>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.
Why should a vote for Nader mean a vote for a Dem for Congress? Lots of Nader voters wouldn't vote for a Dem if a gun were held to their heads.
Sorry to find myself disagreeing with Seth, but I don't see how Nader gave the election to Bush. If Gore had carried his home state, he'd be president. The whole Florida mess is a symptom of the structural corruption of the American political system; Gore lost that state because of rigged counting, racial harassment, and the shameful disenfranchisement of ex-cons. Face it Nathan, your boy did himself in.
Doug