Eagle
I have to say that there is no evidence to prove that Nader sets out to spoil the day for the Democrats but I think he has been a spoiler none the less.
Interesting article:
Yes, Ralph Nader did cause Bush’s election in 2000 (updated)
After almost eight years, it’s probably time to stop fighting the Nader battles of 2000, even if Nader himself seems determined to keep them alive.
To begin with, despite some
gnashing of teeth among Democrats, there’s very little chance Nader’s running again this year will hurt us in the election. The last time he ran, in 2004, he garnered
only .38% of the vote. And this year he’ll be lucky get a third that many votes.
Besides, even if Nader were somehow to win enough votes in a close state this year to make it appear as though he made a difference in the outcome, it would be an illusion: unlike 2000, in 2008 the only people who will vote for Nader are confirmed vote protestors. Nader won’t be stealing their votes from Obama or Clinton; he’ll be stealing them from some other third party or write-in candidate.
Still, for the sake of historical accuracy, I do have to take exception with one of the arguments we continue to hear from Nader supporters — the claim that he didn’t really cost Gore the election in 2000.
Here’s how the argument goes: you can’t blame Nader for the outcome in Florida, it begins, because Gore didn’t really lose the state. It was stolen by corrupt officials in Florida and by the Supreme Court. Besides, the argument continues, if Gore had run a better campaign, he would have swamped Bush by a big enough margin to win regardless of the Nader vote; thus, it’s really his own fault, not Nader’s.
The problem here, of course, is with the implicit assumption that there was only one cause for this electoral cataclysm. Unfortunately for Nader apologists, however, that simply isn’t true. There were several causes for Bush’s “victory,” one of which was Ralph Nader, and all of which share responsibility.
