Sunday, June 27, 2004

Presidential Auction 2004

Revisiting the Nader issue, here's an excellent response over at South Knox Bubba's in the debate about whether Nader should be in the running.

I'm not blaming Nader for Florida necessarily. (But look at the numbers and come up with a good argument otherwise).

The numbers, as cooked by Katherine Harris, show that Bush got more votes than any other candidate, and that is all they show. You can't reconstruct the election after-the-fact and magically reassign Nader votes as you wish.

If you wish to engage in the totally illogical and pointless exercise of "what if Ralph didn't run", then you have to divvy his votes up among Gore, Bush, other third party, and stay home, but then you also have to reassess the Gore vote. How many people came out to vote for Gore because they were worried about Nader?

...Democrats don't see Nader's presence as motivation to turn out another 2% of their base; they see it as an opportunity [to] bash, condemn, and ridicule fellow Americans and clarify for the rest of us just how little regard Democrats have for democracy.

In any case, it is impossible to know what the numbers would have been without Nader. His presence affected turnout among his voting bloc, and also among Democrats and Republicans, and sorting out the complex interactions is far more difficult than the sore losers who can't handle the uncomfortable truths care to admit.

2000 and 2004 are different beasts. I'm not talking about 2004 at all. The choices are different this time, and we now know that neither the Supreme Court nor the Democratic party can be trusted to defend our right to vote.

Hell, the Democrats can't even be relied on to act as an opposition party. That's the funny part. Democrats actually think they are "like-minded" with progressives. In fact, they are so convinced that progressives are their natural companions that they're willing to hurl blame and badmouthing and threats at them in an effort to win them over! Losers.

The delicious part is that all the morons who haven't realized that 1) Gore lost Florida because Bush cheated, and 2) it is mathematically and philosophically invalid to make Nader disappear and reassign his votes, all those fools will soon be singing Ralph's praises for draining so much support from Bush. They still won't notice their illogic and their disregard for democracy, but...

Hellbent

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