Nader Supporters Finally Realizing They Were Wrong?

In 2000 the Nader supporters defended Ralph Nader’s absurd claim that there was no difference between Gore and Bush. Regardless of how obvious it became that there were significant differences, Nader continued to repeat this line. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, there were signs that Nader finally realized that there was a difference. Now we learn from The New York Daily News that Nader supporters are turning to the guy they rejected in 2000.

Right or wrong, people who voted for Ralph Nader get blamed for costing Al Gore the 2000 election.

Now, some of those very same voters are throwing themselves into a new – and nonexistent – campaign: Gore 2008.

And they say there’s no irony at all.

“In 2000, Nader was the most progressive candidate, and in 2008, Al Gore would be the most progressive candidate. There’s no dissonance at all, I would say,” argues Bud Plautz, the New York head of the movement to draft the former vice president.

That’s not just irony, that’s totally illogical. Sure, Nader was the more progressive candidate in 2000, but that’s not the point. Nader was a third party candidate with zero chance of winning. For all practical purposes, a vote for Nader was a vote to make George Bush, and not Al Gore president. It is not possible to logically argue that Al Gore was no different from George Bush in 2000 but is the best possible candidate now. Gore’s style might have changed a bit, but otherwise he is not that different now than he was in 2000.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Brian says:

    The point in 2000 wasn’t that Bush and Gore were clones, but that Gore wasn’t different enough from Bush. It is still true that Democrats are too much like Republicans. When will they stop funding the war?

    “Zero chance of winning”? Not true. If Ralph Nader and Patrick Buchanan had been in the debates in 2000, debates would have been much more interesting. Nader definitely could have won both the debates and the election.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    The Nader line was that there was no difference. Simply looking at the war, if Gore had been elected we wouldn’t be there, and there are many other differences of consequence.

    Even if he had been in the debates, Nader would have had zero chance of winning. If people saw more of him he very likely could have wound up with even less votes than he received. He certainly wouldn’t have increased his votes enough to come close to winning. At “best” he might have helped tip more states to Bush.

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