Stop Me Before I Vote Again

For the record, my hatred of Nader pales in comparison to my hatred of Bush, Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court Five . . . the list goes on and on. I don't hold his supporters most culpable; I simply hold them accountable for their choices, their actions, and the consequences.

Hope you feel better, having gotten that pebble out of your shoe. Because that's what it amounts to: your feeling better. To hell with the consequences. Voting as therapy.

Electing Republicans has so far not resulted in appreciable gains for the Left. It has resulted in worsening conditions on Every Front for everybody except: 1) the super-rich, and 2) the forced-birth brigade.

Hear Hear! Very well put, alsis!

John would undoubtedly want to take responsibility for his own choices of candidates. Therefore it's safe to credit him with their votes and accomplishments. He used the word "evil" in the last thread. Woe! I would have drawn up short of that myself, but in these circumstances. . . what else is there to call him?

I already gave you the "it doesn't feel good" part of the speech over yonder, John. Don't expect me to reinvent the wheel every fifteen minutes, okay ?

J. Alvah,

"Evil" is the Naderite term of choice. It goes from, "I refuse to vote for the Lesser of 2 Evils"; to, as on this blog, "I will work to field candidates to prevent the Lesser Evil from getting elected, thereby helping the Greater Evil."

The word for this would be, Evil.

Painting me with all the Evils of the Lesser Evilists I have voted for is juvenile.

Do you agree with Nader's characterization of gay rights as "gonadal politics"?

Do you agree with his union busting?

With his working with that xenophobic creep Pat Buchanan in the Reform Party?

You have all made it clear that you don't care about Bush's crimes, only the Democrats'.

Just like the Republicans.

Just off the cuff, I've heard a couple ideas about why a sort of cult has grown up around hating Ralph Nader. However, both theories suffer from such a surfeit of plausibility that it's beyond my poor powers of analysis to discern which is true.

The first is that the Nader Haters are a pathologically envious of anyone with a spine. That is to say, their complete lack of anything even remotely resembling integrity or honor (or even simple coherence, for that matter) propels them to attack people who do possess those qualities.

This makes a certain amount of sense if one regards the democrat party as the sum of it's parts. After all, a party of gutless politicians must certainly contain a majority of gutless voters, like John, to vote for them.

The second, somewhat more elegant theory, is more along the lines of 'cognitive dissonance.' Dem voters who are, for instance, frequently against the Iraq war, vote for dem candidates of the prowar 'we can manage the war better' type. Voting against what they know to be right sets up a painful conflict of ideas that cannot be resolved. Thus, in an attempt to minimize this mental dissonance, the democrat transfers his/her own inadequacies onto a more principled person.

That's why you see the bitter phrase 'Hope you feel better' quite a bit from these pitifully conflicted democrats. Unable to resolve their dissonance, the Nader Hater, like John, invents convoluted senarios in which he is not responsible for his own actions. Instead, it's the fault of some group which is actually trying to improve the area in which the Nader Hater is so ineffectual.

Possibly both theories are correct. Or maybe there's a better theory on how Nader Haters like John came to become the pathetic Gollum-like creatures they are. I'd certainly be interested in futher critique.

John! Dude! You can't even be bothered to spell my name correctly. How seriosuly do you expect your harangues to be taken?

(Yawn.) John, I'm glad you have such a love for recycling, but you've already been informed several times now that

A) Nobody here voted for Nader because they thought that he was Jesus Christ.

B) Our misgivings about the two-party system preceded his campaigns and will probably continue long after he's gone on to the next plane of existence.

And

C) The more you whine about Nader's decidedly minimal sins while refusing to confront the legions of mega-sinners in your own backyard, the more you look like an absolute bonehead.

If you're really interested in understanding us a little better, you could pop over to the dreaded Counterpunch page and look up some of Greg Bates' writings. Check out his informal survey of Nader voters in swing states called "The Year of Voting Dangerously." Ehhh... who am I kidding ? If you really wanted to understand us and not merely use us as a punching bag, you would have done that ages ago.

Look inside your shoes, John. A handful of pebbles might not seem like much, but you've been toting them around for several decades now and they're obviously hurting you badly. Nothing else explains your shit attitude here.

Your fixation on Nader changes absolutely nothing about the fact that much of Bush's evil the Democrats were complicit with or actively supported.

All your support for the Lesser Evil has amounted to is giving the Greater Evil more room to operate within.

john we all join you
in desiring death to
the greater evil

so hopefully you're wrong
when you write

"You have all made it clear that you don't care about Bush's crimes, only the Democrats'"

to me at least
i won't settle for
just the greter
i want
both types of evil
destroyed

as i suspect you do

given the indications
in your words
that you take
a job class based approach to politics

well
if "our "theory of how american politics
actually works is correct
then
only the total bust up
of at least one
of the two ruling
parties
can lead to
the end of the reign
of the two degrees of evil they embody

so why do we pick on the dems ??

since both deserve
savage pleb flank attacks

well cause we're lefties

and
the dems are the party
you attack from the left
if i fancied my side arm more then my short arm

maybe i'd join
the camo cads
out there on the right
the guys that oughta be attacking
the exposed flank of the rocky type
bush repubs

let's see which head squashes in first

my bet ..the donk's head is softer

but we'll see

J. Alva,

Apologies for misspelling your name.

alsis, sorry to bore you. But you just don't get it. In '00, one of Ralph's appeals was he was Building An Alternative. He was lying. So, his only reason for running was: help defeat Democrats by colluding with the Mainstream Media in downplaying Bush's radical extremism and pushing the muddy mushy misinformation that the differences between the Big 2 were insubstantial. I say, disinformation like that is Unsafe At Any Speed! We need a Consumer Report on this candidate!

jsp, thank you, at last there's something of an answer to my main question: Destroy the D's and hope that something better comes a long. It's a high stakes gamble with other people's well-being, it's poorly thought-out, but it's honest. I disagree with the strategy; think it's immoral and unlikely to succeed. We'll see how it works out.

And that's my Final Answer.

No, John. I don't believe that Nader was lying in 2000. I do believe that his break with the Greens was a dual failure: his own need to have things his way and the ditherers in the GP who couldn't decide whether they wanted to field a candidate at all. One local Green told me that there were also arguments over money. Perhaps so, and perhaps that could have been avoided if enough voters had pushed Nader's take to 5% in 2000. A bigger pie in the form of matching funds might have given the camps more reason for generosity with each other.

At any rate, not everyone in the GP considered him a liar at all. Here's a link that might prove instructive in that regard:

http://www.greens4democracy.net/

Make sure you read the mission statement. It takes the gloves off that Cobb foolishly wasted time trying to make more important than the fight itself. In truth, if Cobb had run a real campaign, I would have voted for him in hopes of helping the GP preserve ballot access. Josh Frank at brickburner.org firmly believes that Cobb is truly corrupt, not merely inept, and that his only purpose in 2004 was to scatter the Greens and find himself some kind of glorified post as a sort of auxilliary PDA head. If that's true, all I can say is that if he truly is that kind of weasel, he should have learned how from a better, more calculating and charismatic class of weasel.

One more time: It's not Nader that made this little nest of malcontents. He simply gave us a prominent public face and a focal point for what's been eating us for years. That's all.

Likewise, Nader's departure from the Greens or political action or from the mortal plane altogether would not be enough to give us all the collective amnesia to proceed as we did before 2000. Tell yourself otherwise if you like, but it's true. It's not as if the troubles that drove us to Nader's campaign in the first place have dissipated since then. If anything, they've gotten more urgent and pressing than they were back then.

Oh alsis.

Yes, of course, a pissed-off constituency existed & Ralph tapped into it. True.

Unfortunately, he lied. Not only did he not share his mailing lists with the GP (!), he never even joined the party.

At one point in '00 he said he wouldn't target swing states in his campaigning. He went back on that and ended up campaigning heavily in Florida and other swing states in the final weeks.

From this we learn 3 things:

1) If he says he's going to do something, get verification.

2) He wasn't interested in getting 5% of the vote for the GP. Had he run a campaign predicated on getting 5%, he would have Completely Ignored the swing states and focussed on the strong Blue and strong Red states. His campaign would have said, "We need a progressive party. In order to build it, we need 5% of the vote in this election. I am therefore asking all liberals and progressives in states where the Presidential election is not likely to be close to vote for me. As bad as the Clinton-Gore Democrats are, the Bush Republicans are far worse. I do not want this 3rd Party building to jeopardize a woman's right to choose or the health of the economy." But that's not what he said.

3) His goal was the same as Michael's here, to prevent the DP candidate from getting elected. That's why he focussed on swing states in the end.

In Berube's original blogpost where we first met, Berube linked to a Nader quote where he said he would have voted for Bush before he voted for Gore.

Again -- how's it working out, people? Has the Bush election pulled the DP to the left? Has it strengthened a 3rd Party (or 4th or 5th -- I'm not sure how many are represented here -- I know at least 3; the Green Party, the I'll-Follow-Ralph-Wherever Party, and the Socialists).

So, OK, he gave you a focus for your discontent. One more time: Thank you for confirming that you vote for the candidate that makes you feel better about yourself, and to hell with the rest of the world.

I've said it many times: I don't go around looking for Nader fights, I simply see uninformed defenses of him as opportunities to spread what I think is useful and pertinent information. The guy is not a factor any more. He got what he wanted in '00: Bush's election. I call it Evil; you call it a Necessary Step in the Destruction of the Democratic Party That Will Hopefully Someday Maybe Lead to Something Better We Have No Clue As to How But What Else Could We Do and Who Cares How Many People Suffer As a Result.

Thus John:

Again -- how's it working out, people? Has the Bush election pulled the DP to the left? Has it strengthened a 3rd Party (or 4th or 5th -- I'm not sure how many are represented here -- I know at least 3; the Green Party, the I'll-Follow-Ralph-Wherever Party, and the Socialists).

And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness:

And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, [and] when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

Well, MJS, I was out getting some much-needed fresh air today. So glad you all were here to take this round of John's "Nuh-UH" routine with such good humor. Myself, I'm bored with it at this point. Even chasing after our native bratwurst-sized garden slugs with a shaker full of salt seems less futile-- plus I get exercise for free !

alsis,

" 'Nuh-UH' routine" --

that made me smile. Honestly -- that's funny.

Thanks. Uh-HUH!

well, it's been instructive. I've learned that some splinterists cop to the Greater Evil of the R's, and others fight the suggestion with all their might, even to the point of supporting states' rights for Intelligent Design (my man Tim!).

Honest, justified outrage and disgust with the Democrats. Man, I hear that. Truly, a pathetic opposition party. I'm rooting for Feingold, both with his censure and in general. If Hillary gets the nomination I'll throw up. Honestly. Depending on who the R's run, I may vote 3rd Party again if Hillary is the D nominee. Biden has no chance, thank goodness. Lieberman is history too, and ditto.

Just like there are disagreements in the "Stop Me" scene -- and that's a good thing! -- there are disagreements within the D's. As you know (duh!). I only mention it to say that blaming someone like me for Lieberman is like me calling you white-supremacist-friendly (which I don't think I quite did, except maybe Tim, and only because he mocked me for calling the R's white-supremacist-friendly, which still utterly mystifies me).

Anyway, if I did call you white-supremacist-friendly -- sorry. It was a mud fight; I think most of you would agree that some of you slung some at me too. Lots of mean sarcasm received and given all around.

Well, I sincerely hope you don't help D's get defeated (with maybe 1 or 2 hard-to-imagine exceptions) unless it's to actually elect a Green or a Socialist.

Apropos of not much, I was today listening to some songs originally collected and published by Carl Sandburg. Before he became a hit poet, he worked for a time for the Socialist Mayor of Milwaukee. Sandburg rocks. Here's hoping for a better future for us all. I'll keep working on it, and I know you all will too.