[lbo-talk] Nader, again

Shane Taylor s-t-t at juno.com
Fri Jul 11 09:44:09 PDT 2003


Brad DeLong wrote:
> There's something very weird about Al From, and
> there is something very weird about From's claim
> that more Nader voters in 2000 would have voted
> for Bush than for Gore had Nader not been in the
> race. I think From is lying--after all, he wants to
> convince his DLC senatorial clients that there are
> no votes to be gained by going left, and I've never
> thought of Al From as ethically unchallenged.

Brad's probably right about From, although more Democrats voted for Bush than for Nader.

In an immediate sense, the Nader reprisals were obviously about a Gore win. But I suspected there was something more. The anti-Nader drive by many Dems was also about the two-party system, and they rightly, unlike the Greens, approached this as an issue of power. The Greens, however, continue to approach this as a technocratic issue, which IRV and the like would solve. The Dems lost the White House, but perhaps they've secured the two-party system.

Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> beyond which, in an electoral college system, this
> would have to be broken down by state to be truly
> meaningful, especially since gore *won* the popular
> vote even without the nader voters. in my own state
> of illinois, for example, gore's success was never in
> doubt.

And recall what the Electoral College did in '92: one-fifth of the popular vote for Perot = zero votes for the presidency. From the vantage point of defending the two-party system, the EC might well have proved itself, despite the odd chance of the EC vote and the popular vote conflicting. Still, that's just my peculiar suspicion. I still think it's weird the Dems, in the wake of 2000, weren't at least pushing _as a party_ to abolish the EC. There was some talk, yes, but that seemed evaporate.

-- Shane

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