bad nooz for Dems

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Wed Feb 6 11:21:55 PST 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>

Nathan Newman wrote:
>I'm pissed as shit at Gephardt and if I thought voting Green would change
his
>behavior< I'd do it. I just see no empirical evidence that it will.

-So instead you'll keep voting for Dems, and Gephardt can continue to -do as he likes. Do you have something to show for this strategy?

Yes- folks like Barbara Lee who voted against the war, folks in the Progressive Caucus who vote almost 100% on important domestic issues, support for continual filibusters of many egregious rightwing policies by even conservative Dems, and millions of dollars spent on voter registration among minority communities in recent years.

You can argue that is not enough, which is fine-- just detail where we get more from voting Nader and the Greens. Any empirical example would be useful. Someone brought up Cantwell's election as an interesting case, although that can be even more easily explained as a spoiler problem on the Right where the libertarian vote was far higher than Cantwell's margin of victory. And Dems have been investing in higher voter turnout quite significantly in recent years (finally), including in races like Corzine's in New Jersey and in Florida last election, where black turnout was significantly higher than in 2000 for the Dems.

The turnout and help for Dem candidates down ballot argument is pretty weak, since if Nader played such a great role, Dems running for Congress would have done far better than four years earlier. Yet the Congressional votes between Dems and the GOP was almost exactly the same as four years earlier. Nader's 3% seems to have had almost zero effect on changing the overall vote for Congress.

So again, aside from anecdote, how about some empirical measures of why Greens are having any positive impact on American politics?

-- Nathan Newman



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