[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Energy, Elections, and the Internet

[Jeffrey Fisher <jfisher@igc.org>]

my argument is not that without a landslide gore is a failure. the argument is that
gore lost a lot of constituencies he quite arguably should have won, and he lost
them to bush. your only response to this is that the "significantly worse" prospect
of a bush administration somehow leads to the conclusion that "nader supporters need
to face" the fact that they did damage to gore.

(1) surely, a vote for nader was not a vote for gore. but (a) neither was a vote for
bush, and (b) i have yet to see any evidence that gore or his supporters are owning
up to anything they could have done differently to win this election; rather, they
carp at nader and nader voters for tossing the election. in this respect, a vote for
nader could be said to have "done damage" regardless of his prospects for matching
funds. that doesn't mean you can write off a bush win (if indeed he does win) to
nader-voters. if that's the extent of democratic party analysis of the strategy of
this campaign, then they are even less capable than i fear.

(2) the small margin only means that gore would only have had to have kept a few
clinton voters (or turned out a few more voters) to win in spite of the nader vote.

jeff

Law wrote:

> I will argue that even if you don't like the present state of US
> politics or the two primary candidates, the prospect of a Bush
> presidency is still significantly worse than the prospect of a Gore
> presidency. And, given the small margin and Nader's lack of any
> prospect, matching funds or not, a vote for Nader did damage. Nader
> supporters need to face this.
>
> The argument that without a landslide Gore is a failure, baffles me.
>
> Jim
>
> On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> > first of all, if gore had managed to win his home state, all of this would be
> > moot. perhaps before blaming nader, the gore campaign should remove the mote
> > from its eye and wonder what it could have done differently or better and ways
> > in which bush cut into the democatic coalition built by clinton. note that
> > gore lost vast numbers of people who voted for clinton twice.
> >
> > <..snip..>
> >
> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40555-2000Nov8.html
> >
> > <..snip..>

--
jeff fisher
dilettant
jfisher@igc.org
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
"I am the brand name. When all things began, the brand name already
was. The brand name dwelt with God, and what God was, the brand
name was. The brand name, then, was with God at the beginning, and
through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without
him." - Philip K. Dick
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