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The Hidden Swing State?
rwiedower writes "What if all the Nader voters lived in a single state? Kerry would have to court them and their electoral votes just like he pursues union workers in Ohio and senior citizens in Florida. Now, in the two weeks before the election, Nader's 1% might well be a deciding factor. And Nader voters, sick of being told that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, have formed a loose coalition demanding to be treated for what they are--a swing state."
What about the libertarians? They're not claiming to be akin to a swing state, they're basically trying to CREATE a swing state!
Time for the obligatory Simpsons quote from Treehouse of Horror VII:
Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles! [audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away!
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
First, voting for a Republican or Democrat candidate when you're not in a swing state is really a wasted vote, because your vote won't change anything. Any Texan who votes for Bush or Kerry won't make any difference in the world, because Bush will carry Texas. There just aren't enough Democrats in Texas to make a difference.
However, a vote for a third-party candidate in Texas (or any state) will increase the visibility of that candidate.
Second, third-party candidates that are tied to one of the two major parties can affect things. Let's take Nader. His point has been that the Democrat party isn't liberal enough, so his presence will force the Democrat party to really evaluate their positions. If there are enough liberals who don't think the Democrat party isn't liberal enough, they will vote for Nader, possibly forcing the Democrats to lose. That's what happened in Florida in 2000. In theory, the Democrats will then be forced to become more liberal, i.e., "truer" to their party platform.
The question is, have the Democrats learned their lesson? Have they realized that if they don't really cater to their liberal elements, they will lose swing states to Nader again? I believe the answer is no.
For the record, I'm in Texas and I'm voting Libertarian. The Libertarian party is to the Republican party what Nader is to the Democrat party. In theory, the Libertarian party could swing Texas to Kerry. Imagine if the Libertarian party got 15% of the vote. If that happened, then it's unlikely that the Republicans will get more than 40%. That would leave 45% of the vote for the Democrats. If the Republicans lost Texas because of the Libertarians, then it would send a message to the Republican party that need to pay less attention to their Jesus-freak constituents and more attention to their supposed support for personal responsibility.
A Libertarian candidate may never become president in my lifetime, but if he scares the crap out of the Republicans, then he will still make a real difference.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I went to the "slacker uprising" rally at the Univeristy of Minnesota during the 2nd presidential debate. Slacker Uprising is a publicity tour of Michael Moore nominally to increase voter turnout by offering a pair of underwear if you register to vote (Yes I registered, no I didn't grab the undies).
After the debate, and Moore's appearance on HBO, he began his "speech." I use quotation marks because most of the content was culled from other writers and speakers. The one salient point I thought he did have concerned Nader and the temptation to vote for him. As you can imagine there were quite a few Nader supporters in the crowd that were wavering between supporting Kerry and supporting Nader. There were others that were plain pricks about it, calling Moore a traitor and such.
Moore expressed the opinion that, because of Nader, the democrats have been pulled much further to the left than they were in 2000. If you compare Kerry to Gore in 2000, the rhetoric has become much harsher and emphises the differences instead of their cheery agreements. The two candidates today have very different proposed solutions to the same problems, and no one thinks for a minute that Kerry and Bush are equally evil (I haven't heard anyone use the tweedledee and tweedledum analogy this time around).
As someone who voted for Nader in 2000 this argument made a certain degree of sense to me. Is voting for Nader throwing your vote away? I don't think so. In fact I think Nader's support has swung the democrats over enough to my viewpoint that I'm willing to vote for them, hence my decision to vote for Kerry.
A socialist has never been elected preisdent of the United States, but minimum wage and social security would hardly haave had as much support without them. Those who support Nader don't expect to have him become president, they expect to influence policy of those who *are* elected.