Are we running out of reasons to vote Democrat?

[Jason Harvestdancer]

My point was that anyone who says that voting for Nader cost Gore the election is saying "Gore is a legitimate candidate, Nader is not."

Anyone who laughs at my talking about the Bush votes going to Gore is saying "Bush is also a legitimate candidate."

A person said that it is a misconception that voting third party "won't work". I brought up a very recent case where voting third party really didn't work.

The "Nader cost Gore the election" meme, in addition to the hidden assumption that Gore was a legitimate candidate and Nader wasn't one, also assumes that every single one of those Nader voters, so dissatisfied with Gore that they actually voted 3rd party, would have come out to vote for Gore instead of staying home were Nader not on the ballot.

Gore failed to attract those votes. It's his own fault. He spent 8 years working on a second facial expression in preparation for the 2000 campaign, and it wasn't enough.

 

[laughing dog]

The "Nader cost Gore the election" meme, in addition to the hidden assumption that Gore was a legitimate candidate and Nader wasn't one, also assumes that every single one of those Nader voters, so dissatisfied with Gore that they actually voted 3rd party, would have come out to vote for Gore instead of staying home were Nader not on the ballot.

Gore failed to attract those votes. It's his own fault. He spent 8 years working on a second facial expression in preparation for the 2000 campaign, and it wasn't enough.

I agree that candidates need to earn their votes, and that a vote for Nader does not mean it would have gone to Gore or that if Nader had not run, Gore would have received those votes.

However, the motivation for the Nader votes does make a difference as to whether they worked or not. If a Nader voter was truly voting for his/her best candidate regardless of the consequences, then that vote worked. However, to the extent that Nader voters were making a "protest" vote to induce the Democratic party more to the "left", then those votes did not work. Especially, to the extent those particular Nader voters expected a Gore victory.

 

[credoconsolans]

I always vote for the party that

1) supports abortion rights for women
2) supports women's rights
3) supports environmental causes
4) supports separation of church and state

 

[bilby]

If you want people to vote, then you have to give them something to vote for, not vote against. Playing defense ain't sexy. Saying things like "You need to vote and you need to vote democratic because of judicial nominations" will get you yawns, blank stares, and "who cares" from a population a substantial number of which can't name the three branches of govt.

GOPers vote FOR stuff. They aren't voting against gay marriage, they are voting FOR the protection of the family. They are not voting against abortion, but FOR the lives of the unborn. They aren't voting against separation of church and state but FOR freedom of religious expression.

What is the DP for? Evidently compromise, capitulation, and co-opting the GOP talking points of the 1990s.

People in this country are for

• Increasing the minimum wage
• Decreasing our military presence abroad
• Making healthcare available, accessible, and affordable to more citizens
• Improving education
• Fixing our immigration policy

These are things the DP should be educating the populace about and driving the policies for not just during an election year but doing so 24/7/52

But they are not

The question is why aren't they?

I am not old enough to remember the 24th of July 1952, but I have no reason to believe that the Dems were not educating the populace on their policies on that day, nor that that day in particular would have made a big difference to current attitudes.

 

[fromderinside]

You want reasons?

I'll give you stinking reasons.

Thank You Mr. President for:

keeping us from a depression

receiving the Nobel Peace Prize

providing us with a stimulus in 2009-2010

your Egyptian address that apparently started the Arab Spring

getting us out of Iraq

using Drones rather than Seals for most terrorist assassination strikes

getting rid of Qaddafi

not going to war with Syria

getting poison gas out of Syria

using sanctions to bring Iran to the Nuclear table

reminding russia it's an integrated economy when Putin stomped his feet about Ukraine

preventing gas lines through our midwestern aquifer

making wages and immigration priorities

getting Nigeria to react to education terror

....

Hey. I have many, many, more.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Are we running out of reasons to vote Democrat?

All my Senators and my Rep stand against the things you listed. Our state, in the hands of the Democrats, is being run efficiently, competently and is in a period of expansion. The National GOP is not going to seriously oppose any federal Democrat officeholder or the governor as we are tuning solid blue. Why would we vote for crazy when the people in charge are doing a good job?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

If you want people to vote, then you have to give them something to vote for, not vote against. Playing defense ain't sexy. Saying things like "You need to vote and you need to vote democratic because of judicial nominations" will get you yawns, blank stares, and "who cares" from a population a substantial number of which can't name the three branches of govt.

GOPers vote FOR stuff. They aren't voting against gay marriage, they are voting FOR the protection of the family. They are not voting against abortion, but FOR the lives of the unborn. They aren't voting against separation of church and state but FOR freedom of religious expression.

What is the DP for? Evidently compromise, capitulation, and co-opting the GOP talking points of the 1990s.

People in this country are for

• Increasing the minimum wage
• Decreasing our military presence abroad
• Making healthcare available, accessible, and affordable to more citizens
• Improving education
• Fixing our immigration policy

These are things the DP should be educating the populace about and driving the policies for not just during an election year but doing so 24/7/52

But they are not

The question is why aren't they?

They are where I live.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

My point was that anyone who says that voting for Nader cost Gore the election is saying "Gore is a legitimate candidate, Nader is not."

Anyone who laughs at my talking about the Bush votes going to Gore is saying "Bush is also a legitimate candidate."

A person said that it is a misconception that voting third party "won't work". I brought up a very recent case where voting third party really didn't work.

The "Nader cost Gore the election" meme, in addition to the hidden assumption that Gore was a legitimate candidate and Nader wasn't one, also assumes that every single one of those Nader voters, so dissatisfied with Gore that they actually voted 3rd party, would have come out to vote for Gore instead of staying home were Nader not on the ballot.

Gore only needed 1000 Nader votes in Florida (roughly 1% of Nader's vote total in the state). Voting third party in 2000 led to some drastic consequences. Alito, Iraq, potentially even 9/11 not being stopped.

 

[bilby]

My point was that anyone who says that voting for Nader cost Gore the election is saying "Gore is a legitimate candidate, Nader is not."

Anyone who laughs at my talking about the Bush votes going to Gore is saying "Bush is also a legitimate candidate."

A person said that it is a misconception that voting third party "won't work". I brought up a very recent case where voting third party really didn't work.

The "Nader cost Gore the election" meme, in addition to the hidden assumption that Gore was a legitimate candidate and Nader wasn't one, also assumes that every single one of those Nader voters, so dissatisfied with Gore that they actually voted 3rd party, would have come out to vote for Gore instead of staying home were Nader not on the ballot.

Gore only needed 1000 Nader votes in Florida (roughly 1% of Nader's vote total in the state). Voting third party in 2000 led to some drastic consequences. Alito, Iraq, potentially even 9/11 not being stopped.

Gore got more votes than Bush in Florida. If a thousand more Gore votes had been cast, it most likely would have just led to a slightly more blatant fraud than the one that was perpetrated - but ultimately it turned out that the only votes that counted in that ballot were Jeb Bush's, Katherine Harris's, and the nine members of the US Supreme Court.

I know this has been written out of history, but I still remember it happening. If your country had the slightest respect for its electoral integrity, and the least testicular fortitude, the Bush family would have been hanging along with the infamous chads, and history would likely be very different.

This is the kind of insanely stupid shit that happens when you allow elections to be run by elected officials with party affiliations, rather than by an independent and fiercely non-partisan commission.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Gore likely did have the highest vote total. The uber-media recount performed determined that pretty much any non-contradicting standard (ie not using a very liberal determination of voting for punch cards, but a very conservative one for optical scanner cards) established for a statewide recount (as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court) went in Gore's favor. The unfortunate part about the uber-media recount, was that it was ready to be published a little after September 11th, 2001. The media spun the results to note if Gore had received the recount he wanted, he would have lost, which is true, but irrelevant.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Gore lost not because Nader ran, but because the supreme court handed Bush the win. Why are we arguing otherwise?

 

[Samhain]

My point was that anyone who says that voting for Nader cost Gore the election is saying "Gore is a legitimate candidate, Nader is not."

Anyone who laughs at my talking about the Bush votes going to Gore is saying "Bush is also a legitimate candidate."

A person said that it is a misconception that voting third party "won't work". I brought up a very recent case where voting third party really didn't work.

The "Nader cost Gore the election" meme, in addition to the hidden assumption that Gore was a legitimate candidate and Nader wasn't one, also assumes that every single one of those Nader voters, so dissatisfied with Gore that they actually voted 3rd party, would have come out to vote for Gore instead of staying home were Nader not on the ballot.

Gore only needed 1000 Nader votes in Florida (roughly 1% of Nader's vote total in the state). Voting third party in 2000 led to some drastic consequences. Alito, Iraq, potentially even 9/11 not being stopped.

I really wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. Exit polls were done in 2000 in Florida. They showed, definitively, that were Nader not on the ballot, more of the votes would have gone to Bush than Gore (and in fact, the margin would have been even wider there, 49% to 47% if it were only between Bush and Gore). Nader did not cost Gore the election, Gore's poor campaign cost him the election. People merely assume that Nader votes would automatically have been Gore votes in Florida, but clearly that isn't true, especially not in a state where Jeb fucking Bush was Governor. 200,000 Democrats voted for Bush in Florida in 2000, there were 600,000 more Democrats that didn't even bother to vote, and Gore didn't even win his home state of Tennessee (even when Clinton took it during both of his previous elections!). People need to stop blaming Nader for Gore's piss poor campaign.

ETA: I would also like to point out that putting blame at the feet of Nader for Alito is even more ridiculous. There's no guarantee that Gore would have won a second election and even if he did there's no guarantee that Sandra Day O'Connor would have retired...it's likely she wouldn't have retired if not for Bush being elected. Roberts would be the only one that would make that statement make sense, and that's only because Rehnquist died.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I really wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. Exit polls were done in 2000 in Florida. They showed, definitively, that were Nader not on the ballot, more of the votes would have gone to Bush than Gore (and in fact, the margin would have been even wider there, 49% to 47% if it were only between Bush and Gore). Nader did not cost Gore the election, Gore's poor campaign cost him the election. People merely assume that Nader votes would automatically have been Gore votes in Florida, but clearly that isn't true, especially not in a state where Jeb fucking Bush was Governor. 200,000 Democrats voted for Bush in Florida in 2000, there were 600,000 more Democrats that didn't even bother to vote, and Gore didn't even win his home state of Tennessee (even when Clinton took it during both of his previous elections!). People need to stop blaming Nader for Gore's piss poor campaign.

Not blaming Nader... stating a counter argument about third party voting.

From a link in support of what you are stating...

Even further, according to exit polls, only 25% of Nader supporters would have voted for Gore had Nader not run. Over half of the Nader voters would have stayed home, and the rest would have voted for Bush or another third party candidate.

This would seem to debunk the idea that simply 1% of the Nader vote would have had to change their mind to go to Gore. Based on this, however, you are missing the simple math of all of this. Gore needed 1000 votes to plop himself "easily" into the lead. So looking at the math above, lets just see what it would take for Gore to win with the above constraints:

• 25% vote for Gore
• 50% don't vote at all
• 25% vote for W or 3rd party (This is the tricky part because it is a combo). We'll say that 95% of them vote for W, 5% vote for 3rd party alternative

So if 5% of Nader voters have second thoughts about voting for Nader, based on the math above, Gore wins, gaining 1140 votes. So voting third party can still have significant consequences.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Gore lost not because Nader ran, but because the supreme court handed Bush the win. Why are we arguing otherwise?

Because someone stated voting third party can be a great idea. It killed the country in 2000.

 

[Duke Leto]

Simple point:

Even IF one can show that most (or even 51% of) Florida Nader voters would have preferred Bush via Exit Polling... (And this a really dubious claim given the small number of people in the Florida Exit poll who would have been Nader voters assuming they got a good sample (basically 20 people). The LACK of exit polling in Utah in 2012 allowed people to come to the transparently wrong conclusion that based on the national exit polls more Mormons voted for McCain than Romney (Only a few hundred in the 10,000 of the national sample). Whoever told Jason Harvestdancer about this data point obviously didn't know shit about Edison Research Exit Polls.)

...You still have to show that more than about 35% of New Hampshire Nader voters would have preferred Bush. In both cases, the addition of only part of the Nader vote would have put Gore over the top, and either one would have given him the EV victory.

It is quite safe to say that in the absence of a strong Nader candidacy, Gore would have prevailed. (It is also quite likely that another less uncharismatic Democrat would have done so too.)

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Simple point:

Even IF one can show that most (or even 51% of) Florida Nader voters would have preferred Bush via Exit Polling... (And this a really dubious claim given the small number of people in the Florida Exit poll who would have been Nader voters assuming they got a good sample (basically 20 people). The LACK of exit polling in Utah in 2012 allowed people to come to the transparently wrong conclusion that based on the national exit polls more Mormons voted for McCain than Romney (Only a few hundred in the 10,000 of the national sample). Whoever told Jason Harvestdancer about this data point obviously didn't know shit about Edison Research Exit Polls.)

...You still have to show that more than about 35% of New Hampshire Nader voters would have preferred Bush. In both cases, the addition of only part of the Nader vote would have put Gore over the top, and either one would have given him the EV victory.

It is quite safe to say that in the absence of a strong Nader candidacy, Gore would have prevailed. (It is also quite likely that another less uncharismatic Democrat would have done so too.)

often overlooked fact

Gore didn't carry his home state.
Had he carried TN, FL would have been moot.
When you don't carry your home state, that's a sign of poor campaigning. I mean, it's not like he hadn't won there before.

Or was that Nader's fault too? I guess next you'll tell me Nader was on a grassy knoll in Dallas, ordered ice on the Titanic, was smoking on the Hindenburg and told Lincoln about a play he just had to see because he'd die laughing.

 

[Samhain]

Not blaming Nader... stating a counter argument about third party voting.

From a link in support of what you are stating...

Even further, according to exit polls, only 25% of Nader supporters would have voted for Gore had Nader not run. Over half of the Nader voters would have stayed home, and the rest would have voted for Bush or another third party candidate.

This would seem to debunk the idea that simply 1% of the Nader vote would have had to change their mind to go to Gore. Based on this, however, you are missing the simple math of all of this. Gore needed 1000 votes to plop himself "easily" into the lead. So looking at the math above, lets just see what it would take for Gore to win with the above constraints:

• 25% vote for Gore
• 50% don't vote at all
• 25% vote for W or 3rd party (This is the tricky part because it is a combo). We'll say that 95% of them vote for W, 5% vote for 3rd party alternative

So if 5% of Nader voters have second thoughts about voting for Nader, based on the math above, Gore wins, gaining 1140 votes. So voting third party can still have significant consequences.

And if 5% of them had voted for Bush as well then it wouldn't have mattered...based upon the exit polling it's a wash either way. Perhaps Bush gains more, perhaps Gore gains more, or perhaps they all stay home. Seriously, the vote for the third party makes absolutely no difference. What you're essentially saying is "oh, if only some of the liberals in 2000 had been more compromising about their viewpoints and ideology we could have had some other shitty president in office instead of the one we had." Gore lost because Gore lost, not because someone else ran.

 

[Samhain]

Simple point:

Even IF one can show that most (or even 51% of) Florida Nader voters would have preferred Bush via Exit Polling... (And this a really dubious claim given the small number of people in the Florida Exit poll who would have been Nader voters assuming they got a good sample (basically 20 people). The LACK of exit polling in Utah in 2012 allowed people to come to the transparently wrong conclusion that based on the national exit polls more Mormons voted for McCain than Romney (Only a few hundred in the 10,000 of the national sample). Whoever told Jason Harvestdancer about this data point obviously didn't know shit about Edison Research Exit Polls.)

...You still have to show that more than about 35% of New Hampshire Nader voters would have preferred Bush. In both cases, the addition of only part of the Nader vote would have put Gore over the top, and either one would have given him the EV victory.

It is quite safe to say that in the absence of a strong Nader candidacy, Gore would have prevailed. (It is also quite likely that another less uncharismatic Democrat would have done so too.)

You start off by pointing out that the sample is too small to come to any conclusion because of the margin of error only to follow that up by saying that we should reject what evidence we do have in favor of your particular theory about it for which there is absolutely no evidence for (and at least some "dubious" evidence to the contrary). I just don't understand, why is it that people feel compelled to blame Nader for the shitty campaign of Gore? Gore would also have won if 400,000 registered Democrats hadn't simply stayed home in Florida. Gore would also have won if 200,000 registered Democrats hadn't voted for Bush instead of Gore. But the rather insignificant amount of votes that went to Nader in a state he did very little campaigning in (note that Florida was one of his worst turnouts), is what makes the difference to you?

 

[Blahface]

I'm not sure where those exit poll statistics come from, but this is what it says in Wikipedia.

In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book Crashing the Party and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all."[18] (which would net a 13%, 12,665 votes, advantage for Gore over Bush.) When asked about claims of being a spoiler, Nader typically points to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that halted a Florida recount, Gore's loss in his home state of Tennessee, and the "quarter million Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida."[7]

It is Wikipedia, so maybe it is false, but it seems more accurate than the figures given in this thread.

Anyway, the real problem is first-past-the-post voting. Whenever Nader comes up in a discussion about being a spoiler, the next topic that should Succeed it should always be the need to change the voting system.

 

[Duke Leto]

General response to several critiques:

Look, I'm not pretending that Gore didn't run a terrible campaign OR that large numbers of Florida Democrats either chose Bush or stayed home, or that he'd have won if he had carried Tennessee, I was making two simple points:

1) The number of Nader voters in the Florida Edison Research Exit Poll for 2000 is likely to have been in the dozens, and this is simply too a small a number of respondents to substantiate the claims made my by Nader on which way his 97,421 voters would have gone. Unless Nader is referring to some other Exit Poll, that 25%/38%/37% breakdown can not be taken seriously. It MAY be accurate, it may not. I do not have direct access to the 2000 Exit Poll numbers but I have reviewed CNN's compilations of the adjusted 2004, 2008 and 2012 in detail. In 2008, Edison interviewed 3,350 persons to make its Florida Exit Poll. If 200 was roughly similar, the number of Nader voters interviewed should have been 60 or 70. That's just not enough to make blanket statements, the sample size is too small. If you look up the CNN Exit Polls for the years I have just mentioned, you'll find that CNN does not report what the results are for very small percentages of the electorate, because they know the sample is not statistically robust enough. We also don't know if Nader is quoting raw numbers or the weighted results. Edison does not try to verify the results of the election, they strive to show a picture of the demographic makeup and its preferences, and its samples frequently report results that are different from the actual results. Thus the percentages that are publicly reported are the result of fudging the data to fit the reported results. Don't make blanket statements based on the Exit Polls is my general point.

2) Even if you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Nader voters would not have put Gore over the top in Florida in 2000, you still have to deal with the 3.90% of the vote Nader pulled in 2000 in New Hampshire compared to Bush's 48.07% and Gore's 46.80%. You don't have the excuse that this is a weak performance by Nader, it's actually one of his stronger ones, although he did better still in most of NH's neighbors. Either FL OR NH would have given Gore the EV victory.

Realistically I can't see how the claim that Gore might easily have won in a Naderless universe can be subjected to a reasonable critique. It is also quite impossible to claim that Gore was not a poor candidate. And I'm not sure why either should arouse the level of anger I'm seeing.

I also agree with Blahface that this is an indictment of FPTP rather than Nader.

I'll point out that although a variety of desirable things might have come from a Gore Presidency rather than a Bush one, even had that been a single term Presidency, there's a pitfall to a two term Gore Presidency that is rarely discussed: Namely, it is extremely unlikely that anyone could have prevented the Financial Crisis, and therefore it is very likely had Gore been a two term president that he would have been blamed by Independents in 2008 rather than Bush.