Looks like some Iraqis have already decided to take Bush up on his offer. Nice.
The decision to have supported Nader--it's a complex issue, isn't it? On one side you've got ardent progressives who voted for "their man" in order to send a clear message that the illusion of choice between democrats and republicans was just that: an illusion. On the other side, you've got those who believe, correctly, that if everyone who'd voted for Nader had voted for Gore, Bush would not be president.
Accepting that those Nader supporters ought to have supported Gore, what do we say of the many people who came out to vote specifically for Nader, and who would not have voted otherwise? One assumes that these people added votes to many non-presidential dems' tallies, since the Greens were not on every ticket in 2000. Asking those people to vote for Gore would have been asking them to compromise their principles, since many of them believe that the two-party system is terminally bankrupt (don't ask me to defend that viewpoint; I don't share it).
To further complicate the issue, Gore was not at all the candidate that progressive Democrats wanted. His "me too" performance in the second debate was painful for a lot of us to watch, and his track record as VP and as Senator isn't one that makes a liberal democrat jump up and dance for joy. I think to many liberal democrats, voting for Nader was a message that the party had better learn how to differentiate itself from the GOP, or else prepare to be abandoned by the left. Since Gore and W. appeared to many of us to differ only slightly in temperament and somewhat more in apparent intelligence, the vindictive "let's see what the Dems do after four years of Bush: the Sequel" sentiment was one I heard from a lot of former yellow-dog Democrats.
Either way you look at it, I think that had any of us known just how bad things could get, many more Nader supporters in critical states would have voted Gore, hindsight being 20/20.
Fortunately for me, I was living here in Texas, where my vote was mere symbolism if for Gore, and had the potential to get my candidate matching funds and greater legitimacy (read: an invitation to debates) if I voted for Nader. So for me it was a no-brainer. If we survive until 2004, perhaps cooler heads will prevail on both sides of the progressive fence.
I think "bunk" may be a bit premature; it's understandable that the Brits didn't take them prisoner and interrogate. They're not at war yet, and would have no justification for doing so. These aren't terrorists, they're the soldiers of a UN member nation. If I could just find my copy of the Geneva Convention . . .
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 1 |
| 2003 | 3 |
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