“This is a collapse of the Democratic Party.” Consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader comments on the reelection of Donald Trump and the failures of the Democratic challenge against him.
Despite attempts by left-wing segments of the Democratic base to shift the party’s messaging toward populist, anti-corporate and progressive policies, says Nader, Democrats “didn’t listen.” Under Trump, continues Nader, “We’re in for huge turmoil.”
He is an expert, after all. He’s the guy whose 3rd party campaign in 2000 siphoned enough votes from Gore in Florida to flip the state (and the election) to Bush.
In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore’s defeat.
However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for.
- his wiki
Yeah fuck Ralph Nader for that. He definitely helped Bush win.
His family was forced out of Lebanon by radical Islam so I think he knows a thing or two about the value of democracy.
His parents immigrated. The Late Ottoman Empire is responsible for their genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns. Repeatedly blaming Islam over the political parties responsible is just thinly veiled islamophobia
Ralph Nader does value democracy. He has accomplished a lot through his activism
The statement failed to condition this support on the White House’s making immediate enforceable demands on Israel to stop this mass annihilation, including women, children, the elderly, and hospital patients, immediately. There is no indication of any reciprocity, simply a plea without any display of political power on behalf of the Lebanese American community. After all, there are over a million Lebanese American voters that the Democratic Party should be keeping in mind.
Uhhhh, wasn’t that more due to Jeb! ordering the recount stopped? Like, I seem to recall reading that the recount WAS NOT COMPLETED, and the results that they had at that point had to be accepted, which just so happened to favor Bush.
Not saying Nader didn’t siphon votes, but I seem to remember that there was actual skulduggery and not just “3rd party go brr”.
Well yeah, you (and the other poster who referenced the Brooks Brothers Riot) are 100% correct in stating the count ended prematurely, but if Nader hadn’t siphoned away those votes, Gore likely would have had yhe lead throughout the recount and Republicans wouldn’t have been in a position to pick a favorable time to stop.
I blame it more on Gore and the Democrats for not fighting for democracy more. Hopefully it becomes more clear the Supreme Court is an legitimate institution and people point to increasingly inane decisions as a reason not to listen to it.
Agreed. These people are demonstrating the exact behavior that Nader is talking about that put Trump in the Whitehouse in 2016 and now it looks like again in 2024. What the fuck do they expect to happen when running as “diet Republicans” against “Republicans?”
Of course people don’t like to take their medicine and will now lash out and blame everyone else for the mess they’ve caused again.
There was a lot going on. The final count used had bush up by 537 votes out of 5.8 million cast. The close margin triggered a recount and Bush dropped to 327 vote lead.
Nadar probably cost the democrats more votes then republicans by greater then that 327. But there were other things that hurt Gore. Some intentional some random.
There were ballot design issues. In areas where the butterfly ballot was used Buchanan (who was also a 3rd party candidate) got way more votes than elsewhere. So if you wanted Gore saw him under Bush and selected the dot below you voted for Buchanan. See below.
Bush. O
/ O Buchanan
Gore. O
In another democratic area the ballot had the presidential race split on the front and back page. 21,000 votes were invalidated because they had multiple selections for president.
There was a large purge of mostly black felon voters. 15% weren’t felons.
Then there were lawsuits trying to stop and start recounts in both state and federal court. The state supreme court ordered recounts while they decided if the recount should be used. Then they decided the recount should be used and set a date it was du. Then the US supreme court stopped the recount. Several days later they decided there wasn’t time for a recount and ordered the Bush ahead by 537 count to be used.
So honestly it probably took all the above to swing the final count to Bush from Gore. I’m guessing if any one had not happened Gore would have been president.
A personal note I live in Florida and that was the first election I voted in. My vote for president has never be closer to making a difference in who was president. It’s shaped my views on elections and voting.
Fuck you, Nader. We wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for you.
Looking purely at vote counts, he isn’t wrong. Trump lost about 3 million votes compared to 2020, whereas the Dems lost 15 million. There’s certainly a lot of blame to lay at the feet of “both sides bad” people who didn’t vote, but either way that’s catastrophically bad turnout for the Dems.
It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about the person weighing in.
I don’t want to hear what Jill Stein has to say about it either. Fuck both of them.
And you people downvoting: would you want to hear Newt Gingrich’s take? Even if this is what he said?
That’s a logical fallacy called an Ad Hominem. Where you don’t argue against an idea, instead attack the person voicing it.
You’re opinion of a person, doesn’t mean anything to their argument. It actually works against finding truth and solutions.
You should be saying: “Fuck Kamala Harris”
The Dems knew from day one that the economy was the most important issue to voters, because the vast majority of them are working 2-3 jobs just to barely make ends meet.
So what did they do? They ran a clearly brain-damaged candidate, and when he imploded on live national TV, they subbed in Harris, who spent two months just telling people suffering to be joyful, as if it weren’t only condescending, but terribly bad policy and campaign strategy. Here in Missouri the $15 minimum wage passed overwhelmingly, but Harris decided to cosplay as a moderate Republican and talk about tax cuts that no one actually thought she’d follow through with anyway, because they’ve spent the last four years being ignored by Joe Biden.
And they kept harping on Trump’s weirdness, as if they haven’t already observed that voters do not care how weird he is.
Jill Stein and Ralph Nader didn’t make these crappy political decisions.
The Dems did.
There’s certainly a lot of blame to lay at the feet of “both sides bad” people who didn’t vote
No. Absolutely not.
The Democrats and Republicans have spent 40 years, but more importantly, the last six months making it very clear that losing a badly-needed day’s pay for a worker isn’t worth the time it takes to vote. (Unless you were in Missouri with the $15 minimum wage on the ballot.)
Democrats are the reason that Democrats lose.
I think that if you’re looking at the Presidential race in particular, you probably want to look specifically at turnout in swing states, where the vote could have been realistically shifted.
Probably a lot of post-mortems happening. I want to see some material from Five Thirty Eight on what shifts happened from 2020. In the runup to the election, for example, I remember reading that young non-college-educated male blacks polled had swung dramatically more Republican between 2020 and 2024. That suggests that division around education is becoming more-important along party lines. A majority was still voting Democrat, but the shift was large, something crazy, like twenty percentage points. I remember reading another article in the runup that Trump had gained slightly among females, also kind of a surprise to me. Now that we’ve got voting data, though, we can look at county level stuff and try to get an idea of which demographics actually shifted their votes and how.
Liberals would choose fascism over adopting left wing elements into the party. They’ve made their choice and will now live with it. Repeated failure by leadership to choose a candidate people actually like is what brought us here. Never forget that.
It’s not even the leader itself that matters. Harris was a mediocre politician, but she could have run a better campaign on issues that make people believe in the Democratic party. But instead we ran up to election day wondering if Lina Khan would even keep her job and nightmares of neoliberal policies too limited and too complicated to inspire anyone.
Maybe blowing up the Democratic party would be best for everyone.
Well I’d prefer more than one thing to replace it, but certainly this is one of the rare opportunities to do so.
Move on from the Democrats. It’s over. They had their chance with Bernie.
After this term Trump cannot be reelected. What will the democratic message be then? Who will be the new boogie man?
The Democratic Party will never change on its own. It is run by neoliberals. Neoliberals are moderate conservatives. They will always shift a little right before shifting a little left.
If the Party is not overtaken by progressives, we will repeat all this bullshit again and again until only far right people remain.
The party needs to be taken over by leftists not progressives. It needs leadership who isn’t afraid of being titled left, those who reject the right as an outward identity.
Unless the R’s hold their constitutional convention and crown Trump Emperor
Eh, even if they do, because I do believe it’s 100% possible they’ll try to end democracy in all but name this cycle, I don’t think Trump will even live out his full term in the next 4 years. The man looks older every rally and photo op. He can’t even open doors.
Vance sucks in all the same ways every neocon sucks, so I don’t think he’ll be a totalitarian aberration like Trump if he’s elected. He doesn’t seem to have that something Trump has. I think he’ll be more like Reagan or Bush. Which is awful, but I think it’s something we can push through at least.
To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.
The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.
Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.
Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.
