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[lostincalifornia]

This message was self-deleted by its author (lostincalifornia) on Sat Aug 2, 2014, 11:36 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[leftstreet]

1. Why do Democrats confirm RW justices?

[lostincalifornia]

5. You are absolutely right. However, it is far better to have someone in their who appoints

progressives

[dsc]

16. the same reason the GOP confirms left wing ones

under our system the President, not the Senate, gets to name Supreme Court justices. One, count it one, person was rejected for solely ideological reasons, that would be Bork who was sunk by moderate GOPers and all Dems. Ginsburg was a nearly unanimous confirmation as was Breyer. Both Sotomayor and Kagan got more GOP votes than Alito got Dem votes.

[el_bryanto]

2. That's true. There's also a difference between progressive Democrats and wall street Democrats.

I suppose I'd prefer to support Progressive Democrats in primaries, for example.

Bryant

[ChisolmTrailDem]

3. To whom, exactly, are you talking? nt

[Renew Deal]

6. You. This is all your fault.

[lostincalifornia]

7. I am simply making a comment, not specifically directed at anyone personally. There is a difference

between appointments made by Democrats verses republicans

[djean111]

11. My guess would be to those who have not accepted Hillary as THE candidate, as yet.

More boogyman stuff.

[sharp_stick]

13. I don't think so

But it would likely apply to the douchbags that don't vote for the actual Democratic nominee, whoever that might be.

[DanTex]

25. Maybe the 100+ people who recced this OP, for starters...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025075831

[djean111]

4. We are assuming a Wall Street-financed Dem president will appoint a liberal judge.

[Renew Deal]

8. He already appointed two.

[lostincalifornia]

12. Yes, and those two voted with the progressives on this

[lostincalifornia]

10. As far as women's rights are concerned compared to a republican they sure will

[Democat]

9. But Ralph Nader said Gore and Bush are the same!

Why would he lie?

[winter is coming]

19. A better question would be: why couldn't Al Gore convince people that

"Bush and Gore are the same" was a ridiculous proposition from the get-go?

[jeff47]

21. Yes, Gore was in such control of the media that they criticized him

for kissing his wife and wearing shirts.

Clearly he should have been able to get those same people to talk up the differences between him and W.

[winter is coming]

22. Given all the millions the Democratic Party had to spend, they should have been able to do

a better job of shifting the narrative. Gore wasn't an unknown, and that was part of the problem. As Vice President, he got dinged for being associated with the Clinton Administration.

[jeff47]

23. Oh bullshit.

Again, the media hated the guy. He could have handed out $100 bills to the reporters and they would have criticized how he held his hand.

[Jim Lane]

24. So people who spread lies get a pass if the other side doesn't do the best possible refutation?

To take another example, Bush lied us into war with Iraq. Some people were pointing out that the pretext for war was flimsy, but the majority of the public was swept up in the jingoistic fervor, and Congress voted accordingly.

Nevertheless, no one would ask: Why couldn't the antiwar movement convince people that "Saddam is a threat to us" was a ridiculous proposition from the get-go?

To the extent we can learn anything from past failures, sure, it's worth it to improve our messaging for the future -- but that doesn't excuse the people who hyped the supposed Iraqi threat, and it doesn't excuse the people who downplayed the differences between Bush and Gore.

[winter is coming]

26. I didn't claim that people who spread lies get a free pass.

My point was that Nader's actions don't exist in a vacuum. If Gore had run a good campaign instead of a lousy one, Nader voters would have been irrelevant. I don't think it's appropriate to equate Gore's situation with that of the antiwar protestors: Gore had a shit-ton of money and the organization of the Dem Party behind him, while the antiwar movement was a grassroots, DIY affair.

[Jim Lane]

28. NO ONE's actions exist in a vacuum.

Nader still deserves all the opprobrium heaped upon him, and today's decisions only add to his legacy of infamy.

Sure, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see how Gore could have won. If he had spent one day more campaigning in Florida, he might have won it by a cheatproof margin. Alternatively, if he had skipped one day in Florida, and spent it instead in New Hampshire, he might have legitimately lost Florida, but won New Hampshire, and thus become President. And if he had tacked further to the right, he might have influenced some progressives to vote for Nader in California (no effect) and Florida (again, producing a legitimate win for Bush), but he might have carried his more conservative home state of Tennessee, thus becoming President.

Of course, the Naderites who bash Gore never want to consider the possibility that he could have won by being more conservative. It's always more pleasant to think, "A candidate whose views were like mine would have a better chance of winning." Those of us in the reality-based community know that that isn't always true.

I don't know if you personally are a Naderite or not, but your emphasis is certainly on Gore's failure to counteract Nader's bullshit. My emphasis is on Nader's spewing of the bullshit in the first place.

[winter is coming]

29. And yet, Nader's the one who gets the blame primarily (and sometimes solely),

as if the SC hadn't chosen to destroy its credibility, as if butterfly ballots never existed, as if Dems hadn't voted for Bush, as if Jeb hadn't been the governor of Florida, as if Gore had run a strong campaign, as if the CBC had never stood up and gone unsupported, etc., etc.

You're way off base in assuming that because I reject the "Nader is teh Satan!" narrative that I supported Nader. I've never given two shits about that blowhard. My emphasis is on Gore's failure to short-circuit Nader's narrative because the election was Gore's to lose and he blew it. If you seriously think that there were people who never would have wondered if the difference between parties was significant to them absent Nader's campaign, I've got a bridge to sell you.

[Jim Lane]

30. DUers criticize Nader because, here, criticizing SCOTUS or Harris is preaching to the choir.

You don't see many posts on DU criticizing the Fugitive Slave Act. There's just no point. No one would be justified in inferring that we're pro-slavery.

We tend to post on subjects that are in the news now, or where we think there's a lesson to be learned for the future, or where there's disagreement on DU and we want to weigh in. Nader's decision to run a third-party campaign in 2000 falls in both the second and third categories.

I really don't feel that, every time I mention my disagreement with Nader's decision to exercise his constitutional right to run, I absolutely must append a denunciation of Katherine Harris's illegal voter purge. If that omission bothers you, please consider such a denunciation to be incorporated by reference in all my future posts.

You write:

If you seriously think that there were people who never would have wondered if the difference between parties was significant to them absent Nader's campaign, I've got a bridge to sell you.

OK, back atcha: If you seriously think that the number of people who agreed with the false equivalence did NOT increase as a result of Nader's campaign, and that Bush would have gotten Florida's electoral votes even if Nader had not been on the ballot drawing nearly 100,000 votes, then I'll sell that bridge right back to you for twice what I paid.

[winter is coming]

31. On a day when the SC has yet again handed down an awful decision,

we get an OP about the 2000 election... and it's not about the SC decision but about Nader.

And I'll take that bridge, thanks. Someone who feels alienated enough to have voted third party in an important swing state wouldn't have obediently turned out to support either mainstream candidate in the absence of a third party candidate. Everybody knew that Nader was no-hoper. Instead of spinning our wheels and once again burning Nader in effigy at this late date, we should be looking harder at what the Dem party might do to get those alienated voters to cast something other than a protest vote in future elections.

[Jim Lane]

32. Your cheerful assumption is contradicted by the data.

You write, "Someone who feels alienated enough to have voted third party in an important swing state wouldn't have obediently turned out to support either mainstream candidate in the absence of a third party candidate." You seem to be implying that Nader's decision to run made no difference. Everything I've seen about the 2000 election disputes that.

Nader had enormous personal credibility and star power. He pulled many more votes than some generic no-name Green Party candidate would have.

The Naderites have a valid point that we can't simply assume that, without his candidacy, all his votes would have gone to Gore. If Nader had exercised his right to not run, some of his voters would have voted for whichever candidate was on the Green line; some would have voted for some other minor-party candidate; some would have written in Nader or someone else; some would have left the presidential vote blank; and some would have stayed home altogether. All these people would have made themselves irrelevant to the election, with or without Nader, so his candidacy made no difference as to them.

Some, however, would have voted for Gore, and a few even for Bush. The key statistic is (percentage who would have voted for Gore) minus (percentage who would have voted for Bush) times (total number of Nader votes). That's the net number of votes that Nader's decision to run cost Gore.

Nader's own website, after the election, cited exit polling that the difference was 13 percentage points. I personally think that's a very low estimate. The polling was done at the end of a long campaign in which Nader had been denouncing Gore and in which Gore's supporters had been trying to throw Nader off the ballot anywhere they could. There was a lot of ill-will. If, in 1999, Nader had decided not to run, a lot of those people who defiantly said in November 2000 that they would've voted for some other protest candidate would, in fact, have voted for Gore, however unenthusiastically. Nevertheless, even if we take the 13 percent figure as correct, it would have produced a huge swing to Gore in Florida, more than Jeb could have stolen.

I completely agree with your suggested agenda of motivating alienated people to vote. I add, however, that the agenda must include discouraging no-hoper candidates from running in the general election. In that context, I note that Nader himself has never said anything like, "Well, I meant well, but in hindsight I can see that it worked out badly." As William F. Buckley said, those who do not learn from history are condemned to listen to those who do.

Of course, I'm in favor of discouraging no-hoper progressive candidates. I doubt that Sarah Palin will run as a third-party candidate in 2016, but if she actually considers it, the chance for a "Nader of the right" should be encouraged as much as possible.

[DonCoquixote]

14. Sotomayor and Kagan

Twp people that many ignore, yet they have been all the doifference, with gay marriage, with the aca, and now this.

[lostincalifornia]

15. absolutely

[Logical]

17. Is this whining about the DU? Nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

18. Nope, it isn't. It's more an observation about political realities. n/t

[SidDithers]

20. DU rec. Fuck the "not a dime's worth of difference" types...nt

Sid

[randys1]

27. that is what i keep saying