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Ralph Nader Back On The Florida Ballot
Makoto916 writes "It's official. The Florida State Supreme court has ruled in favor of 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader. He is now back on the ballot, and just in time since absentee ballots were to be mailed out tomorrow (Saturday). This is certainly a victory for those of us who believe that the country is better off when alternative political voices aren't suppressed."
Strange that it was the Democrats that tried to have him removed from the ballot....
http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0904/173778.html
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
As a Canadian in a parlimentatary system, I'll tell you its not all roses.
There have been several minority governments; this happens when the winner doesn't garner 50% of the available seats.
In that case, the leading party usually teams up with another party to reach a majority standing in the house.
Anyways, the main point i'm trying to make is that out of all the monority governments none of them have lasted the four years. Every single one collapsed and forced a re-election.
Right now there's a minority government, so here's hoping everyone gets along!
Bye!
I once sort of respected Nader (pre 2000), even though I didn't agree with him. Now I am shocked at how low he has sunk. Not only is he taking in tons of money from the Republican Party, and letting them run ads for him, knowing full well that they are using him to as a tool against the Dems., but now he is running on the freaking Reform platform to get on the ticket after the Greens dropped him. How anyone can imagine Nader to be a progressive while he is cozying up with a the party of a racist neanderthal like Pat Buchanan is beyond me.
I don't see how he could get any votes now - he has spit in the face of anyone on the left by courting the worst on the right, but nobody but those on the left could stomach like his views.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
Good for democracy.
The votes belong to the voters, not the candidates.
Anybody who wants to vote for Ralph Nader can damn well vote for Ralph Nader, and anybody who doesn't want to, doesn't have to. I think all the prospective Nader voters have been exposed to enough advertising and history by now to make up their own minds whether they prefer "vote for what you really want" or "vote for lesser evil".
Regarding that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" meme goes -- that sounds uncomfortably similar to President Bush's statement: "if you're not with us you're against us."
One thing that Nader voters can do is pair up. In the last election, Nader Traders paired up Nader voters in swing states with Gore voters in non-swing states. The Nader Traders are back in action this election.
There's another kind of pairing: if you really want to vote for Nader, but don't want Bush to win, go find somebody who really hates Bush but doesn't want Kerry to win. Make a deal: "I won't vote for Kerry if you won't vote for Bush." Then you go vote for Nader or Cobb, and your buddy votes for Badnarik or Peroutka. The major party outcome is unaffected, and you both vote for the candidate you really wanted -- which helps build the party you really want.
1) Why do people like you try to polarize things, when it's well known that bell curves are much more naturally occurring? Most democrats are moderates, just as most Republicans are.
2) The current administration is a fine example of how the right-wing can also grow "big government", so you make no point here either.
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Nader often says, half-seriously, that the Republicans and the Democrats are the same, corporate party. Before you dismiss him as glib, or an idiot, think about it. The two parties have what seems to be a gentleman's agreement to watch each other's back. Together, they run the debate commission and keep third parties out. They both oppose instant run-off voting, or fusion.s h_camp_err_on_.shtml Here they're trying to keep Nader off the Florida ballot because they fear he'll swing the state to Bush, but the Democrats here have a chance to try to get Bush himself off the ballot, and they won't take it...
And how about this? Bush might have missed the deadline to get on the Florida ballot! Read it yourself: http://sptimes.com/2004/09/11/Decision2004/Did_Bu
Americans:
I'm voting third party, and you should too if you care one whit for the democratic process or the future of this country.
"A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush!"
"Vote for the lesser evil."
"Don't throw your vote away."
and the even more misleading: "It isn't throwing your vote away, but it won't change anything."
are all memes I've grown to hate. They all completely miss the point. Vote for the man you want for the job. PERIOD. Because one day, a non-Republicrat WILL WIN.
I'm voting third party, at the encouragement of I.F. Stone, who tells me:
"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing--for the sheer fun and joy of it--to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."
I'm voting third party because Bush and Kerry are exactly the same damned thing. And I am not going to let either head of the Republicrat media hydra turn me, or anyone who will listen to me, into some marionette to be tugged about by the memory of 9/11/01.
I'm voting third party because it's the only way I can leave that booth this November without the guilty weight of a near-decade of gratuitous bloodshed heaped upon my heart.
I have suspicions about what things will be like with four more years of these country club politicians. But getting to say "I told you so" is just not worth it this time.
In Illinois, the Democrats control the state government and recently changed the law to allow Bush on the ballot. According to state law, the Republican convention must be held before Sept. 1. The Republican convention was on Sept. 3rd, so it was later than it needed to be to legally allow President Bush to appear on the ballot in Illinois. The Illinois Democratic Party response: Change the law by altering the deadline so that the Republican convention would be within the new deadline (Senate Bill 2123). The Pantagraph published an article about this on June 29, 2004, the first few sentences of which you can find online. State Rep. Bill Mitchell (R-Forsyth) was quoted as saying "The bottom line is people should be able to vote on the President of the United States and voice their opinion on him." and Democratic Party Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich concurs. But what goes unmentioned is how this need to vote for a candidate does not extend to third parties or independents.
Nationally, the two major corporate parties know when to get along as well. Some readers may recall that the official-sounding (but privately-owned) "Commission on Public Debates" which hosts the presidential debates (taking that away from the League of Women Voters) is owned by the RNC, the DLC, and a few of their mutual corporate friends. These debates excluded Nader and Buchanan in 2000 despite a majority of the country wanting to see them in the debates. They were excluded by setting the barrier to entry high (15% interest level in pre-debate polls) and (as Nader points out in his book "Crashing the Party") gathering poll data from corporate-run news agencies friendly to the cause of third-party exclusion. This year, there is a movement to provide a more reasonable set of debates but Sen. Kerry and Pres. Bush are contractually bound to their CPD debates and will probably not appear in any Open Debate-run debate.
If the Democrats spent as much time opposing the Republicans as they spend opposing competitive third parties (like the Greens) and independents (such as Ralph Nader this election year), the Democrats would probably be a different party. Illinois is not a contested state, it is a "safe seat" for Kerry.
Digital Citizen
Communism and Fascism are natural political enemies. It was Communists that went off to the gas chambers along with the Jews, Gypsies and Gays systematically. Communists in the US during the rise of Hitler wrote that American Fascism, if it were to rise, would have a theocratic form of nationalism. The GOP certainly has been running for the theocratic vote.
Remember that the fascists tried to get General Butler to execute a coup d'etat against Roosevelt in the 30's. The also campaigned to leave Hitler alone. Many wealthy people, including Edward VIII of England, were personal friends of Hitler. These were the people who believed in things like Social Darwinism.
Most of the descendents of these people are now in the GOP. They tend to trend more libertarian except for Corporate Welfare, they believe that by vitue of their wealth, they are better people than the rest of us slobs. They see the theocrats as a tool to be used for their rise to power.
Anyway, here are some articles:
Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis
Neo-fascism and the religious right
The Danger of American Fascism
Facts and Fascism by George Seldes
As wrong as communists are, they're right about one thing, Fascists.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
this sums it up nicely from the candiate himself:
Nader said Democrats should blame themselves if they are unable to beat President Bush because they are not focusing on the real issues that people care about. He cited as examples universal health care, creating a living family wage and ending the war in Iraq.
``If the Democrats cannot landslide the worst Republican administration in the 20th century they better look at themselves,'' said Nader.
ABQjournal
"...Republicans would indeed do the same thing under similar circumstances"
That seems like an attempt to achieve political neutrality by conterbalancing your anti-Democrat statements. It is not an actual fact which you have supported with evidence; You gave none.
Republicans did not try to keep Ross Perot off the ballot in '92. Now, that is not proof that they would not attempt to block a third-party candidate in the future, under other circumstances. However, it is the most closely related historical parallel, and arguably the best evidence we have for predicting how Republicans would recieve competing third-party candidates in the future. Should we try to predict future actions on that basis of past behavior or just rely on proof by assertion?
"Flame away"
How cleverly impolite. Preemtively disparage comments critical of your own statements by implying that all subsequent discusssion is flamage.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.