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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."
Lemme guess, you're Republican and want Bush to win Florida?
I don't think that not being on the ballot means your political voice is being suppressed. Plenty of people don't make it onto the ballot, but they are still free to express their ideas.
GMail invites for completed freeipods.com of
ok, i don't know shit about American politics apart from my half-arsed following of newspapers but isn't this going to take votes away from Kerry? i.e. it's a move to hurt democrats not help democracy. this is bad, i want Kerry to win and save the world see. i could well be talking from my rear here, as i'm sure i'll soon find out. (ignore my sig, it's out of place on this thread).
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Again as a gladly non-US voter this discussion amazes me.
.. have a read ..
If you really want a victory for alternative policical voices then push hard and jump and down for a democratic preferential voting system. This way you could have 10 or more candidates and the person that was ultimately most popular would win - not the person that splits the least number of votes.
If you had a preferential voting system then you might be discussing the merits of a first vote for Nader instead of worrying about loosing a vote by voting for him. Your second and third votes may be the ones that ultimately count.
As an Australian voter, where everything is Preferential, I cannot imagine having to use such an archaic "First Past the Post" system as they use in the US. I am also amazed there is not a major movement for change there.
If you don't know what a preferential voting system is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting/
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.
It is good to have two parties with two center seeking candidates that appear indistinguishable from each other, and split the vote evenly between them. It is good if everything congress can agree on has already been passed into law, and everything else before congress is gridlocked. Agreement on a quantity (taxes, spending, etc.) is when exactly half think the quantity is to high, and the other half thinks it is too low. Some people see our two party winner take all system as dysfunctional, when it is really mature democracy near equilibrium. 3rd parties, bipartisan agreement, and a widely varied candidate positions is really disequilibrium.
It looked like we were close to equilibrium in 2000. The problem was that both candidates and the center were all disastrously wrong on counter-terrorism policy before 9/11. And when congress was unanimous after 9/11, it was only because we were disastrously wrong before, not that there was any new sense of cooperation after.
Of course, everyone would like it if the "center" was closer to their own views. But that is what contributions, lobbying, and political action is for. Everyone can be a special interest, all you have to do is open your checkbook or write your representatives.
3rd parties would be more effective as lobbies or think tanks. CATO is more effective at moving the center than the libertarian party, and environmental lobbies are more effective than the green party.
...for the Republican party.
--
I tend to agree about Nader. I don't think he's serious about campaigning for president, only feeding his own ego and perhaps his wallet.
A couple of elections ago, when (as usual) the "third parties" were shut out of the presidential debates, C-SPAN organized a "third party" debate so the candidates would at least have some chance of airing and comparing their views where people could evaluate them all together. Harry Browne (Libertarian) was there, of course, as was Howard Philip of the rather creepy[1] "U.S. Taxpayers Party" (as far as I can tell, they are also called the "Independent" party and I think the "Constitution" party.) and I THINK they had someone from the "Peace and Freedom" (hardcore socialist/borderline communist[2]) party there, and of course at the time the Greens had Nader....oh, wait, no, Nader didn't show up. He was, according to the announcer on the show, too busy promoting his new book to bother.
That kind of tells me everything I need to know about Nader...
[1]- Disturbingly extremist (in my own opinion) bible-pounding, God-bothering rightists. As far as I could tell from the debate, that party's entire platform is composed of two claims:
- Abortion is Murder(tm)
- Sex Education causes Homosexuality
.[2]- Disturbingly extremist (in my on opinion) wealth-hating, welfare-legislating leftists. Kinda helped balance with the other extreme party mentioned above. I'm guessing a lot of European people living in small countries where socialism won't necessarily become Stalinism[3] would tend to like these people
[3]- I still maintain that the degree to which a government can be "socialist" without being oppressive is inversely proportional to the size of the governed population. If California seceded from the US, I think they'd just BARELY be small enough to get away with a socialist government. If the entire US tried to do it on a national level, we'd end up with USSR II. Or so I maintain. I think this is why USAians - even Democrats - often seem "extreme right-wing" to Europeans.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'll go ahead and burn some karma here...
Isn't it a little peculiar that the Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to keep somebody off the ballot, but yet this gets little to no coverage in the mainstream media? However, can you imagine the shock and revolt the Democrats would spew out if the Republicans were trying to keep a candidate off the ballot?
Now I'm sure the Republicans would indeed do the same thing under similar circumstances, my point here is about the coverage. If Republicans do it, it's evil and it needs to be on the front page. If the Democrats do it, then it's just good ol' fashion politics, nothing to see here folks.
Flame away.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
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.
People tend to confuse communism and fascism for socialism.
We are closer to fascism than most people think. Apparently some crazy leader shouting about the evils of the world (could be Hitler, could be Bush) gets people's nationalism at a high, at the same time they erode the rights of citizens. Then all it takes is candidates sponsored by the pharmaceutical/oil/(insert big business here) industry. Remember during WWII Italy was the Fascist Business Republic. Here is a good write up of where we are apparently heading.
Oh yeah and Sweden is socalist as well. They have their problems as well.
> # Abortion is Murder(tm)
:(
That's a big part of the Constitution Party platform, yes. Probably too big. I certainly agree with them on that, but America isn't ready to elect someone as rabidly anti-abortion as they are, so they're pretty much screwing themselves over.
They're also big on eliminating the rampant Constitution violations that the big parties continue to commit without thinking.
They also want to get America out of most foreign "problems" such as Iraq. They believe that America should be a "friend of liberty everywhere, defender only of her own." Makes sense to me.
Personally, I'd love to vote for Peroutka (their candidate this year) -- he matches my values much more closely than Bush does. But realities of the two party system will force me to vote Bush.
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.
The purpose of these candidates on the far edges of the spectrum is not to get elected or indeed even have a whisper of a chance; the system from top to bottom is designed to favor the (two?) most moderate candidates. (For example, the electoral college: The fact that winner-takes-all in each state is a moderating influence.)
The purpose of these fringe candidates is, instead, to drum up enough of a base that the moderate candidate that's closer will want to drift over in that direction in order to pick up those votes. In other words, they should judge success not by how many votes they get, but by how much they ultimately move the definition of "moderate".
So don't feel too bad for having to vote for Bush, as long as you answer Peroutka in the polls. The fact that you are being forced to vote for the more moderate candidate means the system is working exactly as it is intended to, for the greater good of the overall population.
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
Read Counterpunch articles on Ralph Nader. They've recently published articles on these issues and frame the debate in a more balanced way by examining where the Democrats and Republicans are getting their money from (as well as differentiating between what individual citizens do versus what political parties do, and looking at how much money was collected from various sources for Nader and the two dominant parties), and recognizing that you can't control who runs ads criticizing you or your opponents, as well as examining how the Greens came to arrive at their nomination of David Cobb and Pat LaMarche over Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo.
Not that I'm saying you're an Anyone But Bush supporter (which I don't know if you are), but I would think this is something the ABB crowd could appreciate (and this is taking your critique at face value) -- swallowing something bad for a greater good. I don't think most Democratic Party voters actually like Kerry; the delegates disagree with him on some major points of policy, but they plan to vote for him to get Bush out of office. Similarly, if you believe Reform Party endorsement to be bad, consider that Reform Party endorsement gets Nader/Camejo on the ballot in some states and that means a lot when one is trying to push for democratic (small-d) electoral reforms as Nader/Camejo clearly are. I'm sure Nader realizes more than anyone posting to this website what immense barriers his campaign faces and how slim his chances are of winning. He wrote a book about the need for structural electoral reform a few years ago called "Crashing the Party" when he was endorsed by the Green Party. But we shouldn't push out people who have such a fight ahead of them. Not only would that have denied some victories (like Jesse Ventura's in Minnesota) but it would say that democracy is only for the two parties who already have a lock on the system.
Digital Citizen
Mussilini said that a better name for facism was corpratism- facism was the ultimate marriage of buisness and government.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
...and that's why we need approval voting, or some similar system. (Yeah, I know I'm being redundant)
-jim
Third parties in the United states serve as a source of direction for the larger parties. When the little guys start growing, the big guys know it's time to shift their policies to get back the votes-- or fade into obscurity.
The exceptions have been few. In a few cases, a figure of sufficient charisma and political clout has been disatisfied, and sparked a flare for a few years-- such as Teddy Roosevelt and Perot did. The end result isn't much different than other third parties. The other exception is the Republicans themselves; the issue that rose them to prominence so polarized the country that civil war resulted. Let's hope they don't go back that far to their roots. =)
Of course, the unity of the big two is now, and has always been, an illusion. The "Dixiecrat" faction is noted in the Democrats, and while all Republicans seem to be either Religious Right or Fiscal Conservative, the majority are not both.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
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
I am not a Nader supporter, Bush or Kerry are far better choices than Nader IMHO. However Nader should have his shot just like anyone else. The whole idea that Nader screwed Gore or will screw Kerry is bulls**t. Nader has said a lot of screwy things but one thing he has right is that Gore/Kerry are not entitled to any democratic party member's vote. They have to earn it. If Gore/Kerry can not get the vote of a person who is inherently inclined to favor them then that is their own damn fault. Blaming Nader is just a pathetic attempt to blame someone else for their own failures and shortcomings. Of course what else should we expect from career politicians.
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
Lemme guess, you're Republican and want Bush to win Florida?
Nader has made it onto the ballot here in Wisconsin also (where the polls indicate a very close race), but he is running as an independent here. Unfortunetly, many people seem to have missed that detail and will likely vote for him with the idea that they are voting for a third party candidate, trying to push the numbers up to the that all-important 5 percent needed to reach *real* party status. I've already personally talked to two people who were planning to vote Nader under that misconception.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for third party and independent candidates... I've often voted that way in the past. I just think it is important people really know what they are voting for.
The Bolachek Journals
http://www.vote-smart.org/
This is an extraordinary website. I admittedly worked for them at one point. But this site has absolutely NO SPIN!!
Check it out and see for yourselves voters.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
I'm intentionally leaving the term "socialist" vague here, and admittedly it's probably not the best term. By it, I just mean a tendency towards government control (both in terms of regulation and in terms of how many services the government insists on running directly itself) centrally, at a nationwide level. Suggestions for a better "neutral" (e.g. not "fascist" or other emotionally-charged terms, since the word I'm looking for would not inherently imply injustice or oppression) are welcome, since by my working definition here, imposition of a state-mandated religion would be "socialist", and to my knowlege no modern nations who are generally tagged with the word "Socialist" (as opposed to being thought of as an outright "theocracy" or "dictatorship") really do that. At least not for the last couple-hundred years - the Church of England would once have qualified, but not in modern times.
One has to distinguish between two issues here: one is how much the state centralizes power in its hands (we call such states which do it on a large scale 'centralized') and another, how much the state takes care of its citizens' needs, instead of letting them do it on their own (we call such states 'welfare states'. These are two different issues. For example, France is very centralized and also has quite a lot of welfare (but you have to pay each time you see a doctor in France, though), and Germany is a welfare state, too, but is not centralized. W/r to religion, Sweden has a state church, priests are paid by the government and bishops have to be members of political parties in order to be ordained. And it would be called by you a 'Socialist' country!
I would say, that the better word would be 'socialdemocratic': welfare state, but with private enterpreneurship and democracy.
In order to be more "socialist" (by my almost-certainly-non-canonical definition here) Government needs to have more power over its citizens in order to maintain its control, both through "overt" and obvious means (e.g. police and "internal" military) and less obvious (controlling access to and distribution of information and goods. The larger the population of the governed, the more force the government needs to keep everyone in line.
You're ignoring the possibility that the government builds the welfare state because the people want it (and vote accordingly). If people in Europe were forced to accept welfare, would they oppose any cuts so strongly as they do?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
"...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.