I am quite tempted to go.

Technical question: Did you use your brushpen on this one, too? I ask because, online anyway, the cartoon looks like it is drawn with grease pencil, charcoal and nib. Or else I’m just raving.

Boy, we learned our lesson on that one, didn’t we.

I was, however, foolish enough to believe that if he got elected, the Democrats would snap out of their collective coma long enough to effectively rein in the little fucker. Are we even ? :p

–I need to work on my SARCASM tags or something. They aren’t coming through.

That’s because you’re too cool for emoticons, kip. Striking a pose has its price, y’know. ;)

But then, the reckless irresponsibility of Gore voters such as myself, and how it interefered with building a new progressive party, has already been hashed and rehashed to death. This cartoon is much more interesting in the current context as a reminder of the vileness of the ‘electability’ arguments that anyone supporting Kucinich is harming the Democrats and doing their best to re-elect Bush (and yes I really have seen such arguments).

Charles

JDC, perhaps you do misread the cartoon. But even if you’re a Nadar-hater, surely the 2000 election results support the cartoon’s main premise - that there’s something wrong with how we run Democracy in the USA. I mean, post-November-2000, is there any Democrat who can honestly say they see nothing wrong with how we run our elections?

Bravo, Charles.

I do have trouble divining the “main premise” of the cartoon. (This may well be symptomatic of how differences in politics affect the ability to “get” a cartoon as was discussed in the Israeli wall cartoon earlier. Maybe I do get it but simply don’t like it.)

I’m not a fan but I don’t hate Nader. (I voted for him in NY as part of one of those vote-swapping schemes. I would not have voted for him if I thought he could win. I supported the Green Party as an idea rather than the notion of Ralph being Commander in Chief.) I do find some of his statements and actions strange. And I think running a candidate against Wellstone was idiotic.

I don’t believe in the “it’ll be so bad people will come to us next time” school of thought. The same was said of Reagan. And it took an operator like Clinton to regain the White House.

I think that the 2000 election offered a clear choice between Gore and Bush. Voting for Nader because you believe in the Green Party is fine. Voting for Nader because you believe there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is ignorant.

I agree with Charles that “electability” is an insufficient factor in supporting a candidate. Especially in primary elections. Vote your conscience, your heart. I’m a big fan of Kucinich and would love to see him get the nomination. But if he doesn’t and, say, Kerry does, I’ll vote for Kerry. (Please don’t ask me what I’ll do if the nominee is Lieberman. I get chills just thinking about it.)

But in the 2000 general election, I think it was more important to defeat Bush than to be ideologically pure. I suppose we could accuse each other of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good (or less-bad if you prefer in Gore’s case).

And thanks for the “Yawn” Amy S. Your trenchant analysis helped me come to a fuller appreciation of the issues at hand.

I’m fucking sick of listening to people wail about how bad it was to say there were no differences between the two parties. Last I heard, hype was an integral part of the campaign process. I doubt Nader really believed that there was, literally, no difference between the two parties. Neither did I. However, the differences have become more and more negligible in the last thirty years. Meanwhile, Gore crowed that “he would fight for you.” Which was hype. The man couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. Meanwhile, Bush said he was compassionate. It was hype. The man’s compassion could fit inside a peapod with room left over for two subway tokens. So what ? Only an idiot believes, literally, every last thing a candidate says on the trail.

And don’t even get me started on the colossial joke that was “vote swapping.” Yikes.

If you look at the record of the Dems in the past two years, Nader’s assertion wasn’t as much hype as it first appeared to be. At the national level, the Dems have appeased where they should have attacked most of the time. No one held a gun to their heads and ordered them to rubber stamp every bloodthirsty, hateful piece of shit Shrub lobbed at them. But they did. Maybe you’d like to take five minutes of your time to get worked up about that, instead of about some hype from a three-year-old campaign trail.

As Emma said on her blog, Nader did not invent the notion that Democrats and Republicans were alike. The Democrats, including Clinton the Slug, have sold themselves by aping the Reps for years. If they want people to understand the differences between them and the Reps, they damn well better do a better job of showing it.

I assume that when Lieberman gets the nod, you’ll focus on whatever sliver of policy appears to differentiate him from Shrub and pull the lever. Better you than me.
Enjoy.

I said “Voting for Nader because you believe in the Green Party is fine. Voting for Nader because you believe there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is ignorant.”

Do you really disagree? Perhaps I was unclear. I take no issue with anyone who pulled the lever (or punched the chad) for Nader out of a conviction that that was how to build a viable third party or honestly wanted Nader to be president. (I wouldn’t agree with that conviction but that’s a separate issue.) However, voting for Nader to send a message to the Democrats strikes me as stupid.

Are you saying that “the major parties are the same” rhetoric is OK because everybody lies? If everybody does lie, why have a third party? If Nader didn’t sincerely believe it, why was he running like that? Personal glory? He certainly wasn’t going to win.

Vote swapping *is* a joke. But it let me (in some minescule way) support the idea of a third party without facing the consequences of a cannibalized vote. There’d be no difference in outcome if I’d been a sincere Nader voter. He got my vote either way.

And of course I’m underwhelmed by Democratic performance over the last 2 years. It is almost entirely craven. And I think it hurts them immensely. As for what I should be outraged about in the here and now, the present wasn’t the topic of the cartoon.

I honestly don’t know what I’d do if faced with a Lieberman candidacy. He’s abhorent. I’ve described myself as an anyone-but-Bush voter. But Lieberman? Uggghh . . . I’m counting on not having to make that choice. Which may be chickenshit but there it is. What do Greens do then? The faction that doesn’t want to run a presidential candidate in an effort to defeat Bush would be nauseated.

Whuuups. Sorry. That’s what I get for reading quickly before going to bed. I overlooked the “no new cartoon” notice.

Anyway, blah blah blah Nader blah blah blah Gore blah blah blah stolen election blah blah blah DLC blah blah blah spoiler blah blah blah I so don’t care about that argument anymore.

There’s a new election season approaching with a fair share of progressives on the ballot: Dean, Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, Sharpton. And they are actually Democrats worth voting for. So let’s pay attention to that.