I cannot believe we are still arguing about Nader

[MadHound]

22. We're still arguing about Nader because he is convenient scapegoat

He can be used to blind people to Democratic shortcomings. He can be used as the "daily hate", in order to keep party members loyal. He can be used in order to demonize those pesky liberals. He can be used to obscure the fact that our election system is badly broken, and nothing is being done about it.

That is why we still argue about Nader.

The fact of the matter is that Nader's run in '00 did not swing the election in Bush's favor. In fact, according to Al From, then head of the DLC, Nader's place in the race acutally helped Gore. "The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race. "
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=127&subid=179&contentid=2919

Furthermore, not only did Gore run a bad campaign, he ran an even worse recount. Journalist Greg Palast approached the Gore campaign early on in the recount with reams of solid evidence that fifty thousand voters(and the number was rising) had been deprived of their vote by Katherine Harrison working in concert with the Bush campaign. Now think of this, here you are in a tight recount race, and you are handed the means with which to banish your opponent to the political wilderness forever. What would you do? I imagine most of us would go public ASAP. Gore didn't, instead, he remained mum, and ultimately 100,000 plus voters were disenfranchised with hardly a peep, and nothing approaching justice.

Think about this now, Gore was handed not only the election on a silver platter, but the means with which he could banish the Bush family to the political wilderness forever. But what does he do? Nothing, not a damn thing.

Oh, and let's not forget that it was the Supreme Court who ultimately decided this mess.

But nooo, apparently some people can't handle the fact that the Dems screwed up, that they didn't have the backbone to fight back, that perhaps they were, to one degree or another, complicit with the Bush debacle. No no nonono, can't be.

So instead they find a scapegoat in Nader, and continue to keep on bashing him twelve years later.

Sad, really, truly sad.