this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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The fact that Nader ran to his left and had decent success is a pretty good indicator that Gore was too close to the center to win.
But I mainly blame the design of the Florida ballots for Gore's loss.
There's also that minor matter of Republicans actively sabotaging the recounts by standing outside the counting office and chanting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
That doesn't make sense for a couple different reasons, but thinking how to explain that it is wrong actually led to me to realize that Hotelling's Law is a not insignificant part of the incentives at work in a FPTP system which is yet another reason not to use them.
(Basically, in short, whatever point Gore staked out on the little spectrum, Nader can gather some votes by picking a different point. Doesn't mean a damn thing about how good the point either person picked was or the relation between them. But yes, mathematical pressure on both "main" candidates to move to the center and similar to each other is absolutely a real thing and I hadn't fully realized that before, although it seems totally obvious in retrospect and like I should have realized it before this.)
You're right, "too close to the center to win" doesn't make sense. But Nader did run to Gore's left, and took votes from Gore that might have caused a different outcome.
I know because I got yelled at for it on the Internet for eight years.
(Though I still blame the stupid ballots.)
All the Democrats are too close to the center except for a handful of congress people. Honestly, I won't disagree with your earlier point there. But my point was that Gore out of all the Democratic candidates was pretty fuckin sensible in terms of seeing big problems and wanting to deal with them, instead of just having a big party for all the defense contractors and oil companies and Wall Street.
But yes, Nader was a factor, sure. Also: I actually know somebody that worked in politics for quite a while, and her take on the whole Florida debacle was very interesting to me -- basically that it was a failure of on-the-ground organizing by the Democrats; that they should have been able to pick up right away that people were at risk of getting confused by the ballots, and have someone at every polling station that could be able to give a little spiel (or cause the election workers to give a spiel) about how to mark your vote correctly. Like, it was rigged (on many different levels, including in my opinion deliberately making the ballot confusing in a way that would confuse a certain percent of Gore voters), but also every election is "rigged" somewhat, to whatever extent each side can get away with, and part of your job as a political organization is to watch close and be sharp and not let the other side get away with stuff.
IDK if I agree with her, but that was her take on it and she has a lot more firsthand experience than me.
Totally agree. He got lampooned for the "lockbox" but it was actually a decent idea. Regarding the ballots: There's a (paywalled) study from Stanford that claims to show that people accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan were a significant reason the election went the way it did. The ballot is pretty terrible
All this analysis would be fun if it weren't (a) so consequential and (b) continually showing our only hope dropping the ball.
"So like 50 assholes just worked hard on getting the guy they wanted, did some fairly basic shenanigans including showing up at an election office and throwing a fit?"
"Yeah. Is bullshit. And they changed the result, and looking back, it changed the whole world."
Press A: "Wow. I'm never getting involved in politics, that's corrupt as fuck."
Press B: "Holy shit. Can we make a bunch of people to go somewhere and throw a fit? Like, what did they do? And it worked, and it made a difference?" "Yeah like a huge one." "Holy shit..."