Here we are in the midst of what is turning out to be the most
controversial election ever. It was so easy when Reagan destroyed Mondale,
Bush killed Dukakis, and Clinton smacked Dole. Here in 2000, we have
contested ballots, missing returns, a popular vote winner who will lose,
and more lawyers than you can shake a pointed stick at. George W. Bush,
the pawn of the religious right and foe to any rational American, will
soon be declared president. At this writing, the electoral verdict is
still out, but it is only a matter of time before the legal bickering
ends, and the Democrats realize that it’s better for Al Gore to concede
than to drag their image, and the democratic process, through the shit.
The Gore campaign has been deeply criticized over the past few days
because of its strategy to focus only in a few key states and to forget
the rest. The strategy nearly paid off, but some of the borderline states
(like Colorado, Ohio, Tennessee, and Arkansas) fell to Bush when they
probably wouldn’t have if Gore had paid them a bit more attention. And
then there’s Florida. For such a stupid, useless state, it’s playing
the pivotal role in the election. Bush takes that too. And the presidency.
Gore should have also stressed the importance of the next president’s
appointing up to four Supreme Court justices during his term. In the next
10 – 15 years, we could see Woe vs. Wade overturned, see gay rights slip
into non-existence, and see an open door for school districts to force
Christianity down students’ throats. Gore may have blown it when he
spent so much time touting his responsible social security ideas and
denouncing Bush’s debt-driving tax cut proposals, instead of painting
Bush as the inexperienced, conservative hypocrite that he is. Still,
despite all of this, Gore should have won.
Enter the minor candidates. Da Bunny loved it when Pat Buchanan
entered the race. I figured the Religious Right Nazi’s would embrace the
bigot, and tons of votes would be siphoned from Bush. However, the
conservatives were smart. They realized from the get go that Buchanan was
unelectable. A vote for his extreme ideals, no matter how much the
conservatives might agree with them, would be a wasted vote. What’s
more, a vote for Buchanan would be a damaging vote. It would steal from
George W., and the conservatives certainly wouldn’t allow Al Gore to
assume the throne. Notice that none of the political pundits even touched
on this—they knew that Buchanan had no chance, and they realized that
the conservatives realized he had no chance. Collectively, the
conservatives threw their might behind Bush.
Ralph Nader is Pat Buchanan’s polar opposite. A liberal to the
core, Nader is a strong advocate for human rights and environmental
protection. What’s more, because he’s not completely extreme like
Buchanan, he’s theoretically electable, albeit not realistically
electable. After all, we live in a solid two party country. Sure, third
party candidates like Ross Perot seemingly have made some headway, but
their raw percentage of votes remains very low. When it comes to choosing
a president, we choose Republican or Democrat, regardless of how narrow
minded and stupid that position is. The danger of the third party
candidate comes when he’s aligned too closely with the party line of one
of the candidates and when this third party candidate is extremely
popular. Despite his chastising of Al Gore, Nader was not much different
from Gore, and Nader focused on a similar environmental and human right
agenda, although to a more liberal degree. Nader was also extremely
popular, having at one time spared us all from the horror that was the
Corvaire. However, because of the entrenched two party system, Nader knew
that he could only play the role of spoiler.
Nader stated that he didn’t care if he took votes away from Gore.
He was running for president, and, by golly, it was his job to take away
votes from the other candidates. However, he was certainly not going to
take any away from Bush or Buchanan because of their opposite political
positions, but there were a lot of stupid Democrats who would back him.
Here was where Nader began to emerge as an idiot. Despite his claim that
Gore was no different from Bush, Nader knew that a Gore presidency would
at least not hurt his causes. A Gore presidency may not advance Nader’s
causes to the degree that Nader would like, but Gore would not press any
legislature that would damage Nader’s ideals. Bush, on the other hand,
could seriously damage Nader’s causes. Bush, as a conservative and
former oilman, would throw human rights and the environment to the
wayside. Clearly, in every state where Bush won by a thin margin of votes,
Nader’s two or three percent cost Gore the victory and handed him a
loss. A spoiler is a non-playoff hockey team that knocks off another team
that is on the fringe of making the playoffs. An idiot is a man who causes
a non-threat to lose an election to a MAJOR threat, a threat that can
throw the U.S. into conservative turmoil for the next 15 – 20 years.
When a woman loses the right to control her body and gays lose their right
to domestic partner benefits, don’t blame Bush or his Supreme Court
appointments. Don’t blame Gore for losing to Bush. Blame Nader for
handing Bush the presidency, gift wrapped on a silver platter. Nader
picked a bad time to stroke his ego.
That’s only half of why Nader is an idiot; the bigger reason is
because he’s permanently stranded the Green Party as a minor party. A
strong candidate like Nader could have helped propel the Green Party into
popularity in the RIGHT ELECTION. This was not the right election. As Ross
Perot did with the Reform Party in 1992 (before the aberration of Buchanan
damned the Reform Party forever), the Green Party could have continued to
grow and gain supporters. However, in this all-important election, Nader
should have stepped aside. It was too important for the country to be used
as an experiment. Don’t get me wrong—as a liberal, Da Bunny here
supports the platform of the Green Party. In the right election, I might
have even voted for the Green Party candidate, especially for someone like
Ralph Nader. I say again, this was NOT THE RIGHT ELECTION—not where the
measly 3% of votes that Nader would garner across the country would help
to propel a great menace into office. Furthermore, the 3% of votes that
Nader received does not qualify the Greens for any federal funding in
future elections.
The Green Party was destined to be fed by disenchanted Democrats.
Now the Green Party and Ralph Nader have angered so many Democrats with
their reckless foolishness that it will only continue to attract the
extreme liberals who support the party already. Many Democrats are so
bitter about what Nader has done that they will now do things to subvert
the Green Party, like spray-painting its San Francisco headquarters with
obscenities, not to mention going out of their way to hurt the causes of
Green Party candidates. Nader has killed his causes and his party before
he could really get it running. The Green Party is sentenced to the
fringe, falling and failing alongside the Libertarians and the Reform
Party; Nader and his ego are squarely to blame.
Today, the country is in serious peril because Nader was too power
struck to support Gore when he absolutely had to. The Green Party is in
serious peril because of the backlash that will forever be thrown against
it. Ultimately, both are in peril because, simply put, Nader was an idiot.
Thanks, Ralph.
