General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: David Carr-NY Times "For One Night at Fox, News tops Agenda"- article & MY RANT against CTers. [View all]graham4anything
(11,464 posts)Last edited Fri Nov 23, 2012, 08:11 PM - Edit history (1)
so 2000 and 2004 when Nader ran, or 1976 when John Anderson ran, etc. will never happen again.
3rd party votes in a Presidential are for all time repudiated.
(now, if one of the 3rd parties replace the republicans and are then one of two parties, that would be different).
Everyone who voted for Nader DIRECTLY made the pool of available voters for Gore and Kerry that much smaller.
I will give you and example in a lower on the ballot election
Say there are 3 candidates for freeholder and the top 2 candidates will be elected.
Total of 1000 voters in our example here. That means 2000 total spaces available.
Candidate A gets 800 votes out of 2000 total. (so 200 voters did not vote for candidate A as either of their choices and there are 1200 available votes left.)
Candidate B gets 500 votes and that means to get elected,
Candidate C needs to pick up 501 of the remaining 700 votes, meaning they would need a larger % of the total then candidate A or B theoretically would have.
To be sure of the victory to win, Candidate C needs to make sure their voters DO NOT vote for a second candidate.(even though everyone can vote for 2 different people out of 3).
It is in candidate c's self-interest that the available pool of 2000 is whittled down to say only 1500 and have their 500 votes come from people who do not vote for the other and leave that blank.
So every vote for Ralph Nader made the Al Gore votes that much harder to attain.It is inconceivable that Gore would not have won NH had Nader not been on the ballot.
Making florida irrelevant to 2000 at all.
It is why we always need to have and then keep the different minorities who together are the majority.And to not split the vote or be angry at a candidate for not giving them their wedge issue as quick as possible.
Now to answer direct what you said about Nader- by 2008, almost NO ONE wasted their vote
and Nader got next to nothing. Same in 2012 with the democrat 3rd parties.
People now know not to waste their vote.
Something they didn't in 2008.
so you have the reasons about Nader wrong or backward or attempting to fit your meme.
When it's nothing sinister at all.
And in 2012, people know for sure BOTH SIDES ARE NOT THE SAME.
Which was the #1 lie of both Nader and Paul.
(Ross Perot is a special case as he had a personal grudge and the money to waste. I am convinced though he never wanted to win, but might have. He just wanted to make sure 41 didn't win because of that personal grudge (and you know it was a 41-Perot grudge, because later on he backed W against Gore.