2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Switch Jill Stein votes to Clinton, and just half of Gary Johnson votes, and here's what you get: [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)Good lord. The all-powerful Ralph Nader beat Al Gore? How do you even begin to reach that conclusion?
It is just plain silly to blame Nader or anyone else. Gore WON the popular and electoral votes in the eventual, not-counted recount.
To pick all of the things that should have gone differently and be angry at people who simply didn't want to vote for him on the basis they "should" have is the height of illogic. More than half of independents in this election said their second choice would have been to "stay home."
It's really odd, and a bit disturbing that anyone would let the Republicans, with their obstructionism in Florida and elsewhere, and fake "protests" of the recount (remember the picture of "angry Florida voters" full of Republican staffers?) and the b.s. Supreme Court decision skate out of rage that anyone would dare not vote within one of the two parties.
And yes, Gore himself should have spoken up. He would have been right to do so in that screwed up circumstance.
We're not entitled to anyone's vote, and just deciding that people are somehow worse for voting indie rather than Republican or "none of the above" is the height of logical fallacy and a strange sense of entitlement.