> Folks can blame Gore for all his failings, justifiably, but the refusal to
> deal with Nader's responsibility as well shows how absolutely resistant
> third party folks are to analysis. They make predictions and when they
are
> proven false, they just pretend they didn't make them.
On two level's this argument seems specious. First, as you stated "The fact is that he won more votes than Bush", so in this sense it wasn't either Gore or Nader's fault for Gore's loss...it was either bad counting added to bad politics, or it was dirty dealings in Florida which got Bush his seat. It cannot be seen to be Nader's fault for that.
Secondly, you can whine and whine about Nader TAKING the vote from Gore, but the fact remains that it is Gore himself and his policy platform which made people feel uncomfortable voting for him. My belief is that if he would have remotely touched upon the things that Nader was speaking about...if he would have somewhat shown that he found that constituency worthy of his time, many of them would have reluctantly voted for Gore. However, he didn't. He thought he could win without them, and he was actually right (vote-wise), but he was wrong really, because he didn't win....HE didn't win. I guess it is really a question of push or pull. Did Gore push the votes away or did Nader pull them away...and I think that it can be answered with about as much scientific objectivity as the glass half-full or half-empty question...
> Nader folks said that electing Bush would make little difference and that
> Gore's defeat would force the Democrats to move left. Both predictions
have
> proved to be massively false.
I just think that this statement is very hard to guage at all. I think that 9/11 puts all bets off on this. How can we know what Bush's situation would be if something as traumatic to the American psyche had not occured? And conversely, how can we really tell how different things would have turned out had Gore been the one in office on 9/11. My feeling is that a right-wing backlash was almost inevitable no matter who was in office given the American socio-political scene.
But it is easy to blame Nader. What if...