progressives in the boondocks

Thu Nov 9 02:08:36 PST 2000

On a tangent from John G.'s comments, the analysis below from Tim Wise takes apart the supposed "Nader
effect" and pretty convincingly exposes much of it as hot air. [I know quite a few LBO listmembers
already get these posts, but I thought this one especially relevant so here it is for those who don't
get them...]

And there seems to be something in the way of a small volcano showing signs of imminent eruption in
Florida, with pressure emanating from a perturbed citizen contingent and a self-interested Democratic
party licking its chops and no doubt working feverishly behind the scenes. (I shouldn't mix metaphors,
but they both seem apt...) A young first-time voter speaking on NPR last night said she'd made the
"Buchanan error" on her punch card and, having caught it, requested a new blank ballot only to be told
it was against regulations as she watched the poll worker take her incorrect ballot and feed into into
the vote tabulator. It later emerged that she was in fact entitled to a new ballot. Possibly an
anomaly in her case, or maybe not. The article below also describes that as many as 19,000 ballots
were "double punched" and consequently invalidated, seemingly indicating that many people who wanted
to vote for Gore were indeed confused and tried to fix their mistakes after they'd inadvertantly
selected Buchanan. Contrary to Christopher's comments, I think the extent of the confusion, rather
than exposing an incompetent electorate, tends to highlight instead a fairly compelling case of poor
graphic design - and believe me, there's plenty in this world. If it's generally agreed that this is
the case - though I'm not sure how a consensus can develop in legal terms - then things could move in
the direction of another vote in Palm Beach county and Gore would be able to smile himself to sleep.
By the way, where's Buchanan in all this? Has he had anything to say?

Here's Ted Turner, by proxy, on the voting irregularities and resultant lawsuits:

http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/09/palm.beach.votes/index.html

(and Tim Wise's piece is below...)

--

/  dave  /

Subject:  [BRC-NEWS] Why Nader and the Left Are NOT to Blame
Date:  Wed, 8 Nov 2000 18:20:37 -0500
From:  Tim Wise <tjwise at mindspring.com>
To:  brc-news at lists.tao.ca

November 8, 2000

No More Mister Fall Guy: 
Why Nader and the Left Are NOT to Blame for President Bush

By Tim Wise <tjwise at mindspring.com>

Well, the long knives are out. Media pundits, Democratic
Party officials, and I would suspect Al Gore himself before
long, have or will soon begin to do the predictable: search
out a scapegoat for why the Presidential election turned out
the way it did. That is, if things remain as they seem at
this moment. With Gore having won the popular vote, and yet
having apparently lost in the electoral college, there will
be a cacophony of voices saying some constructive things --
like discussing the need for an instant runoff/preference
voting system that would better reflect the will of the
American public -- but also blaming the victory of George W.
Bush squarely on the shoulders of the Green Party and Ralph
Nader.

It had begun even before midnight: television talking heads
exclaiming that if Gore lost, the blame could be laid at the
door of Nader and those presumed liberals and leftists that
flocked to his campaign. Few commentators challenged this
analysis, and by the morning after -- as we await recounts
in Florida that will determine the outcome -- it has become
conventional wisdom that Nader did indeed cost Gore the
election, by swinging Oregon, Florida, and perhaps even 
New Hampshire to Bush II.

Such is the sorry state of political analysis, not to mention 
statistical interpretation, and such is the pathetic state of 
the Democratic Party: so desperate to avoid admitting its own 
mistakes that it would prefer to attack a large segment of its 
progressive base, chastising them like misbehaving children,
as if somehow that will bring them back to the fold. Not
likely. And not a very smart move.

Most importantly, the Blame-Nader first school is wrong,
dead wrong about who is to blame for Gore's slim electoral
defeat. Here's why:

First, the notion that Nader voters would all have voted for
the Vice-President in the absence of their favorite from the
race, is nonsense. CNN exit polls show that only about 47%
of the Nader voters would have voted for Gore in a two way
race, while 21% would have voted for Bush and 30% would have
abstained from voting in the Presidential contest altogether.

This is significant, especially in New Hampshire and Oregon,
where some are saying the Nader vote was the difference.

Looking at New Hampshire first, it is true that Bush's margin 
of victory was only about 7,500 votes, and that Nader received 
about 22,000 votes there. But based on the exit polling data, 
if Nader hadn't been in the race, only a little less than half 
of those Nader votes would have gone to Gore, and a fifth would 
have gone to Bush, so that in the end, Bush would have still 
won New Hampshire by about 1500 votes in all.

In Oregon, where it is a virtual article of religious faith
that Nader is to blame for the Bush victory, the hype, is
once again overblown and flatly wrong. Yes, Bush won the
state by a margin of only about 23,000 votes, and Nader
received the votes of 54,000. But once again, based on the
exit polls, had the race been only between Gore and Bush,
Gore would have gotten 47% of those 54,000, for a total of
around 25,400, Bush would have received 21% of those 54,000,
for a total of about 11,300, and in the end, Bush would
still have squeaked out a victory, by about 8,000 votes.

Which brings us to Florida. If ever there were a case to
make that Nader had been the spoiler for Gore, it would 
be here, where the election will likely be decided by less 
than 2,000 votes. Clearly, one could look at Nader's 97,000 
votes there and say, with a degree of certainty approaching
definitive, that had Nader not been in the race, Gore would
have beaten Bush among Nader voters by a two to one margin,
and that would have been enough to capture Florida's 25
electoral college votes and catapult him to the Presidency.

It is this fact which has me anticipating a degree of
vitriol, finger-pointing and Nader bashing truly beyond
anything we have seen thus far from the Democrats. And I
fear that some in the Nader camp may fall for it, and come
to regret their decision to vote for an alternative to this
broken two-party system. But they shouldn't, and here's why:

Think about this election the way you would any other
competition, perhaps, a football game. Just a few days ago,
for example, I watched as my hometown team, the Tennessee
Titans, beat the Pittsburgh Steelers thanks to a field goal
in the closing seconds of the game. Now, needless to say, if
the Titans kicker misses that field goal, the Steelers win
7-6. If he makes it, we win 9-7. It would have been easy to
say -- and predictable and even true at one level -- that if
Al Del Greco misses that field goal, he is to blame, and the
outcome was the result of that missed kick.

But then again, one could also look back at the entire game
and find a number of other things, which, had the Titans
done them right, the game wouldn't have come down to that
kick in the first place, and so those things could just 
as logically be seen as the problem. An interception at a
crucial moment, a fumble, or a penalty flag that hurt an
offensive drive. Any one of those things goes differently,
and the Titans have more than enough points at the end of
the game, and don't need the 3 points that Del Greco can
give them. They can just run out the clock and hit the
showers as winners.

The same is true in the presidential contest. Sure, if Nader
isn't running, a plurality of his voters goes to Gore, and
he wins Florida. But taking that singular fact to be the key
factor, and making it, in effect, the missed field goal by
Gore as the clock runs out, is silly. There were, as with
the Titans game, plenty of other factors that could have 
and should have gone Gore's way in Florida, but because 
they didn't, Nader became a factor. And whose fault is 
that?

Consider this: Gore lost in Florida among white women (many
of those soccer moms who Clinton carried, and many of whom
would normally have been reached by a Democratic candidate
talking about education, health care, abortion, and other
key issues) by a 52-45 margin, with the Nader factor being
negligible among this group. And he lost among seniors, a
group that rightly should have been concerned about Bush's
plans to partially privatize social security, a plan that
twelve years ago, rendered Pierre DuPont (the only
Republican willing to float the concept), an asterisk in
American political history, and a laughingstock. Here too,
among the traditionally Democratic constituency of seniors,
the Nader factor was negligible.

Even more to the point, Bush received the votes of 12 times
more Democrats than Nader did, and 5.25 times more self-
identified liberals than Nader did in Florida, indicating
that progressive voters and those who might have been seen
as a natural lock for Gore, actually were stolen not by the
Greens, but by the Republicans.

Now folks, when your base is more likely to vote for George
W. Bush than Ralph Nader, this not only is bad news for
Nader, obviously, but also makes quite clear that Gore, not
Nader is to blame for his loss in Florida. In all, 19% of
voters there described themselves as liberal. If Nader got
3% of these, this represents a little less than 6/10ths of
the overall popular vote that could have been "taken" from
Gore by Nader voters on the left: those who are being blamed
for Gore's defeat. But if 16% of liberals voted for Bush 
(which they did, for some reason), this represents 3% of the
total popular vote "stolen" from Gore by Bush voters on the
left. That 3% is more than the Nader total in Florida, which
was 2%.

The same thing happened in Oregon, where Bush outpolled
Nader among Democrats by a margin of 3.5 to 1, and where
Bush took 43% more of the self-described liberals than Nader. 
And in New Hampshire, where Bush took six times more Dems from 
Gore than Nader did, and twice as many self-described liberals.

What all this means is simple: Al Gore has no one to blame
but himself, and his inability to rally voters sufficiently
around his watered-down agenda and lackluster campaign. Gore
actually lost nationwide among voters who said they prioritized 
world affairs, despite the fact that Bush would be hard-pressed 
to name a small fraction of world leaders, and has no foreign 
policy experience whatsoever. And just to make clear that Nader 
was not Gore's Achilles heel, consider this: nationally, Bush 
got twice as many self-described liberals as Nader did, over 
seven times more Clinton voters than Nader did, and among 
those who said "government should do more" (a typically
liberal/progressive position statement), Bush took eight
times more of these natural Democratic voters than did
Nader.

Of course, it should not be necessary to say any of this. It
should be obvious that when an incumbent Vice-President, in
an administration that is generally given high marks for the
state of the economy, and who serves in time of relative
world peace, can't defeat a man who is probably the least
qualified, weakest Republican nominee in the past 36 years,
there is something amiss, and it isn't the third party
candidate.

Keep in mind, 66% of the American public says the nation 
is on the right track. That is significantly more than said
this same thing in 1996, when only a little over half felt
that way. And yet, when almost half the population thought
the nation was not headed in the right direction, Bill
Clinton was able to put together a landslide victory.
Meanwhile, Gore, with two-thirds of the public happy 
about the direction of the country, appears to have
lost. How could that possibly be the fault of Ralph 
Nader?

And of course, had Gore carried his own home state, along
with either Clinton's home state of Arkansas, or the
traditional Democratic stronghold of West Virginia, 
then Florida would be an irrelevancy.

But don't look for that kind of honesty from the Democratic
Party, or Democrat-friendly spinmeisters in the media. When
in doubt, they always look left for a scapegoat, when the
real culprit for their troubles is looking back at them 
from the mirror.

Tim Wise is a Nashville-based writer, lecturer and activist.
He can be reached at <tjwise at mindspring.com>.

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