and final thoughts on my fury re Nader
I gotten many angry by criticizing (here and here and here) Ralph Nader. Some even think I've violated the constitution. Anyway, my final replies are in the extended entry. I'm sure there's more to be said on both sides, but Mr. Willem forbids me from taking anymore time from him to say anything more.
I can't reply to everything, and I won't reply to rudeness (a cost I impose on rude speech -- another first amendment violation you might ask?).
Aaron added a bit more to his original post. As he summarizes his position, "Punishing people for the effects of their speech is both legally and morally wrong."
Well, if by "punishing" you mean legally punishing -- as in fining, or through a lawsuit -- obviously (or it should be obvious but I didn't do a good job making this clear before) it is wrong. But if you think it is "morally wrong" to "punish" people in the sense of criticizing them, I don't agree. It is your moral obligation to criticize people who are doing harm to values you think important. A Nader candidacy would do just that.
JB Nicholson-Owens rightly ask "why should a candidate ever have to justify doing no harm to your favorite candidate's standing in the race to run for office?" That's stated too generally. I don't think a candidate in general needs ever to justify running for office. But when your candidacy might throw an election -- not for you, or even for views you believe in, but in favor of views you and your followers obviously disagree with -- then I do think a candidate should "justify" his decision to run. Why? Because words are also actions, and actions have consequences, and the duty to justify the consequences of your actions is not excused merely because you use words. Again, such consequences ARE excused legally, and should be, but the law is not the whole of the moral domain.
Phillippe Mougin asks whether the long term consequences of Nader running might be worth the short term costs. E.g., maybe Nader's running made the Democrats more sensitive to environmental issues, etc.
I'm sure that was the effect of Nader's running. And that would be a great justification for his actions, were that the argument he made. I'm not sure it would suffice -- as I think the long term effect could have been achieved without throwing the election. And I don't think the long term effect would be worth throwing this election either. But at least that would be an argument worthy of the man.
Some, like Ernie A., continue to believe Nader's withdrawing would not have mattered to the result. Obviously my criticism hangs on the contrary view. If I'm wrong about that, then my criticism is wrong too. But the useful links posted in the comments convince me again of what I was convinced of in 2001.
Bruce thinks my holding Nader responsible for what he calls "political negligence" is "insane." Well, negligence would have been one thing. And again, I am not arguing that there should be legal liability at all. But this case is much more than negligence -- the polling data the weekend before the election in 2004 made the danger absolutely certain. My point is just that when you know your actions, including your words, are going to cause great harm and you could avoid that harm, you should be criticized when you don't avoid that harm. My use of liability theory was just to explain the sense in which he is responsible. But the only real issue is whether Nader should be criticized. He's the one saying it is "censorship" to criticize him.
Susanna and Jason make a similarly strong argument, but again, imho, a point that misses at least my point. To criticize Nader is not not to criticize Gore -- or Clinton, for that matter. Obviously, others could have done lots differently such that the election would not have been Nader's to call. And given how much I disagree with both Dems and Gops about, I'm not eager to reinforce a two party duopoly.
But political action is not merely symbolic. It also has consequences. And my view of responsibility (which has led me personally to many sleepless nights for different reasons) is that you must always ask, in anything you do or say, will my actions harm those causes I care most strongly about. Most of the time, for most of us, the answer to this question is easy: most of the time, for most of us, they just won't matter. But when it does matter -- where your words would make the difference -- you should take responsibility for what you do, or do not say.
All that is re 2000. The issue now is 2004. We know again that there will be a close race. And we have seen in this race a much more articulate, passionate and powerful candidate than Nader pushing Nader-like positions: Dennis. And but for the stuff about free trade, I would be the first to say Dennis's views are powerful and right. But we live in a nation which doesn't reward Dennis's views with votes. Nor would they reward Nader's views with enough votes to make him president. Instead, they would reward them with enough votes to make Bush president again.
Doing something that has that effect is, in my view, wrong. And (and this was the point of my post originally), my saying that doing something that has that effect is wrong is not, under any view of the word, "censorship."
Oh, and by the way: As Ken Hirsch writes, there wasn't anything wrong with the Corvair anyway.
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Comments (34)
I was surprised at your criticisms myself, Professor Lessig. And while I realize that realistically, there are consequences to one's actions, if you're going to blame someone for the 2000 elections, blame the drug companies. Nader's campaign spend under $10 million in 2000; the pharmaceutical industry spent $230 million.
Who do you think had a bigger influence, and swayed more mainstream voters?
What bugs me about the Nader defenders is their unwillingness to consider practical effect, that it's all about the ideal. I know there's a term for the sort of person that follows their ideal so doggedly that it leads them to an action that compromises that very ideal... I wish I could remember it. They equate challenging the action to compromise, as if it reduces the power of ideal, and don't see that modifying one's approach to enacting the ideal can actually strengthen the ideal.
Here's how I like to look at it. We're not talking about increasing support for a national movement; we are talking about running for president. Those who defend running for president as chiefly a way to increase support for the movement, thereby admitting that the movement is more important than the presidency, are admitting they are basically using the president-selection process as a cynical marketing ploy, and refuse to consider that there are other ways to build support for the national movement.
If we reduce it down so that running for president should imply that one's chief goal is to become president, then we can make further points. One: like it or not, we must currently submit to the rules of the Electoral College. You need a majority of EVs to win, not a plurality. This means that the winner must get more EVS then all other candidates combined. If they don't, it goes to the House, where the candidate must have enough support to win. Let's accept as a given that Nader does not have enough support in the House to win. Therefore, he must get more EVs than all other candidates combined.
States are winner take all. This means that Nader must win at least the eleven largest states outright (these states include New York and Texas).
Let's not quarrel with the folks that believe Nader has a reasonable chance of winning this many states outright. But let's continue the argument with those that believe he can't, but still support his candidacy.
States are still susceptible to vote-splitting. This means that for a candidate that can't win, they are going to draw support from the winnable candidate they are ideologically closest to. Let's not quarrel with the "Nader or no one" folks. But let's continue the argument with those that would have even a distant preference for one of the other winnable candidates over the other.
So, if Nader can't win a state, he draws support from the candidate he is ideologically closest to. He increases the chance of the other candidate winning the state. Winning a state or two does nothing for him, because he'd either merely split electoral support with the candidate he's closest to, or send the election to the House, where he'd lose.
The candidate that Nader is closest to is likely to be more friendly to free-speech rights than the other candidate. If Nader can't win, and decreases the chances of the candidate he's ideologically closest to, then his idealistic actions of defending free speech are threatening free speech. Those that defend his run on the grounds of free speech are joined in a movement to threaten free speech.
And to cap it all, there are actions Nader could take (and could have taken) to help his ideals without threatening them at the same time. Nader was invited several times to run in the Democratic primary. If he was interested in running, that's where he should have started.
And if his goals were to win the presidency, then there were other actions he could have taken to build the kind of national support he would need to actually win states (or the House). Aggressively lead a national political movement to train and run House candidates, to change gerrymandering, to train and run local and state candidates, and build support for his party from the ground up. They've talked about it, but they haven't exactly made it a priority.
The electoral college is a two-party system, and until the E.C. is changed, efforts to work around it by ignoring it only serve to threaten the ideals of those ignoring it.
I think the fact that Nader being a Palestinian is enough for me to want to see him die. I hate arab filth. They are the epitome of what America is not. I hope he does make a run and causes the remaining liberal movement to die. I hope we steamroll through the middle east destroying the arab garbage there to make a nice home for the hebrews. Jesus will love us for it.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and remark that my biggest criticism is that the most intellectual and capable leader of either political persuasion never enter the race (nor would ever). If we had the nation's best up against the nation's best, we'd have an entirely different dilema... but at least those of us who don't believe in the positions of the Bush administration would not have to watch Bush Jr. speak... and then travel the country knowing that half of the voters you see voted for him.
Blaming Nader for the results of the 2000 election makes about as much sense as blaming Lessig for the current miserable state of copyright laws. Be careful not to "spoil" any more Supreme Court cases!
Unless I horribly failed to articulate my opinion (which certainly would not be a first), my criticism was of the political environment which practically mandates the status quo of the current duopoly. My specific criticism of your position is that, by your statements, you are complicit in the furthering of the belief that we are locked into this duopoly. I understand your pragmatic premise; I just think there's got to be a better way and that political pragmastim stifles innovation in that area of thought.
I believe that the current duopoly has failed us, but I also understand that we're stuck with them for at least another decade. But just as it took a few early-movers to adopt GNU/Linux back in the early-mid 90s, I think we need to think differently about politics and abandon the two-party system that has produced such legislation as the DMCA, Patriot, and CIPA.
--Jason
Nader didn't say his critics were advocating censorship of his views, Prof. Nader was saying that the tremendous uproar about his intentions to announce his candicacy is tantamount to censoring him from his right to fully participate in the political process. If you can present a convincing argument that succeeds to instill this belief that others can be intimidated to relinquish their constitutional right to fully participate in society's political process, then what you'll have achieved is the mob rule trumps an individual's rights. As criticism, we may gleefully indicate the results of another's actions actions may be detrimental to our ideals, of course; but, even if that is proven convincingly to be absolutely the case... does this mean necessarily that Ralph Nader should abdicate his rights on that basis?
I think Ralph retains the same rights as we all share to determine his own destiny in the political sphere. Our right to criticize his ideas and actions hinge upon those ideas of his and how he conveys them through his actions. Incidentally, Ralph Nader didn't cost the Al Gore Presidency in 2000. If the insecure central tabulating software used along with electronic voting machines weren't authorized or put onstream so rashly back then, Al Gore would have kept all of the votes which were stolen in one quick unauthorized overwrite of the original tabulations in just two Florida counties. We'd never have even heard of chads or dimples or Kathleen Harris or Bush vs. Gore.
Don't blame Ralph Nader. He doesn't advocate that you shouldn't run for office. Let the blame rest where it should rest...
Again: It would be perfectly reasonable and fair for the Democratic party to ask Nader or some other third party candidate to drop out at some point in the race if they offer them something in return, the amount of that "something" depending on the amount of support Nader has and on how important that support is for winning the election.
If, as is assumed here, Nader happens to have the crucial votes to securely win the election, that "something" should be at least a cabinet post, for example the Environmental Protection Agency.
If on the other hand Nader's supporters really don't matter ever so much for winning, the offer might be something less important.
In contrast, expecting the candidate with less support to drop out and promise exactly nothing in return is neither an attractive offer nor very democratic. It does serve to alienate potential supporters of the Democratic candidate to the left, however, instead of winning them over, and might actually contribute to a Bush reelection in that way.
Why can't you just talk to your Green party people and work some kind of coalition agreement out? That has been working in Germany for quite some time now.
During the last many months helping with the Dean campaign I have worked a great deal with many Greens and Independents. From discussions with them I can assure you that none of them are excited about voting for Mr. Kerry - they call him a plastic politician.
You make a massive mistake assumming that all of Nader's votes in 2000 could have/would have gone to Gore if Nader hadn't run. Many of the Greens and Independents I have talked to won't be voting for Kerry no matter how much you want 'em to -
If Nader doesn't run then there isn't anyone for them to vote for. I hope Nader runs because when people are faced with the choice of Bush and Kerry folks should have a right to say - neither of the above please!
In response to your response to my previous comment, it seemed to me as though you were advocating more than just the criticism of Nader. It's not your right to criticize Nader that I have a problem with; it's the substance of your criticism. It seemed as though you were advocating holding Nader responsible for the Bush presidency. Re-reading your previous statements confirm this--you make the case that "but for" Nader, Bush would not have been elected. You then invoke the strict liability nature of defective products law (re: the Corvaire) to make the case that Nader's was a defective candidacy unreasonably dangerous to our country and thus Nader should be held strictly responsible for all the bad things (e.g. war, Patriot Act) that have come from the Bush administration. In addition to holding Nader responsible for Bush in the "but for" sense of causation, you also cite the post hoc determination that the votes Nader caused Al Gore not to receive had thus put Nader in the position, at the time of the election, of being the least cost avoider and thus the one who should bear the cost of the damages to society caused by Bush. So, you're saying Nader should be responsible for Bush winning because:
a) Nader directly caused Bush to win due to his candidacy (but for Nader, Gore would have won); and
b) Nader was in the best position prior to the election to prevent Bush from winning (least cost avoider); and
c) Nader had actual knowledge prior to the election (in the form of polling data) that unless he dropped out of the race Bush would win.
It's unclear what sort of liability you feel Nader deserves, but I'm glad you are not advocating him being held financially responsible for the things Bush has done. The tone of your argument as well as the comparison to civil tort liability made me unsure of whether you were actually advocating Nader being held responsible for "wrongful election of inept candidate" (or some other political negligence) and making him pay remunerations to society. It's clear you think he is, at the least, morally culpable... especially since you say it's "more than negligence" since the polling data at the time of the election (which is always of dubious reliability) gave Nader actual knowledge that his candidacy would, in fact, take away enough votes from Gore to cause Bush to win. You seem to feel Nader has committed some intentional or grossly negligent wrong against society in the course of the 2000 election. More importantly, and more to the point of the argument at hand, you are saying he shouldn't put himself in the same position again in the next election (and "cause" Bush to win a second term). Thus your basis for arguing that Nader should not run again and the responsive complaints about "censorship."
Of course "censorship" is not the right word. A private person can't censor anyone or violate anyone's First Amendment rights, yadda yadda. That's not the issue here, and to the extent that it is being made the issue is just the result of uninformed people mistakenly using the wrong legal terms in their arguments.
Saying someone should not run for office because of pragmatic concerns regarding how many votes their candidacy could take away from X candidate just isn't right. This is because you're telling someone not to run for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications, their platform, their abilities, or their character. You're dealing solely with factors outside their penumbra of control. In America, a diversity of viewpoints and opinions is supposed to be encouraged. To say someone should stay out of an election because there is a probability that they will end up being a spoiler candidate is not fair to that person or to our democracy for two reasons:
1) A spoiler candidate can only be determined post hoc, after all the votes have been cast. Pre-election polls are only so reliable; and
2) in a representative democracy the voters should choose who their leaders are by casting their votes, not by telling people to drop out of a race (or not run at all) because they may end up causing someone else to get elected. To do so has the effect of "censoring" the viewpoints of those candidates you'd rather not run for those external reasons.
I say has the "effect of censorship" because it's not censorship, as mentioned previously, and you have every right to say it. But when people cause candidates other than the Repubican and the Democrat to not vote, the effect is to block all non-mainstream opinions from having a say in the election. This may come off as being overly idealistic. I disagree. The more candidates the better. The fact that only two of those candidates will actually get mass support is a result of the flawed two-party system. Let me ask you this, Prof. Lessig. Since there is zero percent chance of one winning an election and greater than zero percent chance of one ending up as a spoiler candidate, do you feel we should let 3rd party candidates run at all here in the USA? They can never help and can only hurt. So why allow them? That idiot Judge Roy "fuck the constitution" Moore is considering running as a 3rd party candidate, and will only attract extreme-right-wing votes away from Bush. Do you advocate him not running because he could cost the election for Bush? Or do you only oppose 3rd party spoiler candidates to the extent that they appear to take votes away from the guy you want to win?
This just in (via politicalwire.com)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001857851_cdig14.html
Campaign Notebook: Nader candidacy expected
"WASHINGTON - Former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader is poised to declare that he will seek the presidency again this year, this time as an independent and despite a vigorous effort by the left to dissuade him, according to friends and associates"
"Some Nader advocates had an epiphany after the 2000 election. Bush beat Gore by 537 votes in Florida, where Nader received 97,488 votes. Nader also arguably cost Gore New Hampshire.
Nader always has rejected the spoiler label. "It is not my job to elect my opponents," he has said."
"The issue now is 2004. We know again that there will be a close race."
Everybody keeps telling us this. And now we are certain, because Professor Lessig has told us so! Thank goodness for your crystal ball, sir. How else would we know what will happen 6 or more months hence?
I just don't think we should decide who should and shouldn't run based on how close we *think* the election will be.
Professor, if the major candidates are not appealing enough to motivate people to vote for them over a fringe party candidate, that is hardly an argument against others running. Rather it is a greater justification of their need to run. Let all voices be heard, and let the chips fall where they may.
Professor Lessig,
I am troubled by your buying in to the hype of claiming that "Nader cost Gore the 2000 election." This claim is nonsense by any scientific or analytical standard. While it is true that Nader received thousands of votes in Florida, and that Bush "won" Florida by 537 votes, your claim suffers from compounded causes.
A few points to consider: first, five third-party or independent candidates each received thousands of votes (Nader, Browne, Buchanan, Phillips, Hagelin), well more than 537, yet Nader alone gets the blame for costing Gore the election. The fact is that nearly every election in America has two candidates getting the vast majority of votes, with the non-duopoly candidates fighting for the few remaining scraps dropped from the table. Nader was firmly in this latter camp in 2000.
Second, your claim does not account for the impact Nader had on the political landscape in 2000. How many people who would not otherwise have voted were inspired to go to the polls in 2000? This group of voters undoubtedly includes voters from across the political spectra: progressive/green candidates disillusioned with the two-party system, right-wingers terrified of what Nader -- or Gore, for that matter -- stands for, and also disillusioned democrats who went out to vote because they were afraid that Nader would cost Gore votes. Though specific numbers from 2000 are impossible to come by, it is quite possible that Nader inspired MORE people to vote than the number of votes he received. Sadly, the breakdown of these numbers, of where these votes went, is impossible to know.
Third, Gore's campaign was one of the most poorly run in history. Gore failed to inspire voters, performed terribly at the debates against Bush, and failed to go for the jugular in his campaigns. Gore should have blown Bush out of the water in the debates, but instead he came across as wishy-washy, spineless, and without his own vision. This fact, in my view, was most important as to why the election was even close in the first place.
Fourth, Gore technically did win the election. Bush was in effect appointed by the Supreme Court. But hey, this is America; just because you get the most votes, doesn't mean you win the election.
I agree that it's important that Bush is not reelected this year, and that Nader will, no matter what his decision about running this year, influence the election in 2004. But the fact that Bush is the current occupant of the White House cannot be blamed solely on Nader. There were too many factors at work.
one of prof. lessig's points that i feel is being missed is the specificity of the current situation. while much of this discussion has taken on a generalized form, i believe that the nub of the argument is the urgency of this particular situation.
to wit: under most circumstances, nader is entitled to a run for office without having to worry about the political ramifications. but in this circumstance, lessig is arguing that the political situation is so dire that nader is reckless in ignoring it.
by analogy, consider the process of vacuuming your carpet. normally, you can just vacuum the rug without any special pre-treatment. that's the beauty of having a vacuum cleaner -- you don't have to get on your hands and knees to pick up small dirt particles.
however, if someone has broken a glass over the rug, then it's foolhardy to vaccum it without removing the large shards of glass first. you'll destroy your vacuum cleaner before you make the rug any cleaner. the most productive action in that circumstance is to bite the bullet, get on your hands and knees, and pick up the shards of glass first.
you might argue that the whole point of a vacuum cleaner is to avoid the process of getting down on your hands and knees to clean up, and you're right. but being right doesn't mean that the glass won't destroy your vacuum cleaner and it won't make the rug any cleaner.
bluntly: in this special, extenuating circumstance, the machinery just isn't powerful enough to fix the problem, and special consideration must be taken. i think it's reasonable, in this case, to criticize nader for not taking that consideration. especially when we all have to share the same rug.
I believe that most of the arguments against third party candidates are based on a flawed assumption: that whoever voted for the candidate in question would have voted otherwise. As anonymous (Feb 15 04 at 10:45 PM) put it, there are a great many people who simply wouldn't vote for any other candidate if the third party choice wasn't made available. Like I keep hearing about the economy, elections aren't a zero sum game. At least, they can only become a zero sum game if every citizen of voting age comes to the polls. Since this is not the case, anything that is said has to be supported by hard numbers. These numbers, however, are near-impossible to come by (specifically, if you hadn't voted for X, who would you have voted for?). The only way around this issue is a different electoral system. Anything else is mostly a waste of effort.
I feel that all of this discussion about Nader affecting the outcome of the 2000 election highlights the most troubling aspect: our plurastic voting system. If we used a more fair system, such as a approval voting (one may a vote for each of as many candidate as one likes; the candidate with the most votes is the winner), not only would this Nader issue be rendered moot, but we would likely end up with less-entrenched two-party system.
FYI, interesting site:
Ralph Don't Run
http://www.ralphdontrun.net
(Flash movie)
Isn't Bush a little more to blame for the fact that Gore lost than Nader?
"President Bush, by refusing to drop out of the election, you made Gore lose. Shame on you -- you should realize that your actions have consequences."
Hmm?
I think all those who make statements threatening other people's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech should be arrested and held incommunicado, preferably somewhere like Guantanamo Bay. If necessary, we could pass a constitutional amendment making it crystal clear that we won't stand for people talking about taking away our freedom of speech.
Have not seen much, if anything, about vote pairing (sometimes called vote swapping) in this discussion. In this country founded on self determination, new forms of digital expression are an important part of the debate!
Constitutional law Prof. Jamin Raskin described pairing in Slate three weeks before the 2000 election. To recap: the idea is that a pair of voters--a Nader voter in a swing state can pair off with a Gore voter in a safe state and swap votes such that the swing state vote goes to Gore but the Nader vote still gets counted. One can have one's political cake and eat it too. The swing state voter gets to vote his conscience, and the safe state voter is assured of stable actions by Nader supporters in swing states.
Supporting the legality of pairing, see recent ruling by appeals court. As long as it doesn't involve money, pairing is essentially a form of free association and speech.
The interesting thing about Nader vote pairing is that Nader himself has never really warmed to the Internet thing. He denounced pairing during his campaign, and in the NYT on Saturday, he is quoted as saying, "I really don't deal with the Web. There isn't enough time in the day to go into virtual reality." The thousands of vote-pairing Internet users were taking the part of him they actually wanted and discarding the rest.
Isn't the web great? You can rip, mix, and burn political candidates too. Let 'em run!
"he is quoted as saying, 'I really don’t deal with the Web. There isn’t enough time in the day to go into virtual reality.'"
As far as I'm concerned, this Bar Code Moment is more damning than anything to do with the 2000 election.
Say it with me: Condorcet voting.
An idealist is simply a pragmatist with better vision.
One would think that the passion and energy democrats are expending to keep Ralph from running would be better spent, oh, I don't know, on ensuring that thousands of black voters are not dropped from the rolls prior to the 2004 election (in FL and other possibly critical swing states). No, best to demonize one man doing what he is permitted to do in our alleged "democracy" than to investigate the further fouling of said "democracy". Much thanks again to the party of welfare "reform", the defense of marriage act, and 500,000 dead Iraqis due to "containment".
Ya know, that's entirely correct. And that's exactly why I'm going to vote for a candidate that is from neither the Democratic nor Republican parties. The consequences of my actions in voting for one party or the other in the past have created this duopoloistic environment and I'd like to see the extinction of that environment. I'm frustrated with having to choose between the better of two evils. I'd like more options when I vote. If there were more evils to choose from, at least I would have more choice as to which option is the least evil.
I believe we need much more diversity in our politics because political Darwinism has created two "super-species" which seem to share far too much of the same political DNA.
--Jason
I do not understand how the insistence Nader stand down differs from the insistence that junior coalition partners cease to exist and merge with the largest partner in each coalition, forfeiting their issues.
I admit we don't have a healthy tradition of parliamentary or coalition style government in the U.S. We have a de facto two party system. But that is a matter of belief on the part of the sovereign voters, similar to the widely believed fiction that the popular vote does or should elect the president, and the inordiate fear of "throwing" the election to the House of Representatives. If a fiction is believed widely enough, it becomes a political reality.
Small third parties should be able to discipline larger ones (like the Democratic) if they fail to represent a sufficiently broad spectrum of issues, so that they fall below the viable size in the two party system. Such pressure is how coalitions work.
So far, the Democrats, with continuing hubris, have demanded that elections be handed to them, without performing on issues. Who needs that? Why won't that approach lead to the Democrats doing the same things the Republicans would? What assurance do we have a Democrat would move to overturn the DMCA, for example?
It is more important to discipline the Democratic party as a potential coalition partner, than to defeat Bush. The intransigence of the Democrats (e.g. in quashing Dean in favor of a candidate who does not appeal to the same voting segment) is further evidence this is needed. If only the Democratic party *would* reform itself, the bitter medicine of Nader would not be necessary.
We will continue to not support you, until you support us. You will continue to lose unless you make that overture.
Only when the Democratic party understands the necessity of actually courting possible voters, who are former Democrats like myself and disaffected, will it deserve to be handed the power to overturn Bush. Until then, we will split elections and you will lose.
Why should we vote for you, if we don't agree with you?
Is it ever appropriate to censure a candidate for the act of running for public office simply on the basis of likely draining off votes from a more mainstream, e.g. able to win, candidate? I don't believe it is.
Ours is supposed to be a representative form of government. This implies that it woks best when there are choices for one's representatives that are reasonably close to one's views and concerns. The two mainstream parties can only represent a very broad amalgram of views and concerns. As each attempts to appeal to some of those drawn to the other their positions often leave surprisingly little real difference to prefer one over the other in practice. For instance, I am highly dismayed to see that the Democratic Party and its candidates is largely refusing to address what to me are the most vital concerns for the next few years, the reclaiming and preserverance of civil liberties and the dismantling of deadly dangerous attacks on our live and liberty such as the Patriot Act and its various kin.
While I believe the Bush administration is the most dangerous on multiple grounds that has ever held power in America and while I am desparate to see its demise, I cannot in my heart of hearts believe that voting Democratic will make us more free and secure in our lives and liberties.
I do not see how any sort of fundamental turning of this country from its present course will come from our two party system as long as the opposition party refuses to take the risky position of standing firmly against what is so dangerous and wrong.
Lawrence Lessig write-in votes were more than sufficient to have tipped the balance to Gore in the 2000 election. Yet Lessig has not committed suicide, and indeed plans to live again for the 2004 election! I think it's fair to criticize him, which is why I've started a grassroots campaign:
Larry Don't Live!
My serious point: blame the voters, not the candidates.
I think your legal premise is fine for what it is, but it's misapplied.
In 2000, Nader had a responsibility to advance the cause of the Green Party in particular. Pulling out of the race would not have been the cheapest solution for its supporters. You are ignoring their cost burden with your argument. Whether or not the Green Party agenda would have been ultimately advanced by Gore's victory is an over-homogenization of their implied interests. In short, I disagree with your premise that Nader should have pulled out in 2000, and specifically in disregard of *your* value metric as applied to the actual results.
As for this time, he's running as an independent, but he still has the interests of his supporters to consider. Putting your interests over theirs is not going to be the cheapest this time either.
Finally, I think it's foolish to blame Nader for Gore's loss. Nader would have been irrelevant if Gore had been able to carry his own home state of Tennessee (a state where the Green Party does not even appear in the official results). Gore lost the election on his own. Blaming Nader for Gore's loss is mostly indicative of an unwillingness of Democrats to accept their own shortcomings.
BTW, I didn't vote for Nader last time and I won't vote for him this time either.
Keep on doing great work!
Thanks
As Ralph Nader has determined that he will run again in the 2008 election and the Green Party has also fielded a slate, that of Cynthia McKinney and Rosa?Clemente, I am curious as to whether Professor Lessig again feels these interlopers again pose a threat to the candidates who "are supposed to win?"
Obama has indicated he will now compromise on offshore drilling, among other issues, so now I am not alone amongst my friends in deciding I will be voting Green this election season. I might be blamed for an Obama loss, but I do not feel that the Democrats care at this time that they have lost votes because of their unwillingness to stand firm on the issues.
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