People say that but it’s not like a Gore presidency would have meant all rainbows and unicorns until the end if time. There’s probably an alternate reality where pent up right-wing rage in 2004 or 2008 would have handed the white house to e.g. Gingrich and he would have nuked Iran or something.
That whole Florida situation was fucked up in so many ways but specifically the “butterfly ballots” DEEPLY radicalized me on the importance of UX design.
nader is actually *more* to blame for a lot of what's broken now than he typically gets handed. not all of it, obviously, but definitely not none of it, either.
Like I live in NYC, pretty much every conservative is a registered Democrat so they can vote in the primaries. The Republican party will usually get more Democrats votes here then any third party in presidential elections
That doesn't mean a third party can't attract voters who would go for the Dem
...because Gore lost Democratic voters to Bush. a very large number of them, much more than Nader "took." if Gore hadnt lost them, he would have defeated Bush easily. That is on Gore and the Democrats, not Nader.
if 0 Dems voted for Bush, you could pin the lost on Nader. but they didnt.
Half of the current SCOTUS got their seats as a reward for working on Bush v. Gore, a decision Nader is largely responsible for forcing. Of all the people with a right to blame Hillary Clinton for shit, he is last in line and needs to get back there
I am saying this as someone who voted for him
In 2000 Nader ran as a 3rd party candidate, taking votes from the Democratic candidate Al Gore. In FL George W. Bush defeated Gore by 537 votes; Nader had received 97,421 votes in that state. This, combined with other factors such as that Gore also lost his own home state of TN, led to a GOP win.
It would have been brilliant of me to end that previous post with "... led to the election of Barack Obama" but with people on here being like they are just now, that would have been unwise.
It's not somethg on which I could be flippant, but I do suspect that in the long-term view, an awful majority of what we've experienced goes back to that a Black man got elected President in 2008, and a vary large part of the USA viscerally, in their guts where fear lives, Could Not Deal With That.
Historically unpopular candidate loses his own home state, gets fucked by the anti-democratic electoral college, Dem leadership blames everyone but themselves for this.
a long-time regulatory activist, most famous for campaigning against unsafe cars. he was a perennial third-party presidential candidate, and in 2000, his vote total exceeded GWB's margin of victory.
many foolish people who are angry about chevron deference and tesla will never, ever forgive him.
part of why this is funny is because some years after the election defeat, al gore remade himself into a similar activist figure
the other part is that nader's campaign argument at the time was that both parties had made "liberal" and "regulation" and "environment" into dirty words
