even called Labour the "other war party" and so on, just like you people do with the Democrats today."

Many Congressional Democrats are the other war party now. This is not true for the Progressive Caucus in the House or for the 13 Senators who voted last July for Kerry's proposal to bring the troops home by July 2007.

I very proudly voted for Nader in 1996 and 2000, because I knew my New England home state was going blue...and it did. But I'm registered as a Green and I want to see the Green Party become a viable 3rd party. I want to see its candidates in the debates and I want to see Greens in Congress.

If Al Gore's left flank was unguarded, that is his fault. But above all, the Democrats failed to get out the vote among their own people. It infuriates me that Democrats will wag their fingers at Nader and those who voted for him as if without Nader all those votes would have gone for Gore.

Without Nader or the Greens, most of those votes would have simply stayed home, which is exactly what a lot of Democrats did that year.

There's a red herring around here, but it's the idea that Nader set out to get Bush elected. As uneventful as his appearance on the Daily Show last night was, his most memorable statement was that he believes Gore won Florida in 2000.

As for Tennesee, well with a 53.7% voter turnout in 2000, Tennessee ranked 44th in the country in that category--with a native son running for president! I haven't yet found out what percentage of the stay-at-homes were Democrat, but I'm willing to bet the difference was in the moderate/conservative Dems who didn't vote.

Seriously, think about that. A former senator and vice president from your home state is running for president and barely half of all registered voters turnout--AND HE LOSES!

That's pathetic.

The conversation has come up because Todd Gitlin brought it up; and he brought it up because Ralph Nader's critique of corporate cronyism strikes a raw nerve in the corporate panhandlers -- especially Democratic Senator You-Know-Her -- who now think they can simply buy the next round of elections in 2008. Railing against Ralph Nader did the Democrats no good in 2000 and even less good in 2004, yet we now have begun hearing more of the "old news" scapegoating simply for the distraction that such diversionary tactics always provide those who have sinned grievously but who have no wish to atone or change to a more honest lifestyle -- like representing working-class Americans. In short, the national Democratic Party wants the huge, corporate payoffs (i.e., bribes) that Republicans until recently enjoyed almost exclusively. Having Ralph Nader remind people of "Crime in the Suites" just won't do when the Democrats plan on occupying the suites. Thus, Todd Gitlin's seemingly inane and misguided attack on Ralph Nader couched in the McCarthyite vernacular of the red-baiting Republican 1950s. (For those too young to have experienced it, the vicious, sub-rational verbal vehicle of choice has to do with ducks and why "communists" walk and quack like them).

Just as a point of context about Al Gore, though, his 2000 loss of "his own home state" and its eleven electoral votes did, of course, cost Al Gore his election. (We could throw in Bill Clinton's former "home state" of Arkansas that Al Gore didn't carry, either, but let's not rub it in.) Some will contest this line of reasoning, saying individual states don't count in a huge country with fifty states. Such persons, though, most often also claim that Florida does count, even in a huge country with fifty states. So, go figure. But anyway, Al Gore grew up in Washington D.C. as the son of a Tennesse senator and hardly lived in his home state at all while growing up. As a Congressman, Senator, and Vice President himself, he mostly continued to live in Washington D.C. His move back to Tennessee before his 2000 run for the presidency smacked of insincerity and opportunism which did him no good in a state that felt little if any affiliation with him. That he lost "his own home state" (which, had he won it, would have rendered Florida moot) came as little surprise to those familiar with Al Gore's estranged situation in his "home" region.

As part of the larger picture, Al Gore had pretty much the same claque of consultants in 2000 as John Kerry did in 2004. Ralph Nader had nothing to do with those whom Al Gore and John Kerry chose to hire as advisors. They all proceeded -- much as they tried to do (except for Howard Dean) in last year's 2006 mid-term elections -- by assuming a zero-sum game with Republicans "owning" their voters in "Red" states and Democrats "owning" theirs in "Blue" states. The Democrats in 2000 and 2004 simply abandoned the "Red" states -- including Al Gore's home state of Tennessee -- hoping to barely squeek by in the "Blue" ones. Such a narrow and defensive strategy cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000 when Florida turned out more competitive than Gore and his consultants realized too late. Reaching out to Ralph Nader and his supporters might have padded Al Gore's margin of victory in the "Blue" states that Gore won anyway, but only a smarter choice of running mate (like Florida's popular Senator Bob Graham) along more traditional electoral-appeal lines might have worked the "favorite son" angle to the benefit of Al Gore's candidacy. Holy Joe Lieberman of Tel Aviv, Connecticut, simply added nothing to the Democratic ticket worth the enormous turn-off that a sanctimonious Norteastern Jew and Israeli Zionist caused, for various reasons, in both Red and Blue states.

John Kerry lost the presidency in 2004 by assuming the same defensive "consultant-driven" Al Gore strategy instead of openly repudiating the Cheney/Bush unforced debacle in Iraq and making inroads in Red states as disgusted with the stupid waste as Ralph Nader and most of the "liberal" Democratic Party "base." Again, Ralph Nader had no effect on any American elections that smart Democratic Party strategy could not have neutralized or even prevented by co-option. But scapegoating comes easier to those who just want to rake in the easy corporate cash bribes -- used to sell TV ads of their consultant-driven images -- rather than do the hard, time-consuming Howard Dean work of rebuilding the Clinton-destroyed Democratic Party up from the grass-roots in all fifty states.

As far as the role "third parties" play in recent American history, only the recent right-wing ticket-splitter Ross Perot managed to siphon off enough major party votes (taking 19% and 9%, respectively) from the Republicans in the 1992 and 1996 elections to affect the national results in a clearly and regionally polarized (Arkansas and Tennessee included) American electorate. Ross Perot's two candidacies gave Bill Clinton two plurality (but no majority) elections to the presidency. Ross Perot's absence in the 2000 elections restored Republican unity and reflected the polarized near-balance in the electoral college that Perot's candidacies had masked but not materially changed in any way. Only Osama Bin Laden, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush managed to disturb this equilibrium. One simply cannot blame Ralph Nader for the endemic crypto-fascism that motivates the National Insecurity State in America: a Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism marketed through a hideously expensive media only too eager to assist (for an obscene profit) the Manufactured Mendacity and Managed Mystification designed and supplied by corrupt, corporate cronies of the American government.

At any rate, Ralph Nader has had this corporate cronyism doped out for decades now and his refusal to just go away and shut up about all the corruption and abuse makes him anathema to a Democratic Party that wants power badly enough to become as corrupt as Republicans in order to get it. And I swear, I just can't get over this vision I have of Senator You-Know-Her practicing her Ronald Reagan, monkey-on-a-stick, "commander in briefs" militaristic salute every evening before her bedroom mirror. Somehow, I suspect that Ralph Nader as President wouldn't bother with that kind of pathetic foolishness any more than FDR, a real Democrat and confident civilian leader, would have. But then, since Ralph Nader "can't win," I guess that only leaves us with the corporate Republicrats who can and do salute the deadbeat-imperialist, National Insecurity State morning, noon, and night.

I want to understand what you're actually saying but by that logic, we deserved Bush. Did you deserve Bush? Do I? Do they? To exculpate Nader from the oncoming hell that gets a little closer every day does a disservice to everybody.

and I'm happy that, in this case, the republicans were doing something really cool and civic minded!

to me, the thought of either a Bush OR a Kerry presidency made my skin crawl.

if Kerry was worth his salt, he would have done something that grabbed everybody's attention but he didn't.

when people blame Nader or "swiftboats" for Kerry's loss, I don't think it says much for Kerry's charisma... a politician worth his/her salt, like Chavez, finds a way to connect with the people and get their support.

I rated the post marginal since I still believe it's the job of a politician to "earn my vote."

Mr. Al "I'm my own man" Gore had a difficult time establishing authenticity.

Maybe you should think about shortcomings of the two-party system instead of blaming Nader. I know lots of people who voted for Nader but would never vote for the Democratic (let alone Republican) candidate. Are you saying those people are not allowed to express their preference in an election?

Deserving or not deserving Bush has nothing to do with it. There has been no popular revolt against Bush, so clearly people aren't that unhappy with the job he's doing.

If Gore's poorly run campaign is irrelevant because he won, then so is any effect that Nader had. You can't have it both ways.

Fair enough, Hopeful. Though, I guess we can debate whether or not you're more likely to have an effect as a Sharpton-style primary long shot or as a third party general election candidate, because that's what his choices would have been.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Interesting. Luigi writes a visceral reaction and accuses Nader (far from an anti-regulation, laissez faire economist) of deliberately setting out to get Bush elected. Todd Gitlin rates his post a "5".

I include a link provided by the US Census to demonstrate that Tennessee's voter turnout was 6th worst in the nation the year their native son ran for president. Todd rates mine a "1".

If it weren't for the fact that I am also an academic, I might actually consider this a failing grade. Todd, you do a disservice to liberal academics with integrity.

First, I do not dispute that Nader focused "primarily" on large, vote-rich states. But he could have gotten closer to his stated goal of crossing the 5 percent threshold if he had confined himself to New York, California, and Illinois. Why didn't he?

As a couple of posters above point out, Nader still revels in sticking the shiv in Democrats while passing out gold stars to favored Republicans (the other night, it was Bloomberg).

2000 was a tightly contested election because the nation had grown tired of Clinton/Gore. While the margin of victory in Florida was narrower than Nader's results, Nader's impact in the 2000 election overshadows the fact that he was less decisive than Ross Perot's campaign in 1992. Clinton's victory that year is among the lowest percentages of the popular vote for a presidential victory and Perot's slice was enormous compared to Nader's. Of course you won't grumble that Perot undercut Bush 41 because you approve of the results. And I still say that Florida is the fault of the Supreme Court, but that Tennessee is the Gore Campaign's fault.

Of course Ralph Nader has an ego, but there are more than enough egos in our nation's capital to make the DC area considerably less pleasant than it could be.

There are other reasons to attribute Nader's 2000 campaign to besides ego and malice. One of them is the success that third parties have had in getting the Democrats and Republicans to adopt their agenda.

In the 1890s, the Populist Party stood for the direct election of Senators, a progressive income tax, nationalized banking and railroads, ballot initiatives and referendums, shorter working hours, and primary elections.

Although the Populist Party was gone by 1908, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments were adopted in 1913. The 40-hour work week was adopted in the early 1930s. Railroads and banks weren't nationalized, but they were regulated, and the Federal Reserve was created to control the money supply.

In the early 20th century, the Socialist Party supported female suffrage, Social Security, public works programs for the unemployed, and the abolition of child labor. Socialist Presidential candidate Norman Thomas said that “The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly”

Not all ideas championed by third parties are good ideas, as the success of the Prohibition Party demonstrated in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1948, Henry Wallace ran as the Presidential candidate of the Progressive Party. By the end of the campaign his domestic agenda (including universal health care) was mostly adopted by Truman.

In 1968, George Wallace's campaign helped to push the Republican Party in a more Southern and conservative direction.

In 1992, Ross Perot won 19% of the vote. Clinton made deficit reduction the centerpiece of the Democratic Party's economic agenda (it still is). For a few years, the Republicans tried to outdo Clinton in their enthusiasm for a balanced budget.

If you want to argue that this is the wrong time for a progressive third party, or that progressives would still have a better chance working within the Democratic Party, that's fine. At least do so with an awareness of the history of third parties.

I'm not altogether convinced that Gore/Lieberman would have handled the post 9/11 situation much better. They might have handled it differently, but would that have then staved off a successful Republican challenge in 2004? In 2006?

The failure of the Democratic Party to engage in some critical self-examination is what handed Congress over to the Repulicans for 12 years and gave us Bush in 2000 and especially in 2004. Their strategy was a failing one and it stands as a testament to their lack of vision that the Republicans had to fail so miserably behind GWB before the country would seriously consider them an acceptible alternative. It's like celebrating because you won an election against a convicted felon or a dead man.

Serial non-sequitur.

First, it is not the right of Nader to do what he did questioned, but wisdom and motives.

Second, how the irritation with Nader supports "Tweedledum" theory? One can be irritated precisely because the difference between candidates was so large and stakes so high.

Not to duplicate other posters, I will point one fallacy: "how the most anti-commercial polluters candidate can be cuddled up to the Republican Party"? Simple: better is the enemy of good, and GOP is using it quite regularly. For example, rather than promoting rapid adoption of hybrid technology that exists now, Bush embraced "zero emission" goal of hydrogen vehicles that nobody knows if they can be ever economic.

Are there other reasons for Nader's campaign other than ego and malice?

I would put delusion of grandeur under "ego". Is there is single idea that (a) Nader advocate, (b) has a prayer of being adopted without strong supporters within Democratic party?

Moreover, with 2% of national vote and considerable hostility, Nader is nowhere close to the examples listed by VAGreen.

Gore and the American people deserved a more competent campaign, a better running mate, and a better press.

The American people and the world did not deserve NAFTA, welfare "reform," the dropping of the investigation on Iran Contra, and "reinventing government" i.e., the spoils system resurgent. All these things enabled Bush and Cheney.

Gore seems to have grown a spine in his retirement from politics, now that it is too late.

Moreover, with 2% of national vote and considerable hostility, Nader is nowhere close to the examples listed by VAGreen.

You're right that Nader's current lack of support hardly makes him a political movement in his own right. But, during the 1990s, when Nader started running, he did help Greens become major parties in states like New Mexico. That was a good thing, though the Green candidates for office were often decried as spoilers there too.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

That would be the same Lieberman Nader was running against in 2000.

the spine was regenerated from Naderlike Stem Cells...

should hilliary and bill also stop talking to Bloomberg?

Bloomberg might be a good choice if different sorts of big wigs like 'em!

I think Nader has lost all credibility to the average voter - assuming they are even listening. He's that 'oh yeah, remember him' person who pops up every election -- like Pat Paulsen and Harold Stassen. No doubt he is a useful tool for the media, much like Bill Bennett, but when the Green Party turned its back on him in 2004 he lost his sway..... By the way Luigi, I came upon some interesting comments of yours today while doing a crash Web course on Net Neutrality.

The saying is not "the better is the enemy of the good" but "the best is the enemy of the good." Yours is the logic (or illogic) of the least common denominator.

The Democrats have a lot to answer for in how they treated Nader. In fact, the debates were a disgrace -- if anyone owes the American people an apology it the Democrats, above all Lieberman for his abject fawning on Cheney when the latter claimed to be a "businessman" -- though I suppose that is accurate if his business was shoveling billions of tax dollars towards Halliburton and its subsidiaries.

Frankly, I have translated the saying from my mother tongue where it is exactly "better (is the) enemy (of) good" (parentetical words implied by grammatical forms). Which kind of makes as much sense as "best". On the other hand, isn't logic a common "denominator" of all arguments (barring the absurd ones)? I see that John did not try to offend me, for which I am thankful.

On somewhat different note, while I cannot stand Nader, to a degree I understand Naderites. DLC dominated Democratic Party was quite imperfect, to put it mildly. However, today DLC is a shadow of its former self.

With possible exceptions of the military budget and war on drugs, every important progressive idea is by now well articulated within Democratic Party, meaning not just grass roots and netroots, but numerous elected officials. War on drugs and military budgets are questioned on the netroots level. Candidacies are launched, often succesfully, without the blessing of the Washington leadership (and without corporate money).

I would even concede that defeat in 2000 was perhaps helpful in bringing those changes. However, the planet is much worse off, and were Republican a wee bit less rapacious and Bushevik a tad more competent, USA could resemble Putin's Russia.

I don't know if you meant it, but powered wig has a certain manic charm and appropriateness.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Those who still want to rationalize Nader are the same types of fools as those who still make excuses for Bush. Nader and his sister are regular buddies with former right wing congressman Thompson (can't remember his first name, he's also an actor). They share a desire to play disruptive games with our political system to help their various investments in the stock market. I'm sure they get big laughs out of the fact that they're also helping the leftist extreme to come out making rationales for hypocrisy.

To be honest, I don't know. I had personally believed that we would end up going into Iraq at some point, the question was how long before we had enough international support to make it doable. I don't think Gore/Lieberman would have manipulated intelligence to get there, though. Still, in the patriotic echo chamber of the 9/11 aftermath, it is possible that the race would be on to be more hawkish--for the Democrats to demonstrate resolve in retaliation and win back the trust of the American people.

But be careful about suggesting that going into Iraq marks the difference between properly responding to the 9/11 tragedy and not. Had Gore/Lieberman hemmed and hawed or offered another Desert Fox kind of response (Iraq or not), it is likely they would have blown it at home and lasted only one term. In essence, too soft a response would have kicked the can down the road and in 2007 we'd be in the middle of the first term of an all Republican government, guaranteeing that the GOP would hold Congress for another 12 years. It might not be Bush at the helm, but I don't put it past Cheney to crown himself the American Richelieu with a different face in the West Wing.

But then Lieberman has demonstrated his own political intrigue of late.

I have lately come to think we are unfair to Nader. I was angry and unbelieving when Gore folded, and Nader was a contributing factor, I felt in my anger.

The only logic that makes Nader responsible for Gore's defeat is this: If his name wasn't on the ballot those voters would have chosen Gore. This reasoning is fallacious, though, because it makes an unjustified assumption, that those voters would have voted.

There is a population of committed voters, but I bet if the question were asked in polls (correct me if it has been); "Would you have voted if Nader was not on the ticket?" a large fraction would have said "No". So Nader might not have deflected any votes from Gore.

What I am concerned about is the simplistic Red Pill/Blue Pill view of events since the 2000 election that assumes there was a good option and a bad option. That same kind of thought prevails today between the pro-Iraq/anti-Iraq (war) mentality. The Red Pill means escalation and the Blue Pill means full withdrawal and one of these two is the right option. I don't believe either one will mean good things, either for us or for the Iraqis.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned around here is the same Red/Blue approach to 9/11. Even though it is fun to take a couple jabs at Condi's assertion that "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US" was an ambiguous document, there is a good chance that a Gore administration would have dropped the ball on that one, too. The ground work had been laid during Clinton's administration. A Gore succession would have meant that the Clinton/Gore dynasty would have to take the full blame for 9/11. I think the pressure to be tough would have been overwhelming and as the VP, Lieberman, hailing as he does from the southwestern part of CT considered a suburb of NYC, would very likely have taken a more assertive and hawkish stance in response. Forcing Gore to follow suit, he might have complicated our chances for better relations with Iran, too.

This discussion really needs to be put to bed. To that end, I'll point a few things out.

1. This is a discussion about Nader. For all the anti-Nader sentiment out there it has to be recognized that it was never his intention to enable an incompetant, delusional megalomaniac. Or George W. Bush. ;) To suggest otherwise about his intentions is as intellectually dishonest as an argument for intelligent design as science.

2. If Anyone deserves the blame for enabling Bush, it is the electorate of states like Florida where the vote should never have been so close that a handful of votes for a 3rd party could be wider than the margin of victory between Bush and Gore.

3. My own comments were limited to a statement regarding the reaction to 9/11 and whether or not Gore could have handled the situation much better. Whether or not that would have included a run up to a war in Iraq is only part of the story. Right now it seems like THE story because of the fiasco its incompetant prosecution has become. But had the Republicans lost the White House in 2000, but solidified its hold on Congress, they very easily could have portrayed any non-aggressive posture vis-a-vis Iraq as a weak Democratic handling of national security and turned it into a victory in 2004--maybe ON a campaign for war in Iraq.

In 2000 it should have been a slam dunk to deflect anything coming from the Bush/Republican camp. It NEVER should have been so close and only a soft response to the Republican attack strategy made it so. I don't agree with Terry McCauliffe on much, but here I do. If they couldn't stand up to the GOP in that situation, what makes you so certain that they could have stood up to them in 2002-3? What's more, even if Gore as president could have resisted a Congressional drum beat, what makes you so certain that they could have handled the 2004 national election any better than 2000?

And none of that could be blamed on Nader or the 2% showing he had in the "Elian Gonzalez" state.