So I know that folks here at BMG are all over the place on whether or not to vote YES on Question 2 (which I, of course, support), but I thought everyone might enjoy this bit of fun:
Please share widely!
Reality-based commentary on politics.
Insert Christy Mihos for Ralph Nader, as desired.
This is the ANTIDOTE to Naderism. Think Florida, 2000, with the Greens using their ballot line to endorse Gore.
You don’t really believe that do you? Nader was nominated/endorsed by the green party because they didn’t see enough of a difference between Bush and Gore, and didn’t want to vote for what they percieved of “a lesser of two evils”. If the Greens wanted to “endorse Gore” they simply wouldn’t have run a candidate…think about it
Who have voted for the Green Party did so because they prefer the Greens over the Democrats, but all of them also prefer Democrats over Republicans and some expressed feeling guilt over voting for Nader in 2000.
that Nader spoiled the election? Stop blaming the Greens for 2000 when all of the evidence leads to Katherin Harris and her Florida/Nat’l GOP fascists mass removing people of color from voter rolls. Not to mention that the Supreme Court put Bush in office, after the recounts were stopped- so please stop perpetuating this lie that Nader somehow had something to do with Bush being in office.
And the tsunami! And the Flying Monkeys! and…and…
If it salves your guilty conscience to believe that Ralph Nader and the Greens didn’t spoil the election, then so be it. Without Nader, Gore would have won Florida in spite of all the dirty tricks from the Bush campaign.
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p>The extreme left shares some– not all- of the blame for what happened in Florida, just as the extreme right does.
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p>(That said, I would point out that Nader’s presence on the ballot was a benefit to the Democrats in Washington state, as he did drag out some folks who would otherwise have stayed home; this allowed Maria Cantwell to eke out a narrow victory against Slade Gordon.)
The sooner leftists place the blame where it lies, with the neo-conservatives, the better. Stop blaming people for participating in democracy and challenging the corporate dominated electoral system. Start working for electoral reform. I repeat, instant run-off voting.
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Besides, one could argue with equal clout that Bush and Gore spoiled Nader’s victory.
we actually posted this on thefutureofprogress.com last week. so funny.
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mw
Is there a thread on BMG about the ballot initiatives? I’m interested to read why anyone is supporting #2. It seems to me, based on the examples of outcomes from it I’ve read, like it will make no real difference in elections and the behaviors of candidates. Thoughts? Thanks.
http://www.bluemassgroup.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=4719
And I STILL voted No on 2, because I voted absentee!
…although your daily paper did endorse the idea:
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“Naturally, the opponents of Question 2 in the Legislature want to preserve the two-party (or in this state’s case, the one-party), winner-take-all system. Rep. Anthony Petrucelli, D-East Boston, chairman of the House Committee on Election Laws, says in the official state voting guide that a change would make the ballot too confusing. ‘Remember the mess in Florida…. Elections should be about voters, not political movements and candidates,’ he writes.
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He can’t be serious. By encouraging coalitions – which would likely be ad hoc, built around specific ideas – the measure has the potential to energize state politics for the better. How many new people would join the process if their families, their neighborhood and their community stood to gain a toehold in the process?
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That’s not confusion, Rep. Petrucelli. It’s democracy.”
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Feel free to read the whole thing by going to the Cape Cod Times.
The Times has endorsed EVERY Democrat – even the ethically challanged Atsalis with his imaginary charity that he organized right after the Herald called him on it after 3 years of big ticket legislatitve golf outings and no response as to where the money went (so far, it’s a single $1,000 scholarship for this year only!).
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CONGRATS on snagging THEIR approbation!
rather have it than not, given that most people in this state have no idea what question 2 is about anyway :).
That episode made me feel ill when it came out, and it still makes me feel ill. The whole idea that both candidates were “exactly the same” was illogical and unreasonable and, oh yeah, patently UNTRUE. Republican spinmeisters were the ones that first put it out there, idealistic (but stupid) young folks picked up the rallying cry and while some voted for Nader, most just stayed home. It was a sad, sad day for democracy and I think it’s pretty obvious now that both candidates were quite different.
…long before ‘republican spinmeisters’ got into the mix. And though the claim that Republicans and Democrats are the same is clearly invalid, the notion still has something to it; the Republican and Democratic parties do work with and sere many of the same interests.
Hitler and Ghandi were both vegetarians, but that doesn’t make them the same. Che Guerva and [insert the name of any well-born politician] both came from priveledged backgrounds and used their education to forment change, but that doesn’t make them the same. Sure you can find common ideologies amongst disparate people, but there is nothing substantial to the claim that the Bush administration is comperable to what the Gore administration would have been.
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As for who started it, maybe the Republican spinners weren’t the very first people to say it, but they seized it and used it in their grass roots way in a very, very effective campaign that put the heir apparent to a very popular administration back at ground zero, when he really should have been running from a serious head start.
You can find random similarities between two very different groups and that doesn’t prove that they’re in any way ‘the same.’ The people making this argument, though, aren’t just finding random similarities- they’re showing similar underlying patterns, motives, and interests.
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It’s not as simple as Bush vs. Gore because the political system is much more complex than the upper tier of the Executive branch.
I don’t think that making ballots more confusing is the best way to support multiple parties, and it does nothing to fix the “lesser of two evils” problem inherent in our current voting system.
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Instead lets implement some form of preference voting.
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The Green-Rainbow Party isn’t donating its ballot line to the Dems. So if you think Q2 is somehow going to stop the Greens from running candidates and spoiling your candidates, which you seem to think are more entitled to votes than other candidates, you’re in for a surprise.
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Fusion adds more checkboxes, not more choices. If this passes, both major parties will setup issue parties like the WFP and then just run major party candidates on their ballot lines. How accountable will the major party candidates be to these issue party votes? There is no guarentee.
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If Democrats are worried about spoiler, stop this fusion distraction stuff and start pushing IRV! If we work together, we can end up with a better system for everyone- no spoilers OR negative campaigning (b/c negative campaigning is incompatable or much harder at the very least with IRV).
No democrats are going to be caught dead putting the Green party under their name.
… because the Greens don’t accept any sort of support from corporate sources, so yeah, it would be suicidal to the Democrats to put a Green on their ballot lines, because Greens are interested in reigning in corporations, not enabling them.