Why is it *my* #%^*ing fault?

[Jim Lane]

102. Yes, that is indeed what the Nader loyalists invariably say.

If you yourself are not a Nader loyalist, fine. Nevertheless, those Nader loyalists do exist and they do make illogical arguments.

Yes, Nader had a legal right to run on a third-party ticket. Gore had a legal right to pick Lieberman as his running mate. Neither of these truisms stops us from addressing the serious issue, namely, what was the consequence of that legally permissible decision. It's perfectly consistent to say "He had the right to choose this way or that way, he exercised that right by choosing this way, and his choice turned out to be one of the reasons Bush became President."

Was the Lieberman choice one such reason? We can never know for sure. One thing that jumps out at me, though, is that you're talking about popular votes while I was talking about electoral votes. Any Lieberman-based increase or decrease in Gore's winning margin in California was immaterial to the outcome.

As to those popular votes, though, there were factors on each side. You're absolutely right that one of Gore's problems was the likeability thing. Another of his problems, though, was some people's lingering distaste for Clinton's adultery. I think it was more important to the electorate as a whole than it was to the ideologically oriented progressives who would go on to sign up for DU. Lieberman had criticized Clinton and had an image of personal rectitude. Partly for that reason, he was also perceived as somewhat more conservative than other possible running mates (though his Senate voting record up to that point was less conservative than in his final term). I'm sure he helped the ticket appeal to some swing voters who felt themselves more conservative than Gore but more liberal than Bush.

As to likeability, I don't know how much any running mate could have helped. Whom was Gore supposed to pick, Clint Huxtable? I focused on Kerry, who was reported to be the other top contender and who might have delivered New Hampshire, but he's also not exactly a have-a-beer-with type, at least to most voters.

Finally, getting back to Nader: I said that we can't know for sure if a different VP pick would have made a difference. We can, however, know, with a very very high degree of confidence, that a Nader decision not to run in the general election would have prevented the Bush presidency. Without Nader on the ballot, his voters would have done all sorts of things (stay home, write him in, leave the line blank, vote for whatever lesser-known candidate carried the Green banner, etc.). The only ones who matter are those who would have voted for Gore or for Bush. Nader's own polling of his voters showed that those who would have voted for Gore minus those who would have voted for Bush would have been enough to deliver a Florida margin for Gore that all the cheating in the world couldn't undo.

There can't be any serious doubt that Nader's decision to exercise his Constitutional right to run was one of the factors that resulted in the Bush presidency.