Of course lots of people had that exact ranking. Polls show it widely.
>I can likewise conceive of no reason to imagine that
>the absence of Nader from the race might have
>increased Gore's actual plurality so much that the
>Repugs would not have stolen the election anyway
This has been extensively studied both anecdotally and by polls. Given that over 90,000 Florida voters went for Nader, if 84,000 had jumped to McReynolds or stayed home, 2000 had jumped to Bush, if just 4000 jumped to Gore, that would have taken the numbers out of the legal scramble.
This is all just kind of silly. I hear usually intelligent people making these ridiculous arguments that no Nader voters were potential Gore voters and I just marvel at the disabling influence of third party ideology. As I said, this bizarre intellectual disability induced by third party support is one reason why I've completely given up on it, even though in the abstract I can conceive of good arguments for it.
But given that its proponents seem unable to pursue it with any self-reflection or political honesty about its effects, I just think a bright-line opposition to third party politics is the only useful position to promote at this point. Kind of how I feel about certain harder drugs like heroin-- in the abstract, people can use them recreationally, but their chronic abuse makes me sympathetic to a just say no approach.
-- Nathan Newman