Am about to get off and go see how the Kentucky results are going, but the logic of Nader campaigning in battleground states is that some of those states are where he has his strongest support and will get his highest percentages and vote totals, e.g. Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon. He had one of his biggest and most enthusiastic rallies of all in Mad City, WI. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Marco Anglesio <mpa at the-wire.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 6:08 PM Subject: Re: election demographics
>On Tue, 7 Nov 2000 Nathan Newman wrote:
>> While a burgeoning movement does not have to gain the allegiance of the
>> whole society in the beginning, deliberatly alienating the closest
potential
>> allies is disasterous over the longterm. Whatever goodwill the Greens
had
>> slowly been building at the local level has been squandered.
>
>Is potentially squandered, you mean. Time will tell in any case. If Gore
>loses by a huge gap, then it'll be impossible to blame the Greens; if Gore
>loses in a squeaker, yes, there will be hell to pay. And if Gore wins, the
>Greens win too (since they'll have attracted plenty of national attention
>*and* benefit from Democratic-leaning goodwill, or at least not attract
>Democratic-leaning vitriol), while if they gain the 5% to gain federal
>funding they win twice over.
>
>From a strategic perspective, Nader probably made the right decision to
>campaign in this election. Gore should have had a clear advantage here.
>Bush's campaign team, especially his researchers, must be given credit for
>the current state of affairs. (And, in 90 minutes or so, we should start
>to know how much credit indeed).
>
>That said, Nader hasn't exactly taken the easy road to his 5%. Rather than
>picking up easy votes in core Republican or Democratic states, where the
>outcome is a foregone conclusion, he's attempted to campaign strongly in
>the battleground states like a major national party leader, which he is
>not. Not yet and probably not ever. One must wonder who the hell is
>advising him or whether he has a strong desire to martyr himself.
>
>That said, protest parties (and the Greens still seem largely a protest
>party to me, right here and now) tend to self-destruct after their first
>or second taste of success. They gain support through rabid populism and
>realize too late that many of their high profile supporters just fell off
>the turnip truck. A protest or populist party run by visionaries becomes a
>national party run by crackpots awfully fast.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Marco
>
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>> | The further I get
<
>> Marco Anglesio | from the things I care about
<
>> mpa at the-wire.com | The less I care
<
>> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | how much further away I get
<
>> | --Robert Smith
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