In retrospect, we know. I don’t think he came off as that bad, nor that the election felt that critical in 2000. Hindsight is 20/20 (says the historian!)
Do you think voting and challenging the democratic party for their voters constitutes slacktivism?
[ETA] I think you’re making assumptions about people’s political activities that may not stack up to reality. You challenged @anon73430903 who, first is British, and second has stated they are politically active and has mentioned thinking about running for political office. Am I as politically active as I should be? Probably not, but I also have a 13 year old, a sick step parent, and am in the middle of writing a dissertation… I’d guess that varying levels of political activism exist among the happy boingertariate, from deeply slacktivist to fully engaged and active. There are likely various reasons for our level of political engagement. But you probably shouldn’t assume that people who disagree with you are slacktivist.
You’re uninformed as to what I do, except with respect to how I will vote on the Presidential election. But I will make it clear and be done. I will not vote for her. I recognize the danger, and the pain that will result, but it is the ONLY thing I can do in November to make my voice heard on the issue. The DNC must hear the message in a measurable way, that we won’t put up with their shit. Beyond that, communicating directly with the DNC, our representatives and our delegates is all I have. But hard numbers on election day will be what matters.
Absolutely. The time to act is to reform the DNC and in the ramp up to choosing the primary candidate.
Once a Dem candidate is chosen, anything beyond that point is just to make one feel good about not participating in the actual process. That is not a challenge, it’s the usual flake factor in any election.
If your ideology is strong enough, you should be participating in tangible ways.
But nobody cares. You have less of a chance to change the DNC than a vote in a swing state. Do more next election.
Again, vote however pleases you. But the idea that people skim over the lizard people and Mickey Mouse joke writeins to make policy is absurd. Nobody benefits.
I find it odd when socialist bent individuals decide to go the individualist route versus actually working towards a collective goal.
But your assuming that once a candidate is set that the platform can’t be changed, or that the platform, even as adopted at the convention translates to policy. It often doesn’t, of course. Political engagement is more than juts actions during the elections, too, it’s continuing to pressure lawmakers, going to city council meetings, writing letters, getting out on the street, etc…
Honestly, that’s a pretty privileged position to take. The people who participate, are often (not always, of course) those with the time, health, and money to do so. Not everyone who wants to, can do so. That doesn’t mean we should dismiss them out of hand or that they shouldn’t be heard.
I lived in TX, and had watched Bush before the election so it felt really critical to me, since I saw him an immensely dangerous, amoral, and troubling man totally unfit for leadership. Bush ran with the rhetoric of a moderate conservative, but his record was of deeply corrupt crony-capitalist shoveling public cash to friends, pushing religion into the public sphere, far-right partisan extremism, and acting like a nearly inhuman psychopath at times like when he mocked Carla Faye Tucker on death row after denying her a stay of execution (and gloating about pushing records for capital punishment).
We don’t even know 9/11 would have happened, since Clinton was listening to Clarke and trying to manage Al Qaida, which the Bush admin dropped. Alternate histories are all guesses, though I’d guess things would have been mediocre but less bad. Given Gore’s obsession with Global Warming and the environment, I think it’'s safe to say we’d be much better off on that front, though, and that is and was more my single issue than the rest. It was a strange twist of fate that the Green candidate’s environmental policies were actually less effective than the Dems. in 2000, but it also pushed me to being pro-Gore (besides me liking him for his constant and diligent work in Congress on promoting and ensuring the Internet was publicly available).
I don’t really want to drag this out. Nader was wrong about the likely outcomes of a GOP win on virtually every front, but I don’t have time to list citations for every way he was wrong. He was wrong about saying Bush was a better candidate than Gore, and saying he’d have voted for Bush if those were his options, but I hope that’s obvious now.
Nader was right about some things and lied about others. I’m glad for the safety improvements and the work he did there. He didn’t have to lie about Corvairs to get there, though.
I think there’s such a major gap in the way we look at the nature of the system and the election that things might be so incommensurate as to be irreconcilable without a level of work I’m not really up to.
Also, I’ve got work to attend to, will be back tonight unless the power of Pokemon keeps me away until tomorrow.
Considering the irregularities and the recount halt, there’s good reason to believe the votes never swung to Bush and that the election was decided in a courtroom, not a Nader rally. But hey, whatever lets people blame the people they want to blame for a complex multi-causal phenomenon.
I could consider a lot of protests “slacktivism” because I feel that many are a way for protesters to assuage guilt for not doing more, or more effective things. For instance BLM is having an impact, but Iraq War protests after the invasion seemed pretty pointless to me. People will disagree with that assessment or what the purpose of certain actions is. It all depends on how you define “slacktivism” which is why I choose to avoid using the word altogether. Any and everyone has disagreements on tactics and strategies. It doesn’t help to simply handwave away what some people are doing because, funnily enough, your opinion of your own actions always seems to be fairly high. Crazy how convenient it is that what you’re doing is always the one right thing to do, isn’t it?
Wait, are you saying that we have Clinton v. Trump because people actively voted in the primaries, and that the attitude that people should vote instead of staying home is the cause of our political problems?
That sounds like the system being used exactly as it’s supposed to be used, with the people’s voices deciding who will lead, rather than small, loud groups.
Actually, I’m pretty sure they check the variance in primary vs. turnout. If they don’t then they’re way less professional than I thought, that’s like analytics 102.
Seeing a big downspike right after a contested primary race should generate some activity…WHAT activity is up in the air, but a big variance should get noticed.
Not that there are any useful solutions in politics in general. The deck is stacked against useful personality profiles and towards people who make things worse…that’s not likely to change.
(Which is why my focus is an end-around…a large worker co-operative corporation that gives 24/7 job offers with housing and variety and uses their collective power to influence local politics. Same tools the bad guys are using, no reason to handicap ourselves, right?)
It’s not. I don’t blame a person for my having time or money to devote to activism, but it is pretty offensive when they position themselves as making a difference when they contribute negatively to their causes.
I meant the attitude that voting is ideologically important and the perception that this is the best we can do (so why try to change a system invented hundreds of years ago that’s not working as intended) is the problem.
People put a ton of effort into the political cycle, and then when it’s over all those efforts and resources go elsewhere. It’s not very proactive or effective.
Another part of the problem is the idea that several hundred million people would be on the same page based on nothing more than the circumstances of their birth. Fixed geographic nations that aren’t extremely easy to move between are a pretty awful model for humans in general.
You’re talking about Florida. It’s worth repeating that even if Fla. had gone to the GOP, New Hampshire also was swung by Nader and would have been sufficient for Gore to have won regardless of Fla.
There were a multiplicity of horrible factors in the 2000 election. There was the purging of voter rolls of felons that removed many thousands of eligible voters for being guilty of being black. There was the accursed butterfly ballot that gave thousands of votes to the anti-Semite in a heavily Jewish district. There was the SCOTUS. There was a hostile media slamming Gore over complete BS. There was Elian Gonzales. There was Gore flailing in his campaign. There was a fawning media selectively ignoring many important facts about Bush. There was a Green party candidate running in swing states and focusing on campaigning to a key Democratic demographic. No single factor alone was deciding. That doesn’t mean you get to selectively dismiss one to make yourself feel better about Nader.
Fair enough… not everyone had that experience though.
That’s a distinct possibility.
He’d still have been dealing with an obstructionist congress, though. I’d like to think that Gore would have made better decisions, but I suspect he’d have gone the free market approach to climate change.
How so? Where have Green policies been implemented so we can see their effectiveness. As long as corporations run our political parties, we’ll get little movement on such things, I think.[quote=“nemomen, post:213, topic:81337”]
I don’t really want to drag this out.
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Fair enough.
It’s a car. He may have lied, but it’s still a car.
Fair enough, again. This doesn’t change my view of you and your awesomeness, though.
Looking forward to it!
I think this has less to do with the protesters and more to do with the people in power. The anti-war folks were going to be ignored, no matter what - because the GOP was in power, and didn’t have to worry about answering to a core constituency. However, BLM form a key constituency of the democratic coalition, both black and young voters. [quote=“ActionAbe, post:214, topic:81337”]
Crazy how convenient it is that what you’re doing is always the one right thing to do, isn’t it?
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I’m trying not to assume that my way is the only way, though.
I think it is… why do you think that college students tend to be politically on the front lines… or organizations like unions - which tends to be left in the hands of those who run the bureaucratic ends of unionization, those employed by the unions themselves.
Okay… but wasn’t Nader literally doing what you’re calling for? Being more politically engaged? Or is it only legitimate political engagement when it’s part of working for the mainstream parties?
Nor does it mean that Nader voting should be given super special emphasis. Only ~fifty percent of the population voted. If you go take even five percent of the people who would have voted Gore if they voted at all but didn’t because they couldn’t be bothered to leave the house on election day, the argument could easily be made on the same basis that they swung the election just as much, and there’s a better argument that they owed a candidate their loyalty, unlike people who choose someone else they like better. Yet no emphasis at all is placed here. Why not? If democrats had better turnout they’d win more elections. Why accost people who aren’t even in the party?
Actually the implication was that @Phrenological was assuming their way was the only way. But the observation has the benefit of applying universally no matter who you are.
Yes, he does get to make this particular ‘dismissal’. It was and is reasonable. Nader, despite his many personal flaws, did not ‘throw’ the 2000 Presidential election. The neoliberal, elitist and pompous Gore managed to lose it.
If we had 4 or 8 years of Gore (I believe he would have lost to a Republican in 2004, post 9-11) it would not have improved the outcomes much. Gore was simply too much of rightist himself, too much a scion of the Beltway elite, to have been a really good, game-changing chief Executive. His election in 2000 would have only postponed some of our deadly adventurism in the Great Middle East. And I doubt the immense increase in policing and surveillance stateside would have been any different under a Gore Presidency. It might have been swifter and more draconian. Gore does not have much respect for average people, and unlike Bush, he doesn’t even have the decency to disguise it.
