Third parties are rare enough in America that it is hard to get a clear pattern of success/failure. In British politics, the Liberal (now Liberal Democratic) party has a pretty clear result from its center-left slot -- in almost all elections since 1922 it does better when Tories are in power and worse when Labour is in power.
I think Nader got it exactly backwards -- his chance of getting further both in this election and in the future would have been better if Gore was doing better/was President. The reason Nader did better than Buchanan is just that the Right was desperate to get back into power.
One of the more unfortunate -- and on the face of it, silly -- aspects of the Nader/Gore debate was that leftists on each side were making "assurances" about the behavior of either Bush or Gore in office. In effect, the Naderites were "guaranteeing" that Bush wouldn't be so bad and the Goreites that Gore wouldn't be selling out the Left.
But the "personalization" of the election around the candidates was silly, I think, as my comparison with the Battle of Antietam was meant to suggest. When the two armies clashed, the armies were more important than their commanders, and the Nader folk were, in essence, abandoning the army that they needed to be allied with, and suggesting that they would be happy if they lost the battle. That's not a good way to ally with anyone.
Nader broke 10% in five counties in the continental USA (besides the whole state of Alaska, which has no counties) -- they were Missoula in Montana (University of Montana) , Dukes in Massachusetts (Martha's Vineyard), and 3 adjacent counties in Western Massachusetts/SE Vermont that encompass the many elite colleges there as well as the summer homes of the NYC literati.
If the future of the left is Martha's Vineyard I would be very surprised.
Jim Chapin
The preceding is a personal opinion. Try not to post more than daily.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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