President Obama Richly Deserves to Be Dumped

[coalition_unwilling]

44. You allege that, because McCarthy mounted his challenge to LBJ, we ended up

with Nixon. I'd like to quote from DUer Ken Burch's post in a different OP I began about a progressive challenger to Obama in the 2012 New Hampshire primary:

"And, if you know anything at all about 1968, you'd realize that it was LBJ's fault that Nixon defeated Humphrey in the fall.

Nixon forced Humphrey, who probably could have won the nomination on his own merits, to stand as the "status quo" candidate and forced Humphrey to vote for an arrogantly rignt-wing and pro-keep the war going plank on Vietnam, thus making it all-but-impossible for progressives to vote for Humphrey as long as he stayed with that. This insistence on Johnson's part was what ultimately led to protests that were violently suppressed by the Chicago police.

Then, when Humphrey realized he was going to stay thirteen points behind until the end if he didn't break with Johnson at all and made his Salt Late City speech announcing his own, more independent position, Johnson froze Humphrey's access to funds from major party donors, which, even though Humphrey was able to nearly wipe out Nixon's lead on his own, guaranteed Nixon's narrow victory-and Johnson further guaranteed it when he refused to go public with the proof he had that Nixon's campaign had interfered in the Paris Peace Talks.

So no, the challenge to Johnson didn't cause Nixon's win-Johnson did."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11007

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I did not imply that primaries were either the primary or secondary mechanism by which candidates were nominated in 1968. But the fact remains that Humphrey ran in and won no primaries. It is far more reasonable to argue that the reason we got Nixon in '68 is that Humphrey was the Democratic machine's nominee, and thus tied almost to the last minute to the Vietnam policies of the LBJ administration, and not that McCarthy challenged those policies.

Same thing goes for Florida in 2000. The Supreme Court stopped the count of the votes. Subsequent media analysis showed that, NO MATTER WHAT METHOD IS USED TO COUNT BALLOTS NOR WHAT DEFINITIONS OF VALID BALLOTS ARE USED, Gore wins Florida. But only if ALL THE VOTES are counted. That has nothing to do with Nader and everything to do with the bloodless coup d'etat conducted by the Supreme Court that thwarted the popular will, the Gore campaign's ineptitude in initiating and managing the recount process and Gore's unwillingness to adopt the necessary degree of ruthlessness for that popular will to prevail. In other words, no one held a gun to Gore's head and forced him to concede after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Bush v. Gore. Would a ruthlessness that could well have resulted in civil war have been preferable to the soft fascism we got for 8 years? I guess that's an argument that will last through the ages.

Here's the part of the Wikipedia article that your selective excerpting (like your earlier eliding of history) neglects to include:

Review of all ballots statewide (never undertaken)
• Standard as set by each county canvassing board during their survey Gore by 171
• Fully punched chad and limited marks on optical ballots Gore by 115
• Any dimples or optical mark Gore by 107
• One corner of chad detached or optical mark Gore by 60

In all four categories above, GORE wins. Nader has nothing to do with it. Therefore, don't blame Nader. Blame the Supreme Court. It didn't give a shit about 'one man, one vote' or it would have tossed out Bush v. Gore, tossed out the Florida Supreme Court's decision and ordered a full manual recount of the entire state.