If this website is to be believed (and I’m too lazy to verify the information myself), Nader wasn’t in favor of overturning Roe v Wade, though it appears he felt it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, at least in some states where it would still have been legalized. I don’t agree with that part.
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Unfortunately, third party politics, especially at the national level, are like Linux and independent coffee shops. A lot of people have tried them and liked them, but the average person is generally uncomfortable with something that isn’t well-supported and mainstream and familiar, even if the case can be made for the superiority of the Green Linux Latte Party.
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Southern state?
I live in one and am voting against Trump. Not cause I like Hilary, but because having him in charge would destroy the US
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Nader wasn’t in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, he was indifferent to it. He also is very clear about being indifferent to the negative consequences of a possible Bush presidency (dead wrong on that one). Here is the interview in which he discussed the reaction to his comments about it. He also mentions that he would have voted to impeach Bill Clinton, which I had forgotten.
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In a letter to the NY Times, Nader wrote,
To the Editor:
An Oct. 21 letter used a repeated fabrication promoted by some Democrats late in the 2000 presidential campaign about my comment on Roe v. Wade.
I was once asked what would happen if the Supreme Court’s decision protecting a woman’s right to choose were overturned. I gave the lawyer’s answer that the issue would revert to the states. I certainly never implied that women could always travel to a permissive state to get a legal abortion.
Moreover, I stated many times my opinion that Roe v. Wade would not be overturned.
RALPH NADER
Washington, Oct. 23, 2002
I will say that I’m not trying to defend Nader like he’s some super hero as much as I’m pointing out that he’s long served as an overly convenient whipping boy for Dems who don’t want to acknowledge (or just don’t know about) actual problems with their own party, and with the Repubs. These strike me as much bigger problems than third party candidates fairly doing what they can to get votes.
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Yeah, I was overstating there, he was really minimizing (as he did about the SCOTUS in general).
Yeah, but he also says, “I fought vigorously against Scalia and Thomas, which is more than I can say for Vice President Gore.”
Why the relentless search for the negative about Nader, when the vast majority of what he’s said and done is positive? (Well, I can easily guess why threatened, corporate-supported Democratic politicians would do that, but I don’t imagine you’re one of them.)
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Funny thing about that article. Yes, it ‘debunks’ the very specific “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush” myth, but it actually reinforces the general “a vote for a third party is a vote for the opposition” fact.
I assume that was the point you’re subtly trying to make? 
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You can slice and dice the number several different ways, some of which show Bush winning, and some that show Gore winning.
With some of the margins as low as single digits, its absurd to image that the Nader vote might not have made a difference, had the count been allowed to continue.
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Because he spent time and energy in swing states campaigning to progressives in 2000 in what appears to many to have been either delusional idiocy or deliberate maliciousness in swinging an election to one of the worst Presidents in recent years. As someone who was watching in horror as left-leaning friends were praising Nader while he focused on spending a lot of time in swing states just before a disturbingly close election between a moderate and an extremist right-wing candidate sort of pretending to be moderate, and knowing full well how bad that outcome would be if Bush won (I lived in TX, I knew Bush was utterly horrible), while honestly liking Gore (the environmentalist guy warning about global warming who was both zealous and instrumental in expanding the internet to the public in the early days), seeing both Fla and New Hampshire narrowly go to Bush apparently due to Nader courting traditional Dems. aggressively in both states left me rather livid at Nader (who was already a fraud to my eyes before 2000). I still would not feel bad seeing a person who played an active part in doing something that destructive to so many lives die in a fire.
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I’m sad I can’t like your post more than once.
I also want to add: remember there’s a lot of elections this year. Your specific, individual vote for local offices has a bigger impact than your vote for the presidency. And you can vote two years from now and also have a bigger impact. Which is how the tea party has taken over so many state legislatures.
Causing huge damage to planned parenthood, voting rights (with an assist from SCOTUS), hard won civil rights for LGBT, and critical damage to a central part of the ACA.
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No, I’m not one of them. But you misread me if you think I am relentlessly searching for negatives about Nader. I think he helped send us into the Bush presidency and that is what I made the initial comment about. Given the terrible human consequences of that debacle, I have a hard time finding anything to praise him about. His good work is long in the past, and his failures are too recent for me. I think he started to believe his own hype, and he came undone from his own desire for the spotlight and sense of intellectual superiority. It’s sad and disappointing to me that his mistakes have outshone his victories. I don’t think he will be judged well by history.
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[quote=“d_r, post:95, topic:81337”]Yeah, the Democratic party has hardly any white people left, only around 60% of the party. (It is true though that the Democratic party certainly can’t go back to its nickname in the 1860s, “the white men’s party”)[/quote]I guess you missed some pretty significant demographic changes over the last few decades. The Dem electorate was 45% minority last election, and should be close to 50-50 this election. Add in the rather substantial gender gap, and white men are only about 20% of the party nowdays.
[quote=“d_r, post:95, topic:81337”]The platform of the “Sanders” wing of the Democratic party resembles nothing so much as the platform of the Democratic party before the DLC/Bluedog coup in the 80s. I think the leftward shift is best explained by the beginning of the wearing away of the tired party myth that you need to be centrist to win elections.[/quote]You’re right, that’s exactly what it represents. But I wouldn’t really call centrism a coup. They tried centrism in the 80s and 90s because we had been getting our ass kicked for almost 20 years, ever since racist southern whites left the party in the wake of desegregation.
We simply didn’t have enough votes. We do now though, because the non-white population has grown rapidly, and shifted almost entirely to the Democratic party. At the same time, a pretty huge gender gap has opened up, and a huge number of white men have left the party. That demographic shift over the last 20 years or so is what moved the party left.
Bottom line- white dudes are largely conservative in the country, and the fewer of them around, the less conservative this country will be.
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Other bottom line: the blatant racism of the GOP has forced the entirety of the minority electorate into supporting the Dems. Not just the left-leaning minority voters, but effectively all of the non-racist electorate. And, as the minority community is no less politically diverse than anyone else, this acts to pull the Dems to the right.
The US at present doesn’t have a left party. It has a white nationalist party and a racially diverse centre-right party.
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So the logical corollary of this is that you believe Sanders made a corrupt deal?
There are exactly 2 issues in this race: climate change and the Supreme Court. It is probably already too late to avoid catastrophic change but another decade of Republicans will remove all doubt about that. And if you truly believed that Citizens United needs to be overturned, you would not run the slightest risk of a Republican appointing justices. There is already one vacancy. There will be at least one more and possibly as many as three. Even with the one, the court will be shaped as either liberal or conservative for the next 20 years.
So yeah. Go ahead and throw a temper tantrum. All that means is that you’re as much a part of the problem as Trump.
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To yourself. To the wider world, your statement will remain unheard.
I wouldn’t convince you to do anything else, but it’s for you own interests, not America’s. There are better ways to take action. Writing in a candidate is the slacktivist equivalent of an Internet petition, and just as likely to effect change.
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I’m just interpreting what I heard his endorsement seem to say. Hence the quotation marks.
Although I probably feel the same way. Not sure what you think I think makes his deal corrupt, though.
Not so, the vote will be recorded, and the results will be known. I am quite sure that the count for Sanders write in will not be less than two.
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She should bring her party to the Democratic Party - with their weight we can flip the balance to more progressive positions. Why should we progressives struggle with a new party to break-in from the outside. If we proved one thing its that we can own the Democratic party and be on the main stage. Push out the neo-liberals and let them wallow in the middle. We’ve proved we don’t need the corporate support, and we don’t have to accept their influence.
