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| 25 new of 175 responses total. |
ric
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response 75 of 175:
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Oct 29 21:59 UTC 2000 |
Honestly, I don't believe that a vote for Ralph Nader doesn't count, or
doesn't matter.
What I do believe is that most Nader supporters, knowing that the winner of
this election is not going to be Ralph Nader, would prefer to see Al Gore in
office versus George W. Bush. I don't believe that Nader supporters are as
indifferent to the outcome of the election as some would like to believe.
In the end, I think that a lot of these Nader supporters WILL end up voting
for Gore in order to help prevent a Bush presidency.
If a vote for Nader didn't count or didn't matter, I would be more than happy
to have people voting for Nader to make a point. But a vote for Nader *DOES*
matter - so much to potentially tip the election to Bush, whose views are even
further from Nader's than Gore's views.
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rcurl
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response 76 of 175:
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Oct 29 22:50 UTC 2000 |
Just heard about www.nadertrader.org. This is a web site to facilitate
friends living in different states to trade votes, so Gore supporters
will vote for Nader in states in which Gore has a "lock", and Nader
supporters will vote for Gore in states where Gore really needs support.
This will help Gore defeat Bush in at-risk states, and Nader will get
votes toward his 5% needed for future federal funding.
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gull
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response 77 of 175:
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Oct 30 00:01 UTC 2000 |
Re #65: I've seen several articles that demonstrated that the overwhelming
majority of the time, the company that provides the largest campaign
contribution on an issue gets exactly the legislation they want. If you
want examples of legislation bought this way, there's the "Disney bill" that
extended copyright, or the recent copyright law change that gave record
labels rights to songs in perpetuity instead of the rights returning to the
artist after a set number of years. It's also no coincidence that there's a
federal law against betting on college sports in any state *except* Nevada.
(Casinos are regular contributors to both parties.)
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richard
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response 78 of 175:
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Oct 30 00:50 UTC 2000 |
janc, actually the odds favor the democrats regaining the house andgephardt
being the next speaker. The senate is going to be VERY close and could
be a fifty-fifty tie (which if Gore is elected, will result in gop control
because Leiberman is also running and willbe reelected to the senate in
connecticut where he is very popular-- and as connecticut has a gop
governor, his replacement will be republican).
Which remind me that I hope those of you in Michigan vote for Stabenow for
the Senate. In spite of the fact that Spence Abraham is Polygon's high
school classmate, he is too conservative and that one race could decide
the senate.
One note on this Nadertraders-- its a valid concept, but there IS a real
chance that Gore could win the electoral college but lose the popular
vote. While I'd like to see Nader get 5%, I'd just assume not see Gore
serving four years as president tagged as the president "who really didnt
get elected"
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gelinas
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response 79 of 175:
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Oct 30 01:01 UTC 2000 |
And if enough people change their vote from Gore to Nader, Gore could
lose those states he currently has 'locked.'
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ric
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response 80 of 175:
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Oct 30 01:06 UTC 2000 |
I wouldn't change *MY* vote, that's for sure. Maybe I'd tell someone I was
going to vote for Nader just to get them to vote for Gore :)
Or maybe, the Nader people will still vote for Nader, and it's all just a
big scam to get more votes for Nader.
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richard
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response 81 of 175:
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Oct 30 01:11 UTC 2000 |
oh,and senna, I *did* provide substantive, real reasons why I wont vote
for Nader. I flatly disagree with his stated position that we should
pull out of NAFTA and the WTO, and doubling the minimum wage, and I
absolutely feel he is unqualified, as he's never held elective office
and had to balance the need of different constituences. Those are real
reasons, valid reasons, so shut up about this being a deal of blind party
loyalty.
And Mary, why dont you justadmit you dont like Gore *because* he's a
southern baptist, you dont feel you fully understand him. You claim
Gore's pro-choice abortion stance is one of convenience, which is
ridiculous given he spent twenty years representing a conservative state
in the house and senate as virtually the only pro-choice member of the
Tennesee delegation. And as passionately as Gore talks about the
environment, and given that he wrote a book about itand has along voting
record to back it up, you have no basis for assuming that Nader is more
of an environmentalist.
And as pointed out in another item by polygon, Gore sponsored and
introduced the early legislation that paved the way for the internet. But
you dont give himcredit for that either. You just see him as another
southern baptist. I think you've made a lot of assumptions, not just
about Gore but about Nader. Gore's not perfect but he's a hell of a lot
betterthan Bush, and four years of Bush and his tax cuts will land us back
with another huge defecit, and abortion may become illegal (remember that
the next president may appoint three justices, and since the gop admits
Bush screwed up with Souter, you can be sure therewont be any
misunderstanding this time around about the appointees views on abortion)
Do you really want that? Like it or not, you cant get elected in this
country unless you are centrist. Most people arent liberals, and most
arent conservative, they fall flat in the middle. So we'll never get a
perfect candidate elected, not to the presidency. So in the absence of
this, you have to vote for the person and the party who arethe
least objectionable. And Mary, doy ou really want the 8,000 executive
branch jobs held by republicans the next few years? Even if you dont like
Gore, there are a lot of people who thimnk just like you who will be
thrown outof jobs if you vote for Nader. Its them you should think
aboutnot Gore.
To demand a candidate who agrees with you on everything is ridiculous.
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mary
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response 82 of 175:
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Oct 30 03:14 UTC 2000 |
I'm not much into compromise, never was, probably never will be.
Gore is more of a compromise, for me, than voting for Nader.
I'm glad you feel good about your vote, Richard.
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polygon
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response 83 of 175:
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Oct 30 05:02 UTC 2000 |
Spence Abraham and I were in the same high school at the same time,
but we were not classmates.
ALL votes count -- except write-ins in states like Michigan that don't
count write-in votes for people who are not registered as recipients
of write-in votes.
When you vote on Election Day, you will be contributing to numbers that
politicians and pundits will be scrutinizing and analyzing for years.
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hematite
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response 84 of 175:
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Oct 30 05:38 UTC 2000 |
(Non Michigander/political type person question) Why does Michigan not
count write-in votes for people who are not registered? (Just for that
state, so if I went home and voted I could write someone in and it
would count? Not that it matters as I already sent my form in...But I'm
curious)
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senna
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response 85 of 175:
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Oct 30 05:38 UTC 2000 |
Any single vote doesn't count much anyway, since the results of the election
will likely be unaffected by the direction I vote. It's the critical mass
that matters.
Yes, you did an excellent job outlining your objections to Nader, richard.
I should point out that I think the "keep the money here in American instead
of letting some other countries do well" attitude that I've seen from some
Americans is shortsighted, selfish, and dangerous.
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raven
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response 86 of 175:
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Oct 30 06:47 UTC 2000 |
Richard Gore's environmental record is one broken promise after another.
One of his main prmises was to shut down a big toxic waster incenerator in
Ohio, he stumped there at least once, it never happened. Clinton/Gore's
salvage logging has been disasterous for old growth trees out here in
Oregon. Why should I vote for the proven liar, when I can vote for the
consumer activist with a 35 year record fighting the good fight? Take
your fear based politics and stuff it as far as I'm concerned Richard.
I will proudly vote for Nader on Novermer 7th. To the Gore voters will
you be proud of your of your vote, or will you feel like a slinking coward
avaoiding a worse evil by supporting a corporate funded slighly less worse
evil?
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swa
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response 87 of 175:
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Oct 30 06:55 UTC 2000 |
I agree with senna's #55; the contempt that is considered acceptable
towards those who've said they support Nader astonishes me. Aiming that
same "only an *idiot* would think that way" type of rhetoric towards
someone who's said they were supporting Gore or Bush is evidently a lot
less acceptable. The message seems to be that, since the two major
parties are the only ones with a shot of winning, they must also be the
only ones supported by right-thinking people, and anyone who holds
different ideas must be a zealot or a flake. I've seen this attitude a
lot these days, but had hoped to see a little less of it here...
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scg
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response 88 of 175:
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Oct 30 08:19 UTC 2000 |
I don't think that's it, really.
There seem to be two ways of looking at voting. One involves using the vote
to make a statement, and the other involves using the vote to its maximal
effect over this particular election. People using their votes to make a
statement may have a large number of ways they could potentially vote,
depending on what that statement is and how they decide to best express it.
The statement may be that they agree with a certain position, and will vote
for the third party candidate who most closely holds that opinion. The
statement may be that the major party candidates are really awful, so the vote
would go for some third party candidate way out in left field as a statement
that the third party candidate wasn't any worse. It could be that they really
do think the candidate they're voting for is the best person for the job, and
even if they won't get the job the voter wants to show their support. People
using their votes soley to affect the outcome of the election tend to look
at things a bit differently. Rather than just picking the candidate they like
best, voting becomes a matter of deciding what they want out of the election
and figuring which candidates are most likely to deliver on the largest part
of that. After that, it becomes a matter of figuring out which candidates
are likely to win, and whether the first choice candidate is the best one to
vote for, or whether it's better to vote for a second choice candidate, to
ensure that an even more strongly disliked candidate won't win.
These seem to be two fundamentally different ways of looking at voting, and
I'm getting the strong impression that people looking at voting from one
perspective really don't understand those looking at voting from the other
perspective. For some reason, rather than getting a reasoned discussion on
the subject, we have people on both "sides" of the issue hurling insults at
the other side. If we can put that aside for a moment, we'll probably find
that both sides have valid points.
As if any of you couldn't tell, I'm part of the group voting to affect the
election results. I really don't understand the rationalle of voting soley
to send a message. For one thing, I'm not sure how to interpret the message
when it arrives. In this case, I've heard several possible messages from
Nader supporters, including that neither major candidate is acceptable and
that voting for Nader is like voting no, that big corporations are evil, that
the environment is important, that they're so disgusted with Gore that they'll
let Bush win to teach him a lesson, but won't actually vote for Bush or not
vote, that the two party system is evil, that they're tired of being told how
to vote, and any number of other possible messages. Assuming current polls
are accurate, on election day we'll find that 5% of the voters have voted for
Ralph Nader to send a message, but I'll be pretty hard pressed to explain what
message was sent. It seems to me that there are far more effective ways of
sending a message, from writing letters to or meeting with elected officials,
to writing letters to newspapers, giving speeches, or holding public protests.
All of those, it seems to me, provide a way to send a message with a much
greater likelyhood of it being understood. It also seems to me that the
strongest message that gets sent on election day is that of approval to
whoever gets elected, and since one or the other of the major candidates is
going to get that approval, I'd rather have it be the one of the two who I
prefer.
Then again, others seem to see my philosophy here as a wimpy compromise, and
as a sellout to a flawed candidate. I don't agree with that view, or even
understand it, but other people here who I like and respect seem to be of that
opinion, so I'll assume there must be some validity to it. Given that he has
no chance at winning, voting for Nader or another third party candidate isn't
any worse than not voting. I suppose I should just be glad I don't have very
many friends who are voting for Bush. ;)
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mdw
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response 89 of 175:
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Oct 30 09:16 UTC 2000 |
If the only reason you're voting for a candidate is because you think he
has the only chance of winning, then you truely deserve whatever
candidate you get. All that does is create a sort of "snowball" effect
for those sufficiently powerful to convince you they'll win, regardless
of what they believe in, or what you believe in. Like it or not, voting
*does* send a message to the politicians. The only reason politicians
pay attention to letters, polls, or anything else is because they want
those votes in the next election. How much attention they pay to
particular random letters is of course an interesting question.
Unfortunately for our political process, there is another component to
political influence that's grown in recent years. It's very expensive
to run a successful political campaign, and while spending a lot of
money is no sure road to success (if it were, Bush would be winning 2:1
over Gore), *not* having sufficient money is a sure guarantee of
oblivion. This means our political candidates are very dependent on
campaign donations, and a large chunk of those donations come from rich
people, and corporations. Those rich people and corporations are not
donating through political altruism. They are donating for the very
selfish reason that they want the people elected to act in their
interests -- and increasingly, the people elected do just that. The
clinton presidency acted in literally thousands of decisions to quietly
reward the rich interets that had funded their campaign, with all sorts
of quiet decisions that sacrificed the environment, the interests of
workers, consumers, and forth, all so that the rich could get richer,
and the rest of us, well... The clinton presidency is not unique, bush
& reagan before him were just as bad. In fact, the practice can be
traced at least back into the 19th century, albeit not on quite as large
a scale, mostly because neither gov't or business was as large in those
days.
3rd parties do not always have a chance to influence the 2 parties, but
often they do. The "gov't fiscal pay-off-the-debt" policies of the 90's
can be traced back to the 15% that Perot got in 1992. Obviously, Nader
won't do that well--he's not as rich as Perot, and the people in charge
of the debates aren't really keen on giving another 3rd party the same
chance Perot got. Still, the better Nader does, the more likely it is
that the major parties will pay more attention to what he's been saying.
At the very least, perhaps they'll be at least a bit more embarassed
about selling the environment off to the largest bidder.
In the above, there's an assumption that Nader is protectionist because
he's anti-NAFTA and WTO. I don't believe that's the case. The problem
with NAFTA is it's accellerated the loss of jobs to cheap foreign labour
- and both WTO and NAFTA have resulted in problems enforcing consumer
protection laws & environmental laws. There's no reason why we ought to
feel obligated to turn ourselves into a 3rd world nation in order to
promote trade, and I believe that's the argument Nader is really making
here.
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md
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response 90 of 175:
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Oct 30 11:59 UTC 2000 |
All you're hearing from the Dem lock-steppers is panic. After months
of wishful thinking, it's finally sinking in that Nader might cost Gore
the election. (I don't think he will, but even if he does, no great
loss.) So, they're trotting out every argument they can think of to
get people to change their votes. Most of them are sincere, a few are
afflicted with "Right Man Syndrome" which makes it impossible for them
ever to admit that they're mistaken. Watch out for the latter group:
if Bush does win the election, you can be sure they'll be blaming every
Bad Thing that happens in the next four years on the Nader voters,
including earthquakes and asteroid hits.
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bru
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response 91 of 175:
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Oct 30 13:54 UTC 2000 |
You know, this nadertrader thing could backfire. I mean, there is no way for
them to know if you are really going to switch your vote. I think all us
republicans should get on there, say we are going to trade, and vote for Bush
anyway. Takes votes away from Gore, sounds good to me.
I decided I am not so pro Bush as so deathly afraid of Gore.
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brighn
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response 92 of 175:
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Oct 30 18:03 UTC 2000 |
And I decided I am not so pro Gore as so deathly afraid of Bush. ;}
Seriously, wrt 90, I can't speak for all Gore supporters, but for myself, I
*do* feel that Gore is the best choice of the options (better than Browne,
and I consider myself a Libertarian). And if Bush wins, I won't blame Nader
supporters... they didn't vote for Bush, they voted for Nader. I'll partially
blame Bush supporters, and (moreso) I'll blame Bush for whatever it is that
Bush does in office, in the same way that I'll blame Gore for whatever it is
that Gore does in office.
And if Gore wins and turns out to be a real jerk that screws everything up,
I'll be in the front of the line for "damn, I was mistaken." Just like I made
a mistake voting for Perot all those years ago; in retrospect, he was a pretty
crappy candidate.
*shrug*
(Richard et al, I wouldn't spend a lot of time telling Mary why she's voting
for Nader or not voting for Gore. She's made her mind fairly firmly up, or
appears to have. ;} )
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raven
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response 93 of 175:
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Oct 30 19:59 UTC 2000 |
The bottom line for me is that Gore is not acceptable to me as a canidate
for pres due to his broken environmental promises, welfare reform, pro
"free" trade positions, and support for bloated military pork which is just
welfare for Boeing, etc. Clinton/Gore was a quite literal robbing from
poor welfare mothers and giving to rich deense contractors.
If it were just Gore and Bush as choices for president I would leave
that box blank on the ballot for pretty much the reasons MDW articulated
in #89
Oh and Richard shame on you for baiting Mary, it only makes you look like
a fool. The same sort of foolishness as the rest of democrat moo cows I
guess.
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raven
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response 94 of 175:
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Oct 30 20:03 UTC 2000 |
Two BTWs. If Gore loses against an intellectual welterweight like W the
shrub it's his own damn fault that he can't pull more than 5 percentage
points ahead of such a clod despite the strong economy and Clinton's
popularity.
Secondly do any of the Gore supporters care to address Gore's actual policy
as reflected in the last 8 years of Clinton/Gore with anything other than
"I think W will do a worse job?"
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krj
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response 95 of 175:
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Oct 30 20:05 UTC 2000 |
It could be that we'll move into an era similar to the Thatcher era in
Britain. In the Thatcher period, the popular vote in Britain split
roughly 40% Conservative, 30% Liberal Party (moderate), and 30% Labour
(left), for about 15 years and several elections.
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richard
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response 96 of 175:
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Oct 30 20:36 UTC 2000 |
View hidden response.
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brighn
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response 97 of 175:
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Oct 30 21:45 UTC 2000 |
Raven says:
Clinton/Gore was a quite literal robbing from
poor welfare mothers and giving to rich deense contractors.
Um, what? This sentence contains English words, but I'll be damned if I can
make sense of it.
Gore has been VP for the last 8 years. Asking about his policy decisions is
akin to, oh, asking about Daddy Bush's VP policy decisions. That's not the
job. The job is to be a diplomat, break the occasional (very occasional)
Senate tie, support the President, and be around in case the President dies.
Gore was Senator for a while. Feel free to talk about that record (including
his influence on the popularization of the Internet).
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md
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response 98 of 175:
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Oct 30 22:08 UTC 2000 |
So Gore can't be held accountable for any Clinton policy, whether he's
spoken in favor of it not? And Gore hasn't really been doing much of
anything for the past eight years? And that makes him qualified, how?
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raven
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response 99 of 175:
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Oct 30 23:22 UTC 2000 |
Ok Brighn how about this: The Clinton/Gore administration quite literally
robbed from poor welfare mothers and gave the money to rich defense
contractors. You can remove the large stick from your a$$ now.
I'm sure you know what I ment BTW. Yet another dem defender tries to weasel
out of actually addressing the weak Clinton/Gore record when it comes to
addressing the needs of the poor, or the damage done to the environment.
Every day that goes by I got more disapointed with the democratics and
their weak weasly panic striken defenders. <sigh> No wonder Gore can't
surmount perhaps the dumbest Republican since Quayle.
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