Nader to announce on Meet the Press

[angus]

I welcome Nader’s entrance into the race and I’d like to attempt to dispel the notion that Ralph Nader helps Kerry lose in November. (Of course, I’d like to have known whether to have invested in Tobacco or in Firearms in 2000, but handicapping the Gore/Bush thing was difficult, so I won’t give you this “it doesn’t matter” third-party line.)  The speed with which the Anti-Nader democrats hit the airwaves after the Russert interview Sunday was impressive!

Most analyses are based on the fact that it comes down to Florida, since Nader received about 95000 votes there and Gore lost to Bush by 500, and it was only in that state (and officially New Hampshire) that the number of votes for Nader was greater than the difference between the number of votes for Gore and Bush.  Had those 95000 votes, or even a sufficient majority of them, gone to Gore then florida is won and innauguration day may have had different character.   Or that’s the usual line.

But those depend on exit polling data taken nationwide (sketchy, at best, for small numbers render large uncertainties).  That’s:  sampled nationwide, but applied to Florida.  Nationally, most samples answered 35-40% gore, 20-25% bush, and the remainder “not voting” when offered only those choices.  Thus, 0.15 times 95000 is much greater than 500.  But even the pollsters themselves don’t try to argue that national samples may be applied to particular subsets with arbitrary confidence (usually reported to less than 5%).  Certainly not from such a large and diverse society.  Moreover, the questions clearly do not reflect the actual choices, even less so than the usual Kerry-Bush 2 man questions since pollsters view the “not sure” as a catch-all for everything else when they specifically compare two brand-name candidates head-to-head.  In fact, there were seven candidates on the Florida ballot in 2000.  Any one of which may have “stolen” votes away from any other, if good campaigning can be called “stealing.” One can argue that Nader took votes away from Browne, Phillips, McReynolds, Buchanan, Bush, Hagelin, and Gore.  And vice-versa all throughout!  Of course the conventional wisdom remains that leftists only drain votes from Democrats and libertarians/conservatives only drain from Republicans.  (To wit, if one insists on believing that Nader pinched Gore then the same logic implies Perot pinched Bush.)

Of course any reasonably attentive student of the most recent general election will conclude that Gore defeated Gore.  But the suggestion that Nader defeated Gore persists, based on the faulty logic that if Nader had not run, enough of those who voted for Nader would have surely voted for Gore for a win.  Here’s some anecdotal stuff:  I voted for Nader in 2000.  I still think I’d rather be thoroughly horse-whipped than have President Al Gore’s monotone monologue filling the screen daily, but then Bush didn’t give me a raging hard-on either.  I had chosen a candidate I (generally) respected and (generally) agreed with, but then learned about Nader and jumped on his bandwagon.  If anything, Nader stole my vote from the candidate I had previously leaned toward.  And I know others, of various socioeconomic stripes, who voted similarly.  Nader is known to me since around 1978, when I discovered him from MAD magazine and began following his honorable path ever since.  We don’t have complete issue-agreement, but we’re all generally beneficiaries of his efforts.  Let the mudslinging begin.

As for Kerry, I voted to re-elect him to the US senate in 1996.  Indeed, he was my senator for five years when I lived in Somerville (making considerably less money, as you might imagine, based on my voting proclivities).  I think that not only the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but all US citizens, are better off with him in the US senate.  And I’ll do whatever I can out here in California to keep him there in Massachusetts (short of blindly voting for George Bush, from whom Nader may “steal” my vote).  I think it is unlikely that I will vote to re-elect the incumbent (as I have been convinced of the irresponsibility I suspected when he ran in 2000), and even less likely that I’d vote to elect John Kerry for President (we shouldn’t apply the Peter Principle at every available opportunity).  And I haven’t decided whether I’ll vote for Ralph Nader, but you can rest assured I’ll vote, and that no one is taking my vote away from Kerry.

I was wondering if any past Ralphies had any comments.  Or anyone in general.

[angus]

nym90
Actually, not wanting to waste my money and my brothers’ blood chasing after empire is most definitely a very conservative attitude, thank you very much.  And that other stuff mostly defies glib labeling.  For example, the two most often cited cases of gun control gone awry are Germany in 1938 and Russia in 1918, so clearly both the far right and the far left are capable of pulling one's warm live fingers from around the barrel.  IF WE LET THEM.  (by the bye, this is one issue where Ralph, wearing his nanny hat, gets under my skin a bit.)

I decided to get a big 'ol blue state of California to show I'm a Republican.  I had been a Democrat from about 85 to 96ish, then Declined-to-State, now Republican.  It’s…  Well, it’s easy to support socialized medicine when you’re in grad school living on a 1500-dollar a month government stipend, but now I say “you get pregnant, pay for your own damned abortion.”  When I landed that first real job a few years ago, I saw the light (or at least that part illuminating my what was left of my labors after taxes).  Mama said this would happen some day.

[angus]

Dunn, absolutely not.  Just as I had an opionion about the Chriac/LePen/Jospin race, or Vicente Fox's current failures & successes, or Alejandro Toledo's intriguing love/hate relationship with the peruvians, I expect foreigners will have an opinion about my government.  In fact some of my fondest memories are of being on a 2nd class bus with the goats and chickens in the third world discussing politics with the locals.  And, in fact, I was working in Amsterdam in 2002 (at VU in buitenveldert if you're familiar) when Pim Fortuyn was shot and had many fruitful discussions with the locals.  Indeed, I am only a 2d=generation American, I just assimilated quicker than most.  We are richer for their opinions here and we are richer for our history of diversity, and I for one think the way to spread culture is to open our great universities and our borders, not spill blood and money.  I apologize if I wasn't clear about that earlier.  In fact the idea to be open about why I am a republican and what kind of republican I am I got from the foreigners who post in this forum, most of whom have interesting tag lines.  Yet another contribution.  Free markets and Free exchange of ideas are why I'm a republican, and those lofty ideals, along with my native language, came from England.  The car I drive came from Germany, my girlfriend of five years is a citizen of China, and my current best buddy is a Swede.  I really don't want to be misinterpreted in the way you suggest.  Though, I admit, the tongue-in-cheek line in the sig is probably asking for a healthy load of rhetorical backlash.  As Washington Post writer Marcela Sanchez often points out in her excellent Spanish articles intended for US observers in Latin America, "In the US, mockery is one of the sincerest forms of flattery."  Or something like that.