Greens Showing a Little Common Sense

In some states, a vote for the Green candidate simply had no effect on the outcome. The Democrat was a shoo-in or the Republican was.

In those states, I could see voting Green even if it ended up taking a few votes away from the Dems.

But in tight states -- a vote for Green or Nader often is, if effect, a vote for the Republicans.

I think the people living in swing states should take that into consideration this next election, because four more years of this crew is more than any country should be expected to bear.

AND THE WORLD WILL BE BETTER OFF IF BUSH IS DEFEATED.

Oh, wow! That would be great. Yes, snood, I've felt the same way, and have had some really unpleasant conversations with friends who voted for Nader. Maybe even lost one friend because of it. (We were falling out of touch anyway...)

What I really wish is that we had a system like Australia's, where a protest vote could be counted but then would become the "real" vote if the protest vote was too measly. That's probably not an accurate summary of how it actually works -- but how I understand it is that in the Australian system, one could vote for Nader and have your second choice be Gore, and if Nader didn't get a certain percentage of the vote, your vote would go to Gore, instead.

Anyway, that's heartening about the possibility of the Greens thinking about backing a Democrat. Thanks for the link.

Now, if we can just find a decent Democrat to rally around... (I'm stillnot super impressed with anyone.)

It was easy for me to vote Green the last two presidential elections: Only Republicans stand a chance of getting elected in this state anyway. If I were in some states I would suck it up and vote for the Dem, distasteful as that choice would be. As I see it, the Republican decision makers are dragging us off to hell and the Democrats are putting up only token resistence. Still, no Democrat would have pursued a Bush style foreign bedlam - er, policy, and that is important enough to cause me to support one more Democrat.

well, Snood, I guess I'm too new here to have been approached by you to explain the rationale behind voting Green, so I'll have at it now:

since I live in California, where the democrats were demonstrably ahead in every poll, I have had the luxury of voting my conscience and so I voted for Nader in 1996 as well as 2000. Believe me, I NEVER would have done so if I lived in a state where the vote was going to be close, however, since the country has made an even sharper right turn recently, I might have to vote democrat if there's the slightest chance Bush might carry California. if the democrats acquired some brains and nominated someone like Howard Dean, I would even be able to look myself in the mirror upon leaving the voting booth. so far, I find the others completely unacceptable save for the unfortunately unnominateable Kucinich and Mosely-Braun. please re-think your anger at Nader; I think he was being his ivory tower self, i.e. naive in thinking that if Bush got in, that change (or even a revolution) might occur by way of a liberal sweep in 2002 and 2004; he must feel pretty bad himself at seeing how wrong he was as he sees the judgeships for life take us rushing back a couple hundred years.

I hope you understand my rationale :wink:

Cool:

This is what I hoped would come from Nader's run.

The Democrats realizing that the Greens are their old core.

So it took loss of Congress to get the hint!

I have a problem blaming Nader for Gore's loss when Gore did little to no campaigning in his own home state of Tennessee. Had he carried the 5 (6?) electoral votes from his own freakin' state we wouldn't be having this conversation.

We wouldn't be having this conversation if several hundred Jewish people--some of them Holocaust survivors--in Palm Beach, FL, hadn't mistakenly cast their ballots for Patrick Buchanan (thinking they were voting for Gore).

We wouldn't be having this conversation if the Secretary of State of Florida, Katherine Harris, had not purged from the voter rolls sveral thousand minority voters she presumed were convicted felons (when they were not).

And we wouldn't be having this conversation if the Supreme Court was not corrupt.

Instead we would be undergoing the impeachment of President Gore by the House of Republicans.

Of course, the Twin Towers would probably still be gracing NYC's skyline, and more than 3000 American citizens, a few hundred of our nation's finest military personnel and thousands of innocent Afghani and Iraqi civilians would still be living... but hey, that's a small price to pay for freedom, now isn't it?

And never mind that we no longer have a budget surplus but for the second time under a Republican administration have mortgaged our children's future by overspending now...but hey, you got your tax cut, right?

And the world is much safer from al-Qaeda and Saddam and Osama now that we have no idea where any of them may be...but hey, those MOAB bombs were something else, weren't they?

And the price of gas is going down, right?

As Frank Apisa said, in MA dems are a sure thing in the boston area. At least they usually are. Mitt "friggin" Romney one the governership though.

I sent money into the green campaign fund to help them get registered. It pissed my dad off - he thinks more like snood. Dad's in retirement, he doesn't have time to live through the upheaval of reform to see a better political system working in America. I feel that putting the greens on the ballot would help seperate the dems and reps a little farther than they are (which wouldn't take much).

I'll overlook the condescending tone of "he thinks like Snood" and just offer this: It's fine to purport to care about the "big picture", or the "long run", and I do understand the facility of having a viable third party, especially one with the moral foundation of the Greens. The only problem for me is that by the time the Greens are successful in getting funding and expanding to the point that they could take any substantial action, the Bushes and Cheyneys of the world will have made this country not worth fighting to salvage.

I don't lose any sleep from the fact that I voted for Ralph. There was no choice for me between Gore and Bush. Gore's campaign was wishy-washy at best. It seemed to be walking on egg shells in re; to Clinton, and should have used him in the campaign with pride. And then to add Lieberman to the ticket was the final straw for me.
The Stepford-wived-demos vs the don't-have-a-clue-repubs. No thanks.
The 2000 election was Gore's to lose and he did. He should have beaten the Junior Bush by a landslide.

The demo candidates in '04 seem to have the teeth to battle the faux fighter pilot, but it is an up hill battle. I'll probably vote for the Demo candidate, if it's Dean, or Kerry, not because they are Demos, but because they are the better choice.

Argh.

I still don't get that reasoning. You really think Gore would not have been better -- MUCH better -- than Bush?? Bush seems just so obviously catastrophically horrible to me.

I'm not saying Gore was so wonderful. But equating the two -- <shaking head>.

At any rate, very glad that you'd consider voting Dem this time around, and hope that you are representative of others who voted for Nader last time.

What bothers me about Nader is that he's so utterly unrepentant about his role in the 2000 fiasco. Just keeps repeating his mantra: "No difference between the two major parties."

How about, if nothing else, environmental policy? Say what you will about Gore, the environment was something he cares deeply about. Wrote a book on the subject, if memory serves...

Sozobe, I thought the problem with Gore's campaign was the lack of leadership, he didn't really seem to be in charge of his own campaign as evidenced by 'his' choice of conservative Lieberman for running mate, who's idea was that? The Gore campaign was playing defense. Why not choose a running mate like John Edwards, play some offense.

What you say about the environment D'art. I agree 100%. Us northwesterners are going to be paying a terrible price in the forests the next few years. But what does that have to do with Nader?
Why didn't Gore pound on his differences with Bush? He never really seemed to let it rip. Tentative wishy wash miasma.

Anyway, baby needs new shoes and all that..........

My beef with Nader re the environmental issue is that he had to know that there were differences between Gore and Bush. By running as a third-party candidate, he was drawing votes from Gore (at least most of the time, I would imagine). But he kept claiming it didn't matter which of the top two won. Yet it does matter...

Though I do agree, Flatted 5th, that Gore could've run a better campaign. And Lieberman was--and still is--a terrible choice for the Democrats.

I voted for Nader knowing Gore was a shoo-in in Connecticut, but I disagree with the notion that his votes would have gone to Gore if he had not run. It is just as likely that those voters would have stayed home. I have seen no analysis of the '02 election that demonstrates the Nader took the election away from Gore. It was Gores election to lose, and he did. With the help of a corrupt Supreme Court.

Do you support the Green Party platform in its entirety? I'm genuinely curious. I find their platform pretty outrageous and have found most people who voted for Nader had no idea what they were voting for. I have yet to find someone who voted Green in either of the last two presidential elections who had read the Green Party platform and understood what they were voting for.

Tell me something outrageous and I will see if I concur. There are always going to be parts of any party's platform I disagree with. For instance, Greens are anti death penalty. With some reservations I support it.

(Does that mean you are unfamiliar with their platform?)

Okay, for starters... They intend to confuscate the assets of the 500 largest corporations "for the people". What are your thoughts on that?

Edgar

Not sure of where you are going with this -- but you might consider betting Scrat a bunch of money that the Green Party platform does not show intention to confuscate anything from anybody.

My guess is, no platform of any political party anywhere has ever proposed that.

I do like your idea of asking Scrat to propose any planks that seem "outrageous" and reacting to them.