Journal singularity's Journal: On Ralph Nader running for President... 1
So the recent political uproar is whether Ralph Nader should run for President again. The only people who see this as a decision to be made are Democrats. Hopefully everyone reading this can see the reason Democrats would not want Nader to run again - they say he steals votes away from whichever Democrat is running.
Makes sense. Nader tends to appeal to a left-wing audience more than a right-wing one. As a result, people who vote for him would probably be more likely to vote for a Democrat than a Republican (provided Nader was not running and they still bothered to vote).
Nader says that "Gore beat Gore", which also makes sense. Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, and even with all of Nader's votes in that state, I still think he would have lost. Blaming Nader alone for Gore's loss is very short-sighted.
As a registered third-party voter, I bring up another theory that does not get much discussion. I vote third-party in the Presidential elections. A lot of times I get blamed for "throwing away my vote". Perhaps I have different logic than other people, but I think my vote says more than someone voting Republican or Democrat.
Maybe if Gore did not want to allow Nader to steal votes from him, he should have gone out and tried to win over the Nader supporters. Gore should have looked at some of Nader's platform and adopted some of it for himself.
The difference between Gore and Bush in Florida was also smaller than the number of people that voted Libertarian in that state. Had Gore tried to court some more of those voters, maybe he could have won that state and, therefore, the election as a whole.
Democrats talk about how Nader "stole votes" from Gore. I look at it the other way - Gore did nothing to keep those votes. Gore "gave them away", or at least stood by while Nader took them. In that situation, Gore (and Democrats) really have no ability to complain after the fact.
Gore tried running his campaign right down the middle of American. As a result, he strayed too far for some of the more extreme liberals, and they looked for an alternative. Bush also ran down the middle, and obviously did a better job of it, and continued to take the more conservative Republicans along with him. As a result, he won.
No, Gore has no one to blame for his loss but himself and his campaign advisors.
As for this November, I think Nader should run again, to keep whichever Democrat ends up running honest to his liberal stronghold.
Good for you (Score:2)
There's a lot of apathy about our political process. Could it be because people feel that they feel powerless in the face of a political parties that clearly answer to special intere