Mad at branches (Nader/Greens) Blind to Roots (Dems)

Popular vote- 1992
Ross Perot – 19%
Bill Clinton - 43.3%
George Bush – 37.7%

Popular vote- 2000
Ralph Nader- 2.74%
Al Gore- 48.38%
George W. Bush- 47.87%

I’m growing increasingly tired of people blaming Ralph Nader for what happened in 2000. If you hold that to be true, then you must be intellectually honest and admit that Ross Perot put Clinton into office in 1992. Who had a bigger impact Ross Perot’s 19% or Ralph Naders 2.74%? I will give people time to locate their calculator’s tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Ok glad to have you back, no no you have it upside down, their you go.

There are two reasons and one root cause that put Bush in the White House in 2000.

Reasons -
1) Katherine Harris purging thousands of Black Voters, which would have voted for Gore. Thanks for bringing that up Gore. <Inset sarcasm>
2) The Supreme Court, we all know that story.

Root Cause-
The Democrats gave Nader a reason to run, and more importantly the Democrats gave people a reason to vote for him. (Note I voted for Gore in 2k)
When I have talked to Greens I usually walk away with the impression that they are disenfranchised Democrats, whose fault is that?


A vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for Bush? Did I miss that fine print on the ballot? I knew I should have read the whole thing. (Note- I voted Gore in 2k) A vote for Ralph Nader is another signal to the Democrats that they are slowly loses their base. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

The Democrats try to put us in that inside the box thinking, they seem to think they are ordained get our vote as opposed to wanting our vote. With all the anger directed at the Greens and my fellow (liberal) Independents, you are successfully pissing off people who have similar political and ideological notions as yourself. While this cafeteria food fight is taking place, the Right wing sits arrogantly secure in the middle of the courtyard knowing they have the UN questioning loyalty of their base.

During the time period Perot had dropped out of the race, Clinton was still ahead in the polls.

Nader was able to make a 2.74% swing because zero were going to go GOP - although it might be a bit less since many - but no where near a majority - of "Greens" would have just not have voted.

In CNN's 1996 exit poll they asked the question "Who did you vote for in 1992?"

Of the people who voted for Perot in 1992, here's who they voted for in 1996....

Dole 44 %
Perot 33 %
Clinton 22 %

I think it's a tough case to make that in 1992 if Perot wasn't in the race half his voters would have voted for Clinton, when four years later, after a very successful first term, less than 1/4 of those same voters supported Clinton.

In the 2000 exit poll, CNN asked the same question of the much smaller group who voted for Perot in 1996. Who did they support in 2000 when Perot wasn't running?

Bush 64 %
Gore 27 %

Honestly, the numbers look pretty clear to me that Perot voters were mostly Republicans who went back to being Republicans after Perot faded and left the scene.

Also, since 1972, every Republican candidate has gotten at least 48 % of the vote. Perot comes into the race in 1992 and the Republican is down to 38 %. Perot is less of a factor in 96 and the Republican is 43 %. Perot is gone in 2000, and the Reppublican is right back to 48 %.

Is there any exit poll data that shows that Perot took a significant amount of votes from Clinton? I've never seen any.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/elections/natl.exit.poll/index1.html

I've discussed this point before and when I asked for a link to back up the "debunking of the Perot issue" all that I received was a link that took me to an article where it is asserted that Perot had no effect, but offered no numbers to back up the assertion.

Also look at http://www.uselectionatlas.org/
Dave Leip's election atlas to see state by state results

the legend of the poll that showed Perot took equally from Bush and Clinton. Like Bigfoot, it is described over and over again, but it is never examined.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is such a poll, but I've searched and asked to be shown it for 10 years, and all I've ever gotten was "Don't worry, polls clearly showed..." Sometimes I'll get linked to a story where the author says "polls clearly showed..."

Meanwhile the exit polling that is readily available shows the exact opposite thing.

It's not like my kid's education depends on this or anything. If anyone can link me to these mysterious polls, please do and I'll be happy to study them and compare them to other data, but at this point if I had to guess where this got started, I would guess that James Carville or someone similar off-handedly on Cross-fire one day said, "oh polls show he took from both equally," and from an off-handed comment like that, this legend was born.

that Bill Clinton won on his own in 92?

Clinton would have won anyway, just much closer.

Most fo Perot's voters would have voted for Clinton. 1992 was a REEJECTION of Bush Sr, NOT a 3rd party spoiler.

Perot never LIED to people saying that Bush and Clinton were the same.

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according to exit polls nearly 60% of the people who voted for Nader wouldn't vote at all if he weren't in the race.

I just had this discussion with a Repub friend. He & I agreed that the winner is the winner, even if a majority of voters voted for someone else.

That being said, I still told him Gore won in 2000.

:evilgrin:

Stop blaming other people (I.E.Nader, greens) tackle the root cause.
Freeper logic? You mean blaming Nader; yes I agree that is freeper logic. No one seems willing to respond to the heart of the post, what a surprise.

Greens had they not voted for Nader (and voted) would have voted Gore.

Perot voters, had they not voted for Perot (and voted) would mostly voted for Clinton, giving Clinton a clear win.

You're right in saying that there were other factors involved, but it's a psychotic delusion to think that Nader voters didn't have a MAJOR part in handing the election to Bush.

Perot voters, had they not voted for Perot (and voted) would mostly voted for Clinton, giving Clinton a clear win.

I'm not saying you are lieing, but do you have data or studies to back that up?

says the opposite -- see my above post. I've never seen any data challenging it -- just assertions.

as for root causes, try actual human nature. tackle that one with just weak-assed ideological rhetoric and see where it gets you....<3% of the vote, that's where.


”Our responsibility is not discharged by an announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor."

JFK 1960

is something that there seems to be little agreement on. For good reason. There probably isn't a single root cause.
The Greens swear the "root cause" is that the Dems aren't left enough. Yet, there's the numerical problem of centrist voters and the unpredictability of what would happen. Lots of possibilities. Lots of nuances. I doubt anyone is 100% correct. There's no way of KNOWING all there is to know. Only guesses. Yet people pretend to know.

Where has the DLC Republican light politics gotten us? A complete ass kicking.

Why are they trying to appease people who will never be appeased.
The republicans are Fox news. And the Democrats are pulling a MSNBC wannabe Fox news. Why would they( right of center, centrists) go for Burger when they got steak. Meanwhile the Democratic party base is saying remember me.

To assume the Perot voters would have voted for Poppy is a ridiculous conclusion. Yes, a good chunk of them were probably Republicans. But they were Republicans who were sick and tired of what Reagan and Bush had done to the country. Fiscal conservatives would be likely suspects. Take Perot out of the equation, I think it's far more likely they would have voted Clinton.

As most of them DID in 1996.

...The would almost certainly have voted Clinton, not Bush. I even liked Perot's ideas.

BTW, Perot hasn't said anything about Bush II and the deficits, so Perot has gone from "sorry little loon" in my book to "dishonest sorry little loon."

Green friend? I state at least two times I'm an Independent :mad:

Saying that most Perot voters voted for Clinton is so far off the mark -- did you look that up at all or are you just saying it beause?...

Here's the exit polls from 1996

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/elections/natl.exit.poll/index1.html

Not only did most Perot voters not vote for Clinton in 1996, the number is less than 1 out of 4.

This is not the kind of thing to argue about. Just look up the numbers. We can all do a simple search.

Gore. He had to spend a lot of extra time in states that would have been his.

Nader also spent the last day of the campaign in Florida. THAT tells you a lot.

Too bad he was too stooopid to realize those campaign donations were from REPUKES who were doing nothing but trying to help fund the split in the liberal vote.

AWOL the senior? some would have gone his way, some would have gone to any other independant running, some would have gone to Clinton, and some would have stayed home. Perot voters would NOT have all gone to AWOL senior. No way. Boil Ass tries to use that argument all the time and it's old.

Nader on the other hand is far more left leaning and he did peel off votes that would have gone to Gore. Gore barely 'lost', whereas Clinton won (fairly!) and by a much wider margin.

Popular vote- 1992
Ross Perot – 19%
Bill Clinton - 43.3%
George Bush – 37.7%

Popular vote- 2000
Ralph Nader- 2.74%
Al Gore- 48.38%
George W. Bush- 47.87%

The public was thouroughly soured on Poppy. Post election polls indicated that Perot took votes away equally from both Clinton and Poppy with Poppy hurt most in the south and Clinton in the East. Perot ran against huge budget deficits which appealed to many conservatives at the same time he was anti-NAFTA which appealed to working class people.

please.

But he certainly helped Clinton in states like Georgia, Colorado, and Montana. In 1996 he boosted Clinton in Florida and Arizona. And in 92 and 96 he boosted Clinton in Nevada, Missouri, Kentucky, and Lousiana. This is another reason I'm sick of hearing Democrats defend the electoral college, because we can't depend on having third-party candidates to bail us out..even if we do win the popular vote!

From the available evidence--polling data showing that Bush and Clinton would have split Perot's votes--it's safe to say that Clinton probably would have won anyway. Of course, a more reasonable approach would have been to look at polling data on a state-by-state basis. But I'm not sure that's an option.

Link to just a little bit of it please?

The exit polls seem to show an entirely different thing.

Unable to locate page requested.

This author, just like you said that "polls say" that they would have split the vote equally.

Have you ever seen one of those polls?

I have not.

I believe someone defending Clinton on a talk show in 1993 said "polls show," that the two would have split their votes, and people have been repeating that assertion ever since.

I could be wrong, but in 10 years I have never seen one of those "polls." I don't think there's any "there" there. I think it's just a circular group of people repeating to each other that "polls" show it is so.

I don't think there ever was such a poll.

I could be wrong, but if I am, I'd sure like to see one of those polls.

Of course I expect replies to the post title, but no replies to the ROOT. Now you know why I’m an Independent.

Even if the numbers you've posted don't really reflect what you're saying, the thing that pisses me off is that we're undermining a part of our democracy that should be held dear.

Anyone that feels they have good ideas about improving our country should be welcome to share those ideas. Democracy is a two way street.

I see it as a party for a bunch of college kids with nothing on the line who think it's "cool" to vote for someone who wants to "decriminalize the plant" (marijuana). It's fine for them to ruin f---ing elections, but it's not their jobs or workers' rights on the line.

The Green Party can seriously go f--- itself.

You just picked up the bad habit of spewing sweeping generalizations.

wasn't either an affluent college student or a pothead. And look at the state America is in right now. I'll never forgive Nader. EVER.

Many Nader employees are hardly affluent, for example. They are paid peanuts and not allowed to unionize. But they are ordinary people who really believe in the guy, and work hard for him.

And by the way you are ignored, I will never forgive you for not replying to the ROOT of my post. FOOD FIGHT, Right wing laughing in the background.

Now you have.

Early forties, not a college student, not a pothead. Own a house, have a job, a wife, living a pretty normal life. I'm sick and tired of a Democratic party that's left me behind. I'm sick of a two party system that is controlled by the same corporate masters. LOOK AT ME!

Look at my neighbor. Single woman, working two jobs to stay ahead. Late thirties, not a college grad. Has a son. Is tired of being screwed by both parties complete lack of empathy with people in her plight, can you say Clinton's welfare "reform"? LOOK AT HER!

Look at my best friend and his SO. He is trying to stay ahead with two jobs. Has one non-custody child, who he does pay and take care of, very responsible. Not a college grad. His SO is a teacher, help's take care of friend's child every other weekend. Neither are potheads. Disgusted by the way Dems have gone rightward, so they have gone Green. LOOK AT THEM!!

Your quick and dirty stereotyping of Greens is disingenous at best, and quite offensive at worst. I could sit here and rattle off a long list of Greens who don't match with your stereotype, and in fact you probably know some Greens who don't match your stereotype. Just because you hate the Greens doesn't give you a pass to act like a neo-con neanderthal ass.
Go repeat your cute little statement at a Green party meeting, and your ass could get stomped, Blue Collar style.

Wake up and smell the roses, or at least do some honest research. People from all stripes and walks of life are getting sick of our two party/one corporate master system of politics, and are going Green to fight this. If all you're going to do is throw out cheap, jingoistic stereotypes about Greens, I suggest you STFU!!

Erroneous, dependent upon caricatures, self-righteous, empty.

Gore won, so Nader didn't cost Gore the popular vote.

Everybody knows he won in Florida, too. And the Newspaper Consortium proved that as well.

Florida was, we can presume, the beginning of Republicans defeating the electoral process, because they can no longer win on issues.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, for some reason, continue to lust after the supposed "carrot" dangled by the conservatives that the only way to win is to try and co-opt the conservative position to snipe for the "middle 20%."

Of course, in order to do that, Democrats continue to ignore populist issues that would have the effect of unifying the party with the disaffected who've left the party because it no longer represented their best interests, those who no longer vote because they believe it makes no difference in a "politics as usual" world, and the nearly half of the eligible voters who just don't pay attention because nothing in what the politicians say clicks with them.

So the Democrats move right to try and take over the voters abandoned by the Republicans who moved right because they were hijacked by the neocons and the people the Democrats abandoned join the Green Party or quit voting and then the Democrats wonder why they don't win on the issues.

Try running a candidate with real positions in opposition to the BFEE and see how fast the "big tent" fills up again. Don't hold your breath.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

I realize most Nader supporters were too buy listening to the hateful lies being told about Gore, by Nader, to listen to him or see who he was. Some idiot on this board even said that he "only had Clinton's record to judge Gore by in 2000". That is possibly the worst bit of justification for being uninformed I have heard of here.

Of course, in order to do that, Democrats continue to ignore populist issues that would have the effect of unifying the party with the disaffected who've left the party because it no longer represented their best interests, those who no longer vote because they believe it makes no difference in a "politics as usual" world, and the nearly half of the eligible voters who just don't pay attention because nothing in what the politicians say clicks with them.


The disaffected have left the party because they are prone to be disaffected and willing to listen to any chooch who will spout misery 24/7 about how the parties are the same.

As for the people who don't vote because "nothing clicks with them".. all I can say is those people should stop blaming their lack of involvement on anything besides their lazy ass behavior. Too lazy to find out who is who and too willing to believe "it doesn't matter" to justify the fact that they simply can't be bothered to give a damn. Do they want candidates to wipe their asses after they take a crap too? Grow up folks.

As for the people who don't vote because "nothing clicks with them".. all I can say is those people should stop blaming their lack of involvement on anything besides their lazy ass behavior. Too lazy to find out who is who and too willing to believe "it doesn't matter" to justify the fact that they simply can't be bothered to give a damn. Do they want candidates to wipe their asses after they take a crap too? Grow up folks.

Mass popular movement of the soon to be former bewildered herd would bring to power the right person to carry out there will. Oops I forgot people are doing more important things like watching WWF and Football. People have more power than they have been conditioned to think. America is filled of Apathetic lazy fu*ks. I hold the bewildered herd responsible for their lack of involvement.

Especially when the Republicans are proving time and time again that they can make their people line up on the far right.

Gore won, and he won in part because he got populist, on his own, and against the advice of the DLC. If he would have gotten populist earlier, and picked a VP who wasn't a flaming right-winger, he would have won by an even greater margin.

The Democratic strategy of picking up the disaffected "mainstream" Republicans as the Republican Party swerves further and further to the right will have as its only logical outcome the spawning of even more third-party attraction.

Unless and until the Democratic Party figures out how to get back its populist groove, it's going to continue going down the dead-end road laid out by the DLC of fighting the losing 40/40/20 battle as fewer and fewer people each time lift themselves off their couches to go out and vote.

Democrats have to a) have a spine against Bush, and b) show a plan that's really different than what the Republicans are offering.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

What you can do is lament that most of his TV appearances during an election seem to bash the Democrats more than the Republicans. In the interim, he bashes equally--but nobody hears it.

Of course it mattered. He was trying to cause a democratic defeat and her was certainly part of the equation.
What does it matter what he says now? No one is going to listen and the media is not going to report it. What mattered was what he did and said during the election.

Based on what he has done so far, I believe Nader is in it mostly for fame and money (how unique). His attacks shift toward the Democrats during the election because that will guarantee him TV time and at times GOP funding. Yeah, his statements against Democrats being plastered all over isn't helping anything, but no one will ever be able to point to Nader as the sole cause of losing 2000--it's just going to be an opinion. Hard to know for sure.

edit: typos

Believe me, I've heard the man more than once, he's not a one-trick pony whose job is to rob the Democratic party base. He's an equal opportunity basher, but watch what gets televised!

The corporate-owned media is NOT going to air anything they perceive as damaging to stock options. Nader's actual rhetoric is quite anti-republican, but you wouldn't know it from watching him on TV. From the viewpoint of a corporate media mogul, it's just fine to air Nader coming down hard on Al Gore for being half-hearted or hypocritical, that jives with the existing GOP talking points, but criticism of The Appointed Pharaoh is not permitted.

What I don't like is the use of Nader as a Democrat critic from the left. Whether he tailors his message to get the TV time (and therefore more support and $) or the TV networks just screen his comments for Dem criticism, I'm not happy about it. How much damage the criticism does isn't really quantifiable, but it doesn't help out much. Personally, I see a marked difference between Nader's election persona and his "other three years" persona. A few of his articles in Common Dreams etc. have been dealing chiefly with Bush, but that disappears when he is talking about the election--usually he concentrates on the Democratic failure to uphold leftist values.

You changed your thread title....


Let me preface my remarks by saying it's a free country and anybody can run for president....

But all the emperical data suggests Ross Perot took votes equally from Bush and Clinton....

Go to Gallup.... You will see Clinton beating Papa Bush 54% to 36% when Perot re-entered the race....


I'm tired of "litigating" and "relitigating" the 2000 election... But for Nader's 97,000 Florida votes the 2000 election would have been too close to steal....

What states, if the 3rd party candidate were added to either candidate, would have changed hands?

Note - in AWOL sr's adopted home state of ME, he came in BEHIND Perot in 1992.

but my guess is if Perot wasn't in the race in 1992, Bush would have almost certainly won

Georgia
Louisiana
Ohio
Kentucky
Nevada
New Hampshire
Montana

and may have also won

Colorado.

In my opinion there were no states that Clinton would have taken from Bush's column were Perot not in the race.

BTW, what makes you think democrats give a damn what you think about us or what you are tired of? No one is catering to you to win you over, stop begging us to do so. Vote for whoever you want and when you run someone against the democratic candidate just remember YOU are driving the democratic party to the right, because the party is whoever is working within it.

Nader is partially responsible for 2000. The Green party is an opposition party anytime they run a candidate against a democrat. That's just the facts.

The naderhaters will only tell you the same things, over and over and over again. You are convincing no one, and basically stirring an issue that we may as well let drop, as it only pisses people off by now.

No amount of reasoned discourse will dissuade the "true believers" that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" is both mathematically and metaphorically inaccurate. Believe me, I have tried, it doesn't work. You cannot reason a person out of a position they did not arrive at by reason in the first place.

What is important now is to do whatever it takes to remove the current occupant from the whitehouse as soon and as peacefully as possible.

Research suggests that out of every four Nader voters, two would have voted for Gore, one would have voted for Bush, and one would have stayed home...

That's more than the 537 votes that Bush allegedly beat Gore by.....


Don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument....

in florida, most of them likely democratic voters. why ISN't that more problematic than people who got the opportunty to participate in the so-called demoratic process, regardless of who they voted for?

They are madder at someone participating in their constitutional right, as opposed to Criminal behavior :wtf:

You want to talk facts about Florida votes? You will LOSE that argument, but you'll go to your grave pretending you won. Trust me, there are more important things to do than dig up that hatchet.

Instead, just remember that Bush allegedly beat Gore, and that's all. There were more than enough votes across Florida to give Gore the win without taking any from Nader's tiny pile. You and I both know that, and the nepotistic dictator of Florida knew it too. Getting a handle on the touchscreen machines in Florida is CRITICAL, going over the details of what your anonymous "research suggests" is not.

Don't waste time bickering over who opened the barn door, lets get the horses back.

If there wasn't a voter purge Gore would have won.....


If there wasn't the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County Gore would have won....


If there weren't 27,000 discarded ballots in Duval County from predominately African American precincts Gore would have won....


If Gore didn't loose some 50,000 votes to Ralph Nader , Gore would have won....

But for any of those events the results would be different....

First, your list of reasons is kinda short.

The votes weren't counted. That's reason #5.

If Al Gore had asked for a recount of ALL the counties in Florida, he wins something like 5/6 of those scenarios.

Of course, the recount was halted by the SCOTUS, anyway. If they hadn't done that, Gore would likely have lost because his super-smart Florida advisors told him to pick 4 counties instead of demanding the whole state be recounted.

Then again, one has to wonder if those super-smart advisors were among the MILLIONS OF FLORIDA DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED FOR BUSH.

Looking for a victory margin? Look no further than the flakes in your own party. That's reason #6.

and in typical idiotic and hypocritical american fashion...few give a flyng FUCK. i compare nader to a fly on a pink elephant's ass...the pink elephant is the VOTER PURGE. it was sucessful the last time, and it wil likelt be successful again...beacuse most people don't give a shit. end of story.

that no one ever talks about either and cost Gore his home state?

I hate to agree, but you are right, people don't give a shit.