Althouse: "To my friends who supported Nader in 2000: have you discerned the subtle differences between Bush and Gore yet?"

October 24, 2008

"To my friends who supported Nader in 2000: have you discerned the subtle differences between Bush and Gore yet?"

From a post by (my son) Jac that's mainly about the band Polydream -- with some nice free downloads.

The drummer, Brit, along with Jac, wrote and performed the original theme for my old podcast, which you can still listen to here. I closed down the old "Audible Althouse" podcast and stopped paying for the website, but I see the RSS feed is still around, and you can still listen. I just discovered that. Strange...

Brit was also part of one of the bands that used to play in that space I photographed in "Mysteries of the Althouse house."

Also in that band was Jacob, whose band Jac blogged about last week (as part of his "musicians I know" series).

12 comments:

Automatic_Wing said...: Actually, I believe the differences would not have been significant as JAC seems to imply. Hard to say, for example, that Gore definitely would not have invaded Iraq...he had no qualms bombing the crap out of Iraq in 1998.

President Al Gore would have been a very different character than bitter presidential loser Al Gore. Who knows how a Gore administration would have really turned out?; 10/24/08, 11:12 AM
From Inwood said...: Could the subtle differences be in the make-up (double meaning intended); 10/24/08, 11:14 AM
tim maguire said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/24/08, 12:32 PM
tim maguire said...: Maguro is right. People who think Gore would have been so much different, so much better than Bush are engaging in wishful thinking. He would have been all the things they like and none of the things they hate (not unlike a pre-presidential Obama).

They forget that because Gore did not become president, they cannot say what or where he would act differently. For instance, to again echo Maguro, there is nothing in Al Gore's background prior to the 2000 election that would lead anyone to doubt that he would have invaded Iraq.

I almost forgot--there's also a common logical fallacy at work here: if we are presented with two choices and the one we made worked out badly, then the other choice was the right one.; 10/24/08, 12:40 PM
AlphaLiberal said...: I've been giving Naderites a hard time over that childish line for 8 years now.

Last week I got an invitation from one organizing a discussion over how to pursue their agenda, one week before the election. I guess getting out the vote for Obama is unthinkable.

The mind boggles.; 10/24/08, 12:53 PM
Barry said...: Ugh. Haven't we let this one go? Here's the condensed version of the Naderite side:

There's no way to know what Gore administration would have been. In my state Gore won, so my non-Gore vote didn't matter. It was Gore's election to loose, and his fault that it came down to hanging chads and a poorly executed court case. Weakening the stranglehold of the two parties on American politics is important to me, and worth a third party vote when it seems it could make a significant difference in shaping the political discussion. One could argue that support for Nader led to the Dems adopting more Nader-like policies to win "back" Nader supporters, or at least restructuring the party's platform to change their appeal. Polls showed that Nader voters would not have supported Gore exclusively if Nader wasn't running.

If you don't like the thought that third parties act as spoilers against your candidate, work for the adoption of instant-run-off voting or similar polling methods.; 10/24/08, 1:24 PM
AlphaLiberal said...: Haven't we let this one go?

Hell no. There are consequences for actions. The Nader movement was a bad idea, a bad strategy with ruinous results.

We need to learn from this very expensive education. Otherwise, this will keep happening.

And, it's hilarious that the Green Party brags of their impotence. Not them, no, they had no impact on the election. What type of political party brags about having no impact? A:
a useless one.

I'm fed up with lots about the Dems, too, and welcome all the new activists around.

Hearing Greens blame Gore while they were going all over the country ripping him to shreds while going easy on Bush and saying he wouldn't be so bad was too much. You were wrong and a lot of people paid the price. Most of the sheltered, privileged Greenies did not pay a personal price.

Finally, we do not have a parliamentarian system. Pretending we do does not make it so.; 10/24/08, 1:50 PM
dbp said...: If Gore had won in 2000, where would we be today?

He probably would have lost in 2004since we rarely keep the same party in for 4 elections in a row.

Both houses of Congress would probably still be held by Republicans right now.

First term presidents usually win and so the Republican president would be favored to win.

I know it must have sucked to be a Democrat the last 8 years, but you are in much better shape NOW than you would likely have been had Gore won then.; 10/24/08, 2:07 PM
Ben Masel said...: If ralph had just spent a bit more on makeup...; 10/24/08, 2:09 PM
blake said...: If Gore had won, there'd be a commenter here named AlphaConservative (looks just like AlphaLiberal, but with a goatee), and he would be cutting-and-pasting from crazed right-winged sites about how Gore was ruthlessly expanding executive power, lied to get everyone into Iraq, spent the country into bankruptcy, and ate puppies and small children.

So, you know: We dodged a bullet there.; 10/24/08, 4:46 PM
sean said...: I like dpb's analysis. I would add that, if Al Gore had been elected in 2000, the Republicans in 2004 would have pointed out the disastrous effects of the "Clinton-Gore" foreign policy, and a nation still traumatized by 9/11 would probably have turned to the party that hadn't permitted a major terrorist attack.

Now if you are one of the nutjobs who believe that Al Gore's superior brainpower would have detected and foiled the 9/11 attack, then I'm glad we don't know each other.; 10/24/08, 4:55 PM
John Althouse Cohen said...: Haven't we let this one go?

Hey, Nader is currently running for pres and Election Day is in less than 2 weeks. It's extremely relevant. So no, we haven't "let this one go."; 10/25/08, 5:46 PM