Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Real Conservatives Vote Nader



I once said to Bill Bennett, "“Would you agree that corporatism is on a collision course with conservative values?" and he said yes.

- Ralph Nader

2 comments:

Sheryl said...

The right ought to love Nader. Let me give you some statistics from Texas Secretary of State's website, which I did some calculations on earlier this year when I was working on David Van Os's campaign.

Travis County is like the very most liberal of our large counties here in Texas, whereas Dallas County is one of the most conservative ones. So you would think that Gore would have done better in Travis County than in Dallas County, right?

Not so. Gore actually pulled 44.9% of the vote in conservative Dallas County, but only 41.6% of the vote in liberal Travis County. But then Nader pulled 22.12% of the vote in the liberal Travis County, but only 3.62% in the conservative Dallas County.

So if Gore had had the Nader voters (who would never have supported Bush), then the liberals would have had a landslide in Travis County with 63.7% of the vote and almost a tie in one of our most conservative counties with 48.5%. Instead we lost both counties.

Now, the high density areas of Texas were all close like this. You have some areas of Texas that almost completely went for Bush, but they don't have the numbers to change the grand tally. And then you have some areas along the border that went almost completely for Gore. They also don't affect the numbers much. People forget how close Texas is to Mexico; there are lot of liberal votes that come from the hispanic population. So it is entirely possible that if Nader had not been in the election, Gore would have taken Texas. Texas, Bush's home state. Yeehah, giddy up, ride 'em cowboy!

Then consider that Bush spent something on the order of 5 times as much money in Texas as Gore did.

Finally, if you figure that the liberal element has traditionally been the backbone of any grassroots efforts within the democratic party, Nader had really undermined the get out the vote elements of the party.

I can see how people might want a multiparty system, but you can't change laws unless you are in office to do so, and the party that gains from a split vote is not likely to change those laws that helped it get in power once it holds the monopoly on power. So Nader just makes me mad.

Sorry, vent over. But at least Carter was Nader bashing at the Democratic Unity Dinner. That made me feel better.

6/16/2004 01:36:00 AM
Sheryl said...

I want to answer Mr. Bennett's question with another question. He asked:

"Why is it, Mr. Chomsky, whenever there are refugees in the world, they flee to the United States rather than from the United States? Why is it on balance, Mr.
Chomsky, that this nation, when it opens its gates, has people rushing in? "

Question: Why is it, Mr. Bennett, that people in Guantanamo are held to a different standard of ethics than the Geneva Conventions? To have less rights than people in America? Why is it that Bush administration has lawyers looking for loopholes to be able to torture people abroad?

Why did the Patriot Act and it's followup try to extend international standards to our home shores?

Answer To Both Questions: Because the United States applies stricter laws on its own shores than it does abroad. Refugees are safer here from the United States than they would be in their home countries.

The same reason that the Bush administration withdrew from the International Criminal Court. I think it was Kissinger they tried to nab for war crimes. I wonder what happened about that.

6/16/2004 02:30:00 AM

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