The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by William Henderson:

Will, you talk about the Dems moving left to recapture the Nader voters. That can't happen. The sad fact is, if the Dems move far enough to the left to get Nader's 3%, they would lose AT LEAST 5% from the middle. Probably closer to 10%. 2004 would look like 1984 or 1988 all over again.

The harsh reality that Nader voters have to face is that a majority of voters in America simply WILL NOT SUPPORT all their positions. We've seen what happens when we try to run a liberal candidate in a national election. It isn't pretty. And yet, lots of people out there don't seem to have learned anything from that.

The Naderites are going to have to decide whether they're only going to support candidates who support their entire agenda lock, stock and barrel - thereby consigning themselves and all the causes they claim to care about to political oblivion for the forseeable future - or whether they're willing to compromise with moderates and help get a candidate in office that will be far more friendly to liberal causes than Bush is.

And as for the electoral college, I suspect that no one is willing to come out in support of getting rid of it simply because it will never happen. Ever. The small states will never give up their disproportionate voting power in presidential elections. And there are enough small states that benefit from the electoral college to prevent the necessary constitutional amendment from ever passing.

It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom!

The problems I have with Nader's behavior in the 2000 election was not just what he did, but also with the way he did it. Nader's entire campaign was incredibly dishonest. And he had to have known better - there's simply no way he couldn't have.

I'll give you an example. A few days before the election, Nader was being interviewed on a TV news program (I don't remember which one). The interviewer asked him about the Supreme Court, and whether he was concerned that his campaign might affect its ideological makeup (and this is definitely still a concern - I'm just praying that the four moderates can hold out until Bush is gone so that the court doesn't slip permanently out of our reach). Nader replied that it wasn't an issue, that Bush and Gore would appoint essentially the same types of justices. This was a bald-faced lie, and I was quite frankly shocked that someone with his reputation for integrity would utter such a tremendous falsehood on national televison.

Nader's entire campaign was built around lies like that. And it played perfectly into Bush's moderate rhetoric. With Nader out there saying that Gush=Bore, it made people more likely to believe the Republicans when they said that Bush was not a dangerous right-wing extremist and when they implied that he'd be just like Clinton except with more tax cuts and fewer blowjobs.

Nader lied. And he boosted Bush's campaign by doing it. And he knew full well what he was doing. THAT'S what upsets me the most about his 2000 run.

The author does bring up a good point - namely, that the vast majority of Greens are young, college-educated, white men. The exact type of person who suffers the least when Republicans are in power.

I guess there's a reason they can be so nonchalant about helping to elect Republicans.

k, trying to chase a majority out among non-voters is a fool's errand. Historically, there are people who vote, and people who don't vote, and every study I've seen says the non-voters' political leanings are pretty much divided exactly the same way as the people who do vote.

There is no legion of progressive non-voters out there ready to ride to the rescue. We have to play the hand we're dealt. The American electorate, by and large, leans conservative. They don't lean anywhere near as far to the right as the current administration, mind you, but they do lean right nonetheless. You and I may not like that fact, but ignoring it won't do us any good.

Clinton was able to win twice because the right was divided and because he was able to build a center-left coalition. We should be looking to his campaigns for a model, not spurning them and saying everything will be fine if we just move to the left. If that means we have to write off Nader's 3%, so be it. Going after the 10% of moderate voters who sided with Bush last time will probably be a lot easier and more productive anyway.

Someone HAS to stop the right in this country. If the left won't do it, it's up to the middle. Just don't be surprised if, when it's all said and done, the left has excluded itself from any and all political debate in this country.

Oh, I understand that the political climate can and does change. But as the political climate stands in America today, a candidate that is too far to the left simply cannot win a national election. We saw that in 1984 and again in 1988. The only way to beat Bush is to form a center-left coalition.

And for people who want to focus on long-term change, I would ask, how long do we wait? There are people out there who don't need help in 25 or 50 years - they need help now. The minimum wage is too low. The last time the EITC was expanded was when Clinton first took office. And on and on. And it's because the right has had its way for far too long.

How long do we wait? Do we wait until there are 7 justices to the right of Scalia and Thomas and under the age of 50 on the Supreme Court? Do we wait until 80% of the federal bench is made up of Federalist Society members with lifetime appointments? Do we wait until the Constitution isn't even worth the paper it's printed on anymore?

How bad do things have to get before the Greens will acknowledge reality?

I never said I WANT the Dems to move right. I simply said that that's the only real option the Green party spoiler campaign has left them.

Look at it this way. If Nader's 3% joins Gore's 48%, the Dems are at 51% and they don't need to move right. They might even be able to move a tiny little bit to the left.

But with Nader's 3% backing a third-party candidate, the Dems are stuck at 48%, which loses to the Republicans 48% because of the Republican advantage in the electoral college.

So if the Dems want to pick up more votes, they have two choices: move left, or move right. Moving right is more effective because they're taking votes away from the Republican candidate at the same time they're picking them up for their candidate.

So, a seperate Green electoral strategy will not push the Dems to the left, as many Greens seem to believe it will. It will, in fact, push the Dems to the right - because that is the most natural and logical response to the situation.

If the Greens want to move the Dems to the left, the way to do it is for them to join the party and change it from within. That is, after all, how the conservatives were able to move the Republicans so far to the right.

I still can't believe that so many Greens can't see this. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

Mark, you and I share the desire of having the Democrats move left. But not only is the method you've chosen very harmful in the short run, it's also not likely to accomplish your goal in the long run.

The cold, hard political reality is this: For every vote the Democrats lose from the middle, they have to pick up two votes on the left just to break even.

This is reality: If the Democrats move far enough to the left to pick up Nader's 2.8% of the vote, and they lose even just 1.5% from the middle, that is a net loss for the party.

Now, if the Democrats moved far enough to the left to pick up Nader's 2.8%, would they lose 1.5% from the middle?

No. They would lose much, much more than that. At least 5%, but maybe even as much as 10%.

If the Dems ran on the Green party's dream platform, Bush would win with 53-55% of the vote, minimum. If the Democratic candidate carried 10 states, it would be a miracle.

And by running third-party spoiler candidates, what you're actually doing is insuring that the Dems will move to the right.

Looking at the last election results - Bush 48%, Gore 48%, Nader 3% - the Dems have two choices.

1) They can move to the left and try to get Nader's 3%

OR

2) They can move to the right and try to peel some of that 48% off Bush.

Now, given that the Greens have shown that they're an extremely fickle and willful bunch who were willing to turn on Paul Wellstone on the basis of a single vote he cast, which option do you think will sound more attractive to the Dems? Especially considering that they know that trying to get Nader's 3% will cost them more votes from the middle than they can afford to lose?

The Dems simply cannot run liberal candidates in national elections and win. We tried it in 1984 and 1988 and got slaughtered both times. How many more electoral drubbings will it take before you get the message? A majority of voters simply will not support a leftist platform. I don't know how to put it any more simply than that.

The problem with the far left is they have no idea how to be a minority party. It sucks being on the fringe because all you ever get to do is pull. But they forget that if they stop pulling, things move even further to the right.

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