> I never said Nader voters were irrational, just choosing a poor strategy.
> And about half of them decided at the last moment that it was a bad
strategy
> and switched over to Gore.
You are making an unwarranted assumption: That the difference between Nader voters who ended up voting for Gore and those who ended up voting against him was a difference in strategy rather than a difference in goal.
I voted for Nader because I think the long-term benefit from proving that independence from Gore is possible outweighs the shorter-term benefit from having a slightly less right-wing welfare reformer and imperialist in the presidency. The last-minute vote-switchers obviously concluded that the shorter-term benefit is greater. They wanted to express the belief that independence from Gore would be desirable, even though they don't think it is yet quite possible. This is a difference in goal, not a difference in strategy.
> The people I think are being irrational is the
> Green leadership and defenders on this list who refuse to analyze if a
> different Nader strategy might have led to less defection over to Gore in
> the safe states. Nader folks want to attribute all of that defection to
> liberal Dem propaganda, while refusing to analyze where Nader's own
> leadership may have contributed to their voting Gore in the end.
According to your hypothesis, millions of people were going to vote for Nader in safe states, but turned against him to protest his campaigning in swing states. In other words, the anti-Nader protest vote was roughly equal in size to the pro-Nader protest vote. And yet the only person to ever articulate the meaning of this immense protest is someone who would never have voted for Nader under any circumstances. I don't buy this for one minute.
> As for working people supporting Bush, for a lot of folks, guns and
abortion
> are important issues to them and override economic self-interest,
especially
> where Dems prevent often weak alternatives to GOP corporate policies.
I see, you are calling them mind-_ful_ pawns, but a Gore critic who says that working class Democratic voters are voting against their economic interests is calling them mind-_less_ pawns. And that's the difference between Green elitism and pragmatic social democratic respect.
Tom Waters Bronx, New York tjwaters at earthlink.net