Gore's "loss" in 2000 squarely on the Dems

[HFishbine]

In 2000, 11% of democrats voted for Bush. Instead of blaming the 2% of dems who voted for Nader or the 6% of independents who voted for Nader, it seems the 11% of dems who went for Bush were the real factor. Maybe we should ban dems from democraticunderground.com.

http://www.udel.edu/poscir/road/course/exitpollsindex.html

[sangh0]

1. OK

You first

[HFishbine]

8. Thanks

But I don't qualify. I'm an independent who voted for Gore.

[denverbill]

12. Me neither. I'm a Green who voted for Gore.

[redqueen]

2. lol!

Great post, HFishbine!

Those traitorous Democrats! *snarf*

:loveya:

[GainesT1958]

3. I'll blame Nader voters all I want, thank you...

Had one-tenth of them voted for Al Gore in Florida in 2000, none of the Florida "controversy" would have happened, and NONE of the tragic events of the last three years would have happened, either...

And if Ralphie Boy's backers don't understand that, they can all GO STRAIGHT TO HELL along with him!!!:grr:

B-)

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. But it was okay for Dems to cross over??

I will never understand that reasoning, but thanks for your honest opinion.

[no name no slogan]

22. What about the 30,000 FL Dems who voted for BUSH?

If you're going to blame anybody, why not blame them? Or K. Harris's purging of 50,000+ voters from the rolls?

If the Dems keep as fixated on Nader as they are right now, then they've already lost 2004 IMHO.

[Frodo]

4. Ok... anyone planning to vote for Bush is banned. Than can we...

... skip anyone else working for the democratic candidates defeat?

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. The numbers are true

and I do wish the Dems would acknowledge that fact more often.

I frequently hear aboujt how Nader is a Repub. So why do they never blame that other repub, Dubya, for stealing their votes too? *Unless, of course, they are referring to Harris' antics in Florida, in which case tehy are correct to do so.*

[mondo joe]

7. Incorrect assumption

You incorrectly assume that party membership = votes.

What Nader did was to chip away at the Dem base - the more progressive voters. And his flawed argument was that there was no difference between Gore and Bush. That's a mistake a lot of people made.

[HFishbine]

13. You raise a legitimate point

but the answer is not what you suggest. 13% of voters who identified as liberals also voted for Bush. Only 6% went for Nader. Somehow Bush managed to "chip away" at the progressive voters more successfully than Nader.

[Doomsayer13]

9. So what do you suggest

We move further to the right to accodate these Bush Democrats? They were DINO's who've been voting for Repubs for the last 20 years, Florida is after all a Southern State. Southerns states still have Democratic majorities in registration but consistently vote Republican.

I'm sorry, this strawman has been used over so many times, I'm quite sick of it.

[HFishbine]

15. See post #13

and re-examine your red herring.

[denverbill]

10. No, I'd rather blame the 50% who didn't vote at all.

Why vote? Nothing ever changes. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Taxes go up. Benefits go down. Soldiers die, and none are the children of the rich or powerful.

[Terry_M]

19. If only half of those 50% who don't vote

went out and voted for a some other party... Then we'd have real change.

[Faygo Kid]

11. Yeah, I blame Gore - that time. No excuse for Nader - this time.

If Gore had done even a halfway decent job on the debates, he would have prevented Bush from coming close in 2000. But now that we have seen the horrific Bush presidency, it's a different story.

[JohnnyFianna1]

17. This is questionable

Actually Gore beat Bush in the first debate, but the public reaction was negative. His advisers told him to cool it off and he did, tying in the last 2 debates.

[trumad]

18. Gore came back from a 15 point deficit

at the beginning of the election and beat Bush by 500 thousand votes...

If Nader did not run in 2000 Gore would have been elected. To this day I shake my head in disbelief when a Nader lover says that the 90 thousand votes he got in Florida did not matter.

Oh what do we expect from idiot Nader lovers anyway.

[kaitykaity]

14. I've acknowledged that Gore didn't run the greatest

campaign I've ever seen. Gore even acknowledged that.

Ralph Nader (and his supporters) has NEVER acknowledged his role in 2000 and admitted that his being in the race tipped the scale in Florida to Bush.

When Saint Ralph takes responsibility and asks for forgiveness, I might not be so angry at posts like this.

[Cuban_Liberal]

16. Let's blame Donna Brazille

She headed up THE sorriest excuse for a campaign our party has put forth in 50 years...

[togiak]

20. All are to blame

Gore is to blame for running such a crappy campaign. He should've beat Bush by a wider margin. He was so personally unlikeable and incapable of articulating his record and vision that he drove people into the arms of Bush.

Nader voters are to blame because the issue came up over and over again how a vote for Nader can tip the election in Bush's favor. Florida was a known battleground state and yet there were almost 100,000 Nader voters in FL and Gore only lost by less than 600. Given how far to the left most Nader voters are it is almost like they wanted to cut off their noses to spite their faces.

As for the crossover votes, that happens in all elections. There were crossovers from the Republican party too.

[nannygoat]

21. What noone seems to mention is the 24/7 savaging that Gore

got from the media.

Check out this wonderful series from the Daily Howler. Included is the link to a study done which showed the skewed coverage that Gore got.

WHY GOOD GUYS SLEPT (PART 4)! Why did “good guy” pundits sleep? Citizens should demand explanations:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh122002.shtml

<snip>

WE’VE GOT YOUR STUDY RIGHT HERE: Is the press corps spilling with liberal bias? In Tuesday’s Post, Michael Kelly
presented a Lichter study of Campaign 2000 which seemed to suggest that Bush and Gore got roughly similar press coverage.
(To Kelly, of course, data suggesting similar treatment were evidence of continuing liberal bias. See THE DAILY HOWLER,
12/19/02.) To state the obvious, it’s almost impossible to examine press coverage in the quantitative, “objective” way
Lichter attempts. But as we mentioned, the particular study which Kelly cited covered network evening newscasts only, and
it included the one brief period of the twenty-month race when Bush got worse coverage than Gore. One wider study of the
2000 coverage gives a quite different impression.

The study was released on July 28, 2000. “According to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Democrat Al Gore
was far more likely to be the subject of negative news stories this year,” Judy Woodruff reported on Inside Politics. “Forty-two
percent of Gore stories covered the degree to which he is tainted by scandal…When the media reported on Bush,” she
continued, “it was more likely to deal with positive themes. Forty percent of all stories were on Bush’s main campaign message,
that he’s a different kind of Republican.”

[HFishbine]

23. That's another good point

and one that furthers the notion that the Gore "loss" cannot be reduced to a single factor.