Elie Mystal's response to Ralph Nader

[In It to Win It]

Ralph Nader
@RalphNader

A dictatorial, unelected majority in the Supreme Court has just rendered America a dictatorial president above the law. Thank you Hillary Clinton, whose blundering campaign let the dictatorial Trump become president and led to a rightwing dictatorial majority on the Supreme Court. -R

Elie Mystal
@ElieNYC

MAYBE CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS ISN'T THERE TO WRITE THIS OPINION TODAY IF YOU DON' T RUN FOR PRESIDENT OR DID YOU THINK PEOPLE WOULD FORGET THAT ON TODAY OF ALL MOTHERFUCKING DAYS???

Link to tweet

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Ralph Nader is responsible in large part for today's ruling

[BootinUp]

2. I have the same feeling in the pit of

My stomach as I did after the infamous Florida ballot SC case.

[CBHagman]

10. Oh, yes.

And I recall he tried to dodge blame for the 2000 presidential election debacle. I recall he even suggested an Al Gore presidency would be essentially the same as a Dubya presidency. I also recall that people weren't fooled by Nader's self-righteous act.

I hope those who were assigned to prep his obituary for major newspapers spared space for 2000 and what might have been.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. Ralph Nader can go piss up a rope.

[2naSalit]

4. Suddenly...

I no longer feel safe in my own country, in my home and am now looking at another country to hang around in until I pass away.

[GreenWave]

5. The purge did it, not ralphie boy.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-the-2000-election-in-florida-led-to-a-new-wave-of-voter-disenfranchisement/

[progree]

8. It was a combination of several factors that resulted in GW Bush's win. ALL were essential to producing that outcome

The following is from https://democraticunderground.com/100216793000#post32
which has several more posts from people trying unsuccessfully to argue that Nader's candidacy didn't affect the outcome (besides #32, #34, #35, #57, #73)

First, note that officially, Bush beat Gore by 537 votes in Florida. Nader got 97,488 votes in Florida. {1}

I have heard and read Nader make the dubious claim:

"In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all." {2}

Well, that still means a net of 13%, or 12,665, more votes would have gone to Gore than to Bush {2}. That's overwhelming more than the 537 vote Bush victory margin.

This one has 21% would have voted for Bush, and 47% would have voted for Gore, for a 26% gap, or 25,347 more votes for Gore than Bush {3}

{1} http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html
{2} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader_presidential_campaign,_2000
{3} http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html
` http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nader-to-crash-dems-party/

Yes, yes, I know there were a number of reasons Bush officially beat Gore -- ALL of them were essential to Bush's victory -- IF EVEN ONE of these elements had been missing, Bush would have officially lost,

e.g. besides Nader’s candidacy, Kathleen Harris purging the voting lists of supposed felons, Gore running a poor campaign (in so so many ways), media dubbing Gore a serial liar (Love Story and all that), the butterfly ballots giving Gore's votes to Buchanan, the U.S. Supreme Court stopping the recount -- yada.

But it doesn't wipe out the fact that even with all that, Gore would have won if not for Nader drawing thousands more votes away from Gore than from Bush.

As for the Supreme Court -- if the vote count on election night and the days and weeks after the election had put Gore ahead by 12,000 or 25,000 votes instead of down by 500 or 600, it would unlikely have gone to the Supreme Court; and even less likely that they would have declared the 12,000 or 25,000 vote count loser to be the winner of Florida's electoral votes.

And Nader broke his pledge (made when getting petition signatures to get on the ballot in several states) to not campaign in swing states, and instead did his utmost to defeat Gore. And yet Michael Moore supported him all the way.

And Nader trashing the Democrats as being as bad as the Republicans no doubt also affected some voters to not vote for a president or to stay home - things not captured in the election statistics.

The purge did it, not ralphie boy.

It was a combination. I don't doubt that there were many factors larger than Nader being on the ballot that caused the official Bush win and Gore loss, including, many times over, the voter purges. But had any element mentioned in the above post been absent, Gore would have been inaugurated.

[GoreWon2000]

12. bushtief won nothing

Having spent 15 of my 24 years working on dem election campaigns in Florida, I can say that bushthief won nothing. bushthief waged an all out assault on American democracy in Florida in 2000 because he knew he couldn't win if all of the votes were counted. The alleged 537 vote total was created by the Jeb/Harris cabal because they flatly refused to follow Florida election law and count all of the uncounted Florida votes because they knew that counting all of the uncounted votes meant victory for Al Gore. Several hundred thousand uncounted Florida votes still sit uncounted in the Florida archives. Most of these votes are located in the largest and most heavily democratic voting counties in Florida. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who these voters voted for. It sure wasn't for bushthief
The corporate media was a major problem. They made no effort to cover up their support for bushthief while they relentlessly trashed Al Gore with numerous false allegations. The corporate media's war against Al Gore is well documented in the archives of the Daily Howler blog. Too many in the progressive media spent campaign 2000 helping Nader spread his big lie that there were no differences between Al Gore and bushthief. Despite all of this, Al Gore still got the most votes both in Florida and nationally.
The repug controlled SCOTUS saw an opportunity to impose their preferred Presidential candidate on the country and trash the will of we the people and they took it. Sandra Day O'Connor made no bones about the fact that she wanted to retire and she did not want Al Gore to appoint her SCOTUS successor.
The illegal Jeb/Harris felon purge was also a factor because it illegally removed more than 50,000 legally registered mostly African American democrats from Florida's voting rolls in 1999 and 2000.
In the end, Nader can never escape the ugly truth that he helped install bushthief in the White House. Nader was in Miami the last weekend before election day 2000 spreading his big lie that their were no differences between Al Gore and bushthief and knowing full well that Florida was a crucial battleground state. Florida was one of the crucial battleground states that Nader ran his $5 million tv ad campaign again spreading his big lie that was paid for by the repug leadership council which was a subsidiary of the repug national committee.

[NBachers]

6. Nader should be pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes and be pied in the face every time he steps out his door.

[Danmel]

9. He should be hung by his toenails

And pecked to death by birds.

[JohnSJ]

7. Go F**K yourself ralph nader, jill stein, and the other self-identified progressives who refused to vote for Hillary.

[GoreWon2000]

11. Bravo Ellie Mystal!

I hope Nader fries in Hell for all eternity for what he did to our country in 2000. I've had quite enough of Nader and his out of control ego. Nader needs to take a good look in the mirror and face the ugly truth that what he did in 2000 put our country at the doorstep of becoming a fascist dictatorship. Nader still refuses to take responsibility for what he did to our country in 2000 and the repug help inpaying for his $5 million tv ad campaign that spread Nader's big lie in crucial battleground states like Florida which made it possible for bushthief to get close enough to have his little brother and campaign co-chair steal the election in Florida for him.