tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908604.post4490493814033414765..comments2024-03-01T00:27:42.852-08:00Comments on Hammer Of The Blogs: L8r N8r H8rzHeywood J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/05627748699423939682noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908604.post-26633593453764902382007-03-10T10:42:00.000-08:002007-03-10T10:42:00.000-08:00"Mancrush". Cool. I feel like Keith Hernandez on S..."Mancrush". Cool. I feel like Keith Hernandez on <I>Seinfeld</I> now. I definitely agree with your point that many Nader voters are falsely assumed to have been potential Gore voters. Several people I personally knew would not have voted at all if Nader hadn't been running. There's a good chance I wouldn't have. I was completely disgusted by the politics of triangulation, and Gore's weaselly, puling answers in regard to serious questions about fundraising ethical violations did not help. <BR/><BR/>Saying that he'd have been a better president than George W. Bush means nothing. The flock of wild turkeys that roams through my back yard every few days fits that description as well.<BR/><BR/>I really have been all over this issue since the late stages and aftermath of the 2000 election. I recall seeing those numbers back at the time, that something like 12 times as many Democratic voters had gone for Bush as had gone for Nader. <BR/><BR/>And all the good little Gore voters marched in lockstep and told be what a prick I was (even though I lived in California and thus had zero effect on the outcome; in fact, I live in a county that went 70% Bush in <I>2004</I>).<BR/><BR/>At first I just told them to go fuck themselves, that it was Gore's job to convince <I>me</I>, and not my duty to protect him from a bunch of addled retards getting all mooney-eyed over Bush's wafer-thin personality.<BR/><BR/>And the way voters and media studiously ignored Nader's preening idiocy in the '04 campaign, you'da thunk that would be that. That made it pretty clear that we idealists had indeed learned our lesson, and would never again trust that enough Americans had the marginal intelligence required to see George W. Bush for exactly what he was.<BR/><BR/>But the fact that the meme is still out there is simply unhealthy; it resolves and edifies absolutely nothing. It lets Gore off the hook for running an utterly inept campaign and losing to a gibbering buffoon. It lets the media off the hook for their fucking parlor games that warp and transform the debate from substantive issues to that of tie color and occasional body language tics.<BR/><BR/>Most of all, it lets the Democratic Party itself off the hook for all they've done since 9/11 to enable the Bush/Cheney machine. They didn't find their sack until post-Katrina, and even then, used it sparingly, even though Bush has never been above 39% in any poll since September of 2005. Shit, they haven't been able to slap Bush's cock out of Lieberman's mouth for two years running. What kind of fucking Mickey Mouse shit is <I>that</I>?<BR/><BR/>And now they smugly assert that, "see, we told you so, they're not really the same". No, they're not. But they are much more similar than they are different, in that they are in thrall to corporate interests, and hopelessly leveraged by small but potent special interest groups, one of which is the corporate media itself. None of that has changed; if anything, it's gotten worse.<BR/><BR/>It's an insidious beast, and Gore was no more likely to stand up to it than Bush would. The difference is that the Republicans have learned how to work <I>with</I> the beast, mostly by questioning their opponents' (and, by implication, the media weasels') masculinity and competence. <BR/><BR/>Even though every closet case turns out to be a Republican, even though the lists of draft dodgers and chickenhawks overwhelmingly redound to them, because they are bereft of even basic concepts of shame, they run with that play and it keeps working, because it amplifies the similar projected anxieties of their base.<BR/><BR/>My real point -- and I do have one -- is that as long as Nader continues to serve as a convenient scapegoat, a handy vessel for all of the Democrats' individual and collective mistakes in strategy and execution, nothing will change. Because it allows them to avoid confronting their own ineptitude, which is really what got us to this point. I understood that in January of 2001; I cannot figure out why they <I>still</I> do not understand such a basic fact.Heywood J.https://www.blogger.com/profile/05627748699423939682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908604.post-2290024665704082872007-03-10T05:27:00.000-08:002007-03-10T05:27:00.000-08:00Damn, dude, tell your wife I'm mancrushing on you ...Damn, dude, tell your wife I'm mancrushing on you now!<BR/><BR/>No, but seriously - you may have noticed me in a few comment sections trying to talk sense about this shit in recent months, and it really drives me to despair to see fellow liberals so blinkered and unreachable on this topic. <BR/><BR/>The point I keep hammering on, in addition to all the good ones you raised, is this: <I>how the fuck does anyone <B>know</B> that the people who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore otherwise if Nader hadn't been on the ballot?</I><BR/><BR/>What I mean is that, given my own experience among the farther-left, I think it's highly more likely that the vast majority of those Nader voters were only there voting in the first place because of him. They weren't originally Gore fans who somehow got swayed into thinking that Ralph had a chance. Idealists that they were/are, they wanted to start building a viable third party; otherwise, they would have probably joined the 60% or so of the electorate that stayed home that year.<BR/><BR/>I haven't yet gotten a serious answer on this. Most of the time the unexamined premise just gets restated again, some form of "Well, Nader got X amount of votes in such-and-such a location!", and once again, it gets taken completely for granted that they would have voted for Gore otherwise. It's really maddening to keep having this experience of talking to a brick wall with people who shouldn't be that dense.<BR/><BR/>Plus, the last time I saw this come up, at Crooks and Liars, I saw some commenters providing stats that showed large numbers of registered Democrats voting for Bush in Florida, which I hadn't known about before (and I see you caught that as well). Seriously, if flagellating apostates is so much fun, why don't those fucksticks come in for any of this treatment?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com