This is why protest votes are so self-defeating. Go read it all:
My latest @observer column examines why voting #Green is a self-defeating act for #progressives. #GreenParty https://t.co/srdwQelAuM
— CBPolitics (@ClistonBrown) August 15, 2016
Whether you accept these arguments or not, there is another undeniable fact that renders them irrelevant: Nader won 22,198 votes in New Hampshire, a state Gore lost by 7,211 votes. Had just one-third of Nader’s New Hampshire voters chosen Gore instead, the Democrat would have captured the Granite State’s four electoral votes and taken the White House with exactly the 270 electors required for victory. The mess in Florida would have gone down in history as an interesting but irrelevant footnote.
Instead, Nader’s voters deprived Gore of New Hampshire’s electors, and he finished with 266. The 2000 election marks the only time a Democratic presidential candidate has failed to carry New Hampshire in the last six elections.
Congratulations, New Hampshire far lefties. By voting for Ralph Nader in 2000, you got precisely the opposite of everything you wanted: a Republican presidency; continued conservative control of the Supreme Court, culminating in Citizens United and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, to name just two of the recent court decisions liberals despise the most; and the war in Iraq, with all its devastating consequences in blood and treasure. There’s a word of fairly recent coinage that perfectly describes your choice 16 years ago: Derp. While you were patting yourselves on the back for making a “statement,” progressivism lost a generation.
When I was young(er) and foolish(er), I voted for Barry Commoner in the Carter-Reagan 1980 election. The Anderson vote handed POTUS to Ronzo in that election, but the point was the same.
Voting your conscience in a two-party system gets you nowhere.
I haven’t made that mistake again, but we didn’t get a do-over. Once was enough. Like the line from House of the Rising Sun says, “Don’t do what I have done.”
Gore lost New Hampshire. The Nader voters didn’t belong to you. This election is in the balance without the third party voters. Win it or lose it in that environment. The outcome is only “determined” by outside parties as mathematical rationalization for a screw up. You want the left votes move left. You want to factor opportunity cost (ie triangulate) then don’t scream about the costs. You have a dedicated anti-war block beyond the horizon. Reach for it or lose it.
The Nader voters were idiots.
If you want the left vote and move left and gain a million people, that could be good.
But if that move makes you lose ten million others, it would not be.
In that case the left voters who insist on their high road are just making sure we all — left voters included — wind up on the low road.
That is self-defeating.
I don’t think this is about the election. I think this is about after the election — the next incarnation of Fox News, only aimed at young people.