Comments on: A puzzle about the polls

By: geo

geo — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:31:19 +0000

Because they wish to avoid losing in the future

Perhaps Democrats also wish to deflect Nader’s devastating criticisms of their miserable (though not, of course, as bad as the Republicans’) policy positions.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:13:29 +0000

Why are so many Dems so invested in blaming Nader and his voters for the 2000 loss? An Al Gore loss couldn't have happened. It didn't happen.

By: Barbar

Barbar — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:03:54 +0000

If Nader supporters shared my unreflective assumption that the Dems were not completely inept they might well have thought that there was a not a large long-term cost to Gore losing.

Fantastic!

By: harry b

harry b — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:57:19 +0000

Neither of your examples constitute errors of logic, and nor did anyone make either of the claims you cite. So, we’re all in agreement!

By: Barbar

Barbar — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:54:29 +0000

I’m not so interested in blaming Nader voters as I am in pointing out in ridiculous errors in logic and fact (for example, that all the negative consequences of Bush’s presidency can be blamed on the ‘incompetence’ of the Democratic Party, or that Nader contributed anything to the Green Party’s nonexistent long-term success).

By: Cryptec Nid

Cryptec Nid — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:34:27 +0000

Because they wish to avoid losing in the future.

By: harry b

harry b — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:35:20 +0000

Why are so many Dems so invested in blaming Nader and his voters for the 2000 loss?

By: geo

geo — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:11:27 +0000

Dear KAS,

It seems to me that by not voting for the candidate you know (or ought to know) is much the best one, ie, Nader, you are helping to “predetermine” the continuance of our irrational and corrupt two-party oligarchy. Perhaps we Nader voters are not altogether simplistic.

By: Harry

Harry — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:40:52 +0000

LFC —yes, I didn’t mean to imply that the belief was false (but see how it might have seemed that way).

By: KAS

KAS — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:46:58 +0000

I know someone whom is voting for Nadar; in their answer as to why, they said it was because they liked him the most out of all the candidate’s; when I pointed out that by voting for a predetermined loser instead of the best of the worst (if you don’t like either that is) that the affect is not simply irrelevant, it’s detrimental- they said that it was just ‘something’ about Obama they didn’t like and McCain/Palin scared them. I took it as racism on the Obama end, whether she recognized it or not and later learned that was the case among her parents…

I think many, many people are simplistic and though they portray reason as it is far more sociologically accepted; feelings end up ruling their decision making process…

KAS

By: Alex Gregory

Alex Gregory — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:47:21 +0000

c.l.ball (#13): Ah, thanks. I misread the post; I should have known it couldn’t be anything so simple.

By: peter

peter — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:51:16 +0000

The phenom is yet more evidence for the empirical invalidity of the assumption of the Irrelevance of Independent Alternatives.

By: whomever1

whomever1 — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:05:33 +0000

Don’t forget the Party for Socialism and Liberation is running candidates too:
Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear.

By: Barbar

Barbar — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:40:50 +0000

Well, the Greens weren’t able to capture the Presidency and the Executive Branch but at least Nader’s run allowed them to win a few House seats and take over some local governments, and now they’re in much better shape than they were in 2000.

By: J Thomas

J Thomas — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:35:21 +0000

The Iraq War, meaning the invasion of Iraq and the complete dismantling of its military and the destruction of its economy, was a success.
Now it’s over.
Whoever was waging it, whoever wanted it fought, they won. It’s an occupation now, and has been for some time.
It will remain an occupation for a very long time, because that was the whole idea all along.

Well, we won the far fast, and it didn’t cost all that much. The occupation has cost us a whole lot more casualties and a whole lot more money and there’s no end in sight, no victory to look forward to.

The occupation is a whole lot more like a war than the war was. You can say it isn’t a war if you want to, but for most of us it’s a war we want ended. Officially you could stress that it isn’t an occupation either—we had to stop calling it an occupation because some of the things we were doing were officially war crimes during an occupation, but the Geneva conventions don’t apply to non-war/non-occupations. But these niceties are pretty much irrelevant.

I say it’s broccoli and I say the hell with it.