The President of the United States, the executive branch, including Cheney, is absolutely responsible- for war-for executing the law.

As well Gore’s 1997 Kyoto speech is lightyears away from the Bush climate change denial we were treated to the last several years. Kyoto, don’t forget was just a start.

“[Gore's team] undermined the 1998 Kyoto talks by insisting on only 5% reduction in greenhouse gases (to 1990 levels) rather than the full 15% the Europeans were ready to sign…”

Limousine liberals like Alterman only back candidates who don’t threaten the status quo of give-aways to giant corporations and the contunuing destruction of the middle class, started under Reagan and continued with glee under Clinton-Gore.

see “The Inconvenient Truth About Al Gore” at:
http://ralphlopezworld.com

Alterman typifies the Democrats who blame everyone but themselves for their own incompetence, lack of vision, and corruption. I suppose Alterman now blames Ralph for the Democrats’ craven cave-in on Iraq? You are disgusting, Eric.

2/14? That’s Valentine’s Day! How apropos… I, too, hope that liberation comes, soon… ^..^

My usual old crotchety mean spirited persona has been put on hold.

Temporarily.

In reality Gore and the Dem machine had little in common with Nader. Just as the GOP has many differences with the libertarian party.

But I do feel your pain.

Zogby did some polling prior. This from the Sierra Club news:

“……no one-least of all Nader-thinks he’s going to get elected. His campaign would be a success, he says, if he wins 5 percent of the popular vote, which would qualify the Green Party for $5 million in federal matching funds, making it better able to compete in 2004. Polls show Nader hovering near that 5 percent figure, winning as much as 10 percent in some western states. According to pollster John Zogby, two out of three voters who are likely to vote for Nader would otherwise vote for Gore. (The other third probably wouldn’t vote at all.)
That’s good news for the Green Party, but bad news for the environment.”

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200009/whyvote.asp

and this:

“The polls have a margin of error of plus or minus one Ralph Nader,” joked Jay Leno on his much-watched late-night show. I’ve said before that Nader could yet wreck California for Al Gore, and with it his presidential chances; he is, meanwhile, giving Gore nightmares in Oregon, traditional Democratic territory where Gore was forced to make an unplanned stop last Tuesday.
“I don’t like the argument that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush [but] I think it’s true,” Gore said. “That is why Republicans are running advertisements for Nader,” he added, referring to Bush’s use of anti-Gore rhetoric from Nader in his ads.
My favourite cartoon of the campaign, meanwhile, shows Boy George coming out of the voting booths saying something like “They say that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush – so I voted for Nader.” Pollster John Zogby says that Nader is taking 19 per cent of the hard-left vote from Gore, 11 per cent of independents, and 19 per cent of under-25s: “5 per cent [for Nader] is massive in a 1- or 2-point race,” says Zogby. He predicts that Nader will cause “serious” damage to Gore.
Certainly those many disaffected Democrats who can’t stand Gore are likely to turn to Nader, much as they did to Bill Bradley during the primaries.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200011060010

From the Washington Post November 8, 2000

According to exit polls, 47 percent of Nader voters would have gone for Gore if it had been a two-man race, and only 21 percent for Bush. (Three in 10 say they would not have voted.)

Charlie Cook in an archived NYTimes article from November 2004 “The Next Nader Effect”- has the same figures:

Remember that Mr. Nader, running as the Green Party nominee, cost Al Gore two states, Florida and New Hampshire, either of which would have given the vice president a victory in 2000. In Florida, which George W. Bush carried by 537 votes, Mr. Nader received nearly 100,000 votes. In New Hampshire, which Mr. Bush won by 7,211 votes, Mr. Nader pulled in more than 22,000. National exit polls by the Voter News Service showed that had Mr. Nader not run, 47 percent of his supporters would have voted for Al Gore, while only 21 percent would have voted for Mr. Bush.

As well, the same figures are in The Boston Globe

Look at the 2000 exit poll results from Florida at the MSNBC site, see the 25th question (unfortunately they’re not numbered — hit CTRL-F or Edit->Find and search for “If these were the only two”).
http://www.msnbc.com/m/d2k/g/polls.asp?office=P&state=FL

It shows that if Gore and Bush were the only candidates on the ballot in 2000 in Florida, Bush wins 49 to 47 over Gore. That’s right. And it’s not because of Buchanan being out. Nader got 97,000 votes. Buchanan and all other candidates got only 40,000 total. And the data shows that Bush gets none of the Buchanan voters, but gets half the Nader voters. 250,000 Florida Dems actually voted for Bush. Maybe they wanted Clinton impeached, and felt Gore should not have defended Clinton. The fact is, people vote in complex ways.

So why would Gore actually LOSE ground to Bush with Nader out? Most likely explanation is that many Gore voters would have stayed home if Nader had not woken them from their political slumbers. The numbers make it pretty clear. The poll shows that 2% of voters would not have voted if Nader were not on the ballot — given the margin of error that really means between 1.5% and 2.5%. Nader got 1.4% and all other minor candidates got .6%, equals 2.0%. Does this mean minor candidate voters would have all abstained in a Bush-Gore-only matchup? Not at all. Seriously, do you think Nader voters are primarily non-voters? The majority vote assiduously, as Nader would encourage us all to out of civic duty.

But 1% of 47% of respondents who say they would have voted for Gore in a two-way contest with Bush, actually voted for Nader — which equals something between .24% and .73% of all voters who would have switched from Nader to Gore rather than stay home. Same range, .24% to .73% would have switched from Nader to Bush rather than stay home. So .48% to 1.46% of all voters voted for Nader and would have voted for Bush or Gore in a two-way contest, rather than stay home. That leaves at most 1% of voters who voted Nader and would not have voted in a Bush-Gore-only match. But remember there are 2% (btw 1.5% and 2.5%) who would not have voted at all in a Bush-Gore-only match. Thus between .5% and 1.5% of all voters didn’t vote Nader, but would not have voted for either Bush or Gore either if they had been the only choices. The exit poll clearly shows Gore losing votes without Nader in, so some Gore voters are likely among that .5% -1.5% who said they would not have voted at all if Nader had not been in the race. One of Nader’s slogans is: “If you don’t turn on to politics, politics will turn on you.” Apparently he managed to turn on enough Gore voters in Florida in 2000 to hand Gore a victory, and the Presidency. Too bad Gore and the DNC/DLC chose not to fight all-out to keep that victory in court and in the streets.

But there’s more curious information in that exit poll question’s data. The actual vote was Bush 48 Gore 48 Nader 1.4%, and the numbers show that some voters actually said they would have switched from Gore to Bush if Nader were not in, and about the same amount from Bush to Gore. Why? Here’s my guess — I remember a poll once that showed a high percentage of voters likes to have the President from one major party and Congress from the other major party. Stands to reason that for a sliver of the electorate, this is their main voting strategy. Without Nader, some figured the Dems would do worse down the ticket than with Nader (as was the case with Maria Cantwell who, as even Terry McAuliffe has acknowledged in the face of hard data, was handed her victory by Nader voters who would have stayed home if Nader were not on the ballot), so they vote for Bush to balance what they expect to be a Democrat-controlled Senate and/or House. But others figure (wrongly) that Nader’s absence will help the Dems down-ticket so they switch their vote from Bush to Gore to balance what they expect to be continued Republican control of Congress. What other explanation could there be for people saying they would have changed their vote from Bush to Gore or vice versa if Nader were’nt in the race? But that’s exactly what about a hundred Florida voters said in that exit poll, which sampled ten thousand voters.

The moral of the story is this: over-simplified thinking about the voting behavior of 1% slivers of the electorate is NOT strategic thinking. Nader launched his campaign in 2004 encouraging all voters and major party leaders to analyze the 2000 election data “like a sports fan,” meaning really crunch and squeeze the data for detail.

And in the end, the only thing we accomplish by refusing to put Nader on the ballot is to guarantee that the “swing” voters will have a less-informed choice. Their deliberations will be just as convoluted and unpredictable as they always have been, but they will have a narrower range of issues and viewpoints to consider.

Suppose you refuse to sign a Nader petition, either because you support the Dem candidate and think doing so will hurt her/his “chances” or because you support the Republican candidate and think doing so will hurt her/his “chances”. Then you’ve just acted to remove a reference point by which voters can gauge their choices. That will have an unpredictable effect on whether your state goes to the Dem, Repub or Independent. But it will have a very predictably NEGATIVE effect on the degree to which our democracy progresses toward a government run with the fully INFORMED consent of the governed, as you will have helped drown out not just another voice, but the most consistently reliable and powerful voice of the past half-centure calling FOR fully informed consent of the governed in all matters that pertain to our daily lives, labors and pursuits.

Nader was smitten. “He’s liberated!” Nader said. “He’s defining what progressive Democrats should be about.”

Perhaps Nader was also liberated.

Maybe I will be liberated from this thread.

They Don’t Know Why They Did the Things They Did – Dana Milbank, Washington Post

I’ve always blamed Al Gore’s miserable campaign for blowing the 2000 election. And I blame the mainstream media — a vast conspiracy of the Dead Center of American politics — for keeping Ralph’s marvelous intelligence and integrity out of the debates and the key testing ground of American ideas, which a presidential campaign is designed to be.

Why does Gore get blamed for his miserable campaign here and no sympathy for the miserable system that candidates have to surmount? On the other hand Nader is not responsible for his inability to appeal, in this miserable system, to the “dead center” in order to get the minimum %15 required to participate?

I have a lot of sympathy for anyone trying to run a decent campaign. It’s an enormous undertaking with plenty of room for a lot of mistakes, wrong moves: party machines, managers hired and fired, misstatements, photographers everywhere, the media ever looking to blow unimportant things up. A third party candidate has an uphill battle but at least can use guerilla tactics to catch attention.

Madison Square Garden October 2000:
Nader: “I’ll say one thing to you,” he responded. “If I was on those three debates, this election would be a lot different, indeed.”

Nader was kept out of the debates because of the CPD rules. Those rules should be changed. Nader’s physical presence at the Boston debate exacerbated the planned demonstration there where crowds of Nader supporters and Gore supporters were going at each other. The police were to keep the peace and went for Nader. I don’t defend the police- they are pigs at times. But Nader’s people were there to disrupt and make a point. Nader himself had a legal right to be inside- no question. He had a ticket. And Nader, for the sake of our democracy, should have been on stage debating. That he wasn’t alienated many further. Nader accomplished something more by being arrested, garnering all that attention and forever the incident will be remembered.

So what happened as a result? I don’t know if the rules have been changed to this day. Despite the fact that Nader won a court battle and secured an apology for that scene, where are we regarding the presidential debates at the candidate level?

Was this episode Gore’s doing? Why is this brought up in the together with criticism of Gore’s campaign as though it were?

What would have been Gore’s incentive, in horrible campaign mode granted, to demand Nader be allowed to debate after Nader had been going around saying to his cheering crowds and all who would listen that there is no difference between Gore and Bush? What would have been the incentive to those small minds managing this all on either side knowing that Nader was fixing to spoil a too close election and bring up uncomfortable issues?

When does a third party candidate. who brings welcome voice on issues we all should be aware of and care about, also become, after a point, for us a spoiler and harmful?

For my money, Gore, if he was thinking more expansively, could have, should have, insisted that Nader be included – it would have been wise and democratic and enlivened the debate.

Many of us- most Americans- want open debates.

http://www.opendebates.org/documents/REPORT2.pdf

My enduring issue –

Back in 2000 at the last moment especially in Florida, when it was no longer a matter of presenting ideas, no longer a matter of debates and had nothing to do with lousy campaigning, when we knew we were at the fork, or brink, many people were hoping, begging that Nader would throw his support to Gore. He did not. Was it, as some say, headiness with power, ego, ideas that more could be accomplished? Was it because after saying that there was no difference, he could not climb down? Those who respond by giving all the other reasons Gore lost Florida and the election, never never say Nader: they trash Gore’s record in perfect hindsight, some even claiming he would also have us in Iraq. But it can’t be dismissed that this was one moment that one man, had in his hands control over which way the election might very well go. That is not hindsight- it was known and feared.

For Nader to admit to the fact (and the exit polls say so and so will history) that enough of Nader’s votes would have gone to Gore is to have to deal with what ensued from that. There is a beyond to voting ones’ conscience, and an element of right timing for such a vote to consider especially when sending a message; there are consequences and costs.

As well you sidestep the issue- that Gore was a world of difference away from Bush.

I have run into other such lists as part of defenses against Nader having anything to do with Bush winning. I have to say that I have not had the time to check just how responsible Gore actually was for these policies, what the choices were, how things looked at the time.

Some compelling reasons Nader challenged Al Gore, and I’m glad he did.

Gore received a whopping 64% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters. What’s that? A “D” grade. Some environmentalist.

He and Clinton sabotaged the Kyoto protocol. They refused to sign it because it asked too much from the US (who is responsible for most of the damage). Representatives from around the world walked out of the meeting. Remember? It was in the news. They were seen as flaming hypocrites by the rest of the world. Gore told big pollutors that they didn’t have to worry, the protocol will not be ratified.

He never mentioned global warming when he was VP and was happy to push through the Salvage Rider Bill that clearcut and raped the forests out here in Oregon. Some environmentalist.

NAFTA has been responsible for, not only job loss which is destroying the US middle class, but it is considered one of the major contributors of global warming and pollution in general. Pollution doesn’t necessarily effect only the country that produces it. Credible environmentalists hate pollution wherever it is. It’s one world we want to protect, right? Maybe that’s why Gore got a “D” on the environment!

He told nuclear energy bigwigs that he was a friend to nuclear energy. Hmmm. Is that what his book is about. Getting nuke energy back into the game. Wooden but clever. Some environmentalist.

He said the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was “good for America,” even though it allowed big media to consolidate even more of their power. (And now, because he knows most people in the US are ignorant, and he has an agenda, he complains about big media. Can you believe that?)

Gore turned his back on the Black Caucus who wanted him to support their call to investigate the votes they were denied. Gore refused. Why? It wasn’t the Democrats’ turn to win, that’s why. To initiate the Iraq invasion would have been political suicided for Dems, yet they knew it had to be done (the big oil said so and these politicians are nothing if not compliant to the wishes of big-money) Better to let the Repubs do it and then just go along, enable it. The two parties collude, you realize.

Al Gore, thought it was just fine to kill, through brutal sanctions, over 500,000 innocent Iraqi human beings, mostly children. (My own rule of thumb: I never vote for anyone who advocates slaughtering innocent human beings. Gore approves of it.)

He was in favor of regime change in Iraq and had no problem with the preemptive bombing campaign that the Clinton administration precipitated over Iraq. This set a precedent for Bush, who continued the preemptive philosophy. Thanks Al and Bill!

At the time, Republicans, including Bush, were opposed to “nation building” or regime change, in keeping with their conservative philosophy. Bush made that a cornerstone of his campaign. Remember, the Viet Nam tragedy was mostly overseen by the Democrats. Now the Democrats are more akin to right-wing nut cases of the 60s-70s. Nixon was more progressive than Clinton/Gore! You’re being boiled like the frog!

He was one of the original founders of the DLC (not DNC) and not only supported but helped design NAFTA and other very ugly, undemocratic trade “agreements.” I quote “agreements” because many countries were coerced.

Gore has not owned up to his role in creating these policies and harmful treaties. Why not?

Perhaps. I’ve certainly not bought into the idea that this is the only way that it could be. But I have bought into the idea that this is the way it is today. There’s room for candidates to force single issues to the fore — as Perot did with the budget deficit and as Bob Kerrey did with health care — but I can’t think of a time in my lifetime when the fundamental course the nation should take was up for discussion (for referendum maybe, but not discussion). And nader pointing this out during the course of a campaign isn’t good enough. He and others need to be on this issue in the off years, when their advocacy isn’t so closely tied to their self-interest as candidates. But the mainstream media refuses to engage in real issues (perhaps because they’re bought and paid for, or perhaps because they sense that the issues don’t fire most people up, and therefore don’t make good business sense), and the “civil society” institutions that foment this sort of civic engagement have declined precipitously. Meanwhile, the alternative media is generally compromised, because it’s generally comrpised of outlets that have already taken sides and aren’t seen as honest brokers, much less ideal gathering places for real debate. There are small enclaves of discussion — like this site — but no meaningful national conversation.

Am I wrong to think things were once different? And wasn’t the Internet supposed to usher in a new era of deliberation?

I will say that this was one grand opportunity missed for Ralph (and his friend) to articulate some of what you are saying here and for response and agreement. My overarching question still is not whether we have a problem- but how best to fix it. Merely stirring the pot and getting a whole of of folks angry with the “stirrer” and not the problem does not seem to be productive.

btw- after awhile I felt sorry for Nixon. I don’t enjoy piling on. It hurts.

perhaps more later…

Potter: a failure to communicate (mine) was responsible for the mis-posting of our Nader conversation. I liked the new Ralph book the first moment I looked at, because I felt: this is the Ralph I got to know years ago when I covered some of the regulatory agencies in Washington for the New York Times, and Ralph & Co. showed me how. By day we talked about administrative law, but over dinner we talked about his father’s restaurant, his mother’s wise chatter and the purposeful variety of his sibs’ interests — as I talked about mine. Of course you felt a sadness because it’s there, and you are tuned to feeling it. But I don’t believe Ralph’s sadness is fixed on himself. I thought of asking him — and decided it would be ghoulish — what he thought would be the first line of his obituary. If he lives fives years longer than his mother did, it will be printed in 2039. Will it say: Ralph Nader, an American reformer who inadvertently tipped his nation’s politics toward war and corruption… ? More interesting, I really wanted to follow up: what’s the hundred-year obit lede on the same man? Ralph Nader, the last activist-prophet of the Jeffersonian model of citizen democracy in America…