And Tim Heffernan at Esquire reports an opening salvo in the 2012 elections, goddess save us:
… Ralph Nader. Yep, that Ralph Nader. Ol’ Seatbelts was speaking to Fox about New York mayor Mike Bloomberg yesterday and had this to say:
__
I see a looming giant on the horizon for 2012… you better try to get an interview with him because if he runs, it is not only a three-way race, he’s going to blow the whole two-party system apart.
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This being Nader, the most inept reader of the American political wind, I’d laugh… if Bloomberg himself hadn’t said on Monday that a third-party president, in his opinion, would be more effective than any given Democrat or Republican. Was he talking about himself? I don’t think so. I think he’s talking to potential third-party or moderate Republican candidates — and I think he’s telling them that his door and his wallet are open. More on this later this week. But I think it’s the story to watch over the coming year.
Discuss.
Strandedvandal
A third party president would get the cooperation of maybe 2 congress critters? Not going to happen.
Hunter Gathers
There’s no fucking way that Bloomie would spend a shit-ton of his own cash to finish with zero electoral votes. He may have a king-sized ego, but he’s not that fucking stupid.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
A) HA! Toles is a fucking god.
B) Ha-ha-ha-ha! Third party Presidential candidate…. Well, let’s hope Bloomberg lights his money on fire rather than backing that sort of nonsense, because at least then some out-of-work people might be able to warm themselves by the glow of his flaming cash. ETA: So I guess what I’m saying here is: I don’t know who Tim Heffernan is, but I think he might be stupid.
C) It took me awhile to gather my post-election emotions today, and I realized that it boils down to this: It’s not the loss as much as the kind of people we lost to http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/in-which-i-finally-do-talk-about-the-elections/
MikeJ
Reg: All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans done for us?
Xerxes: Brought peace!
Reg: What!? Oh… Peace, yes… shut up!
Martin
Nader is fat, right?
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
PS Just noticed that the vehicle that ran over the Democrats was a garbage truck — AWESOME. I repeat: Toles is a fucking god.
freelancer
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
My thoughts on the election were more upbeat, if not a little more terse.
Michael
Undoubtedly, there will be some Greens from 2000 who will go on rapturously about the “integrity” demonstrated by their votes for Nader. When I point out that a larger Gore margin in popular vote would have given even the douchebag contingent of SCOTUS some pause and may have led to a different outcome, I get the internet equivalent of a dull, uncomprehending stare.
Comrade PhysioProf
I’m a New Yorker, and I really like Bloomberg. But mostly that’s because he’s not completely fucken insane, which is my current standard for “really liking” a politician.
Davis X. Machina
This is clearly the political version of the buildup to the launch of the Segway.
Comrade Luke
Michael Moore took a break from being fat to be on Democracy Now last night, and suggested the same thing.
The way he predicted it would play out was that the Tea Party was going to push hard to get someone on the presidential ballot, and if they succeeded that would result in the less-delusional portion of the Republican party to run someone as a third party candidate. Enter Bloomberg.
Makes a lot of sense if you ask me.
Bnut
Bloomberg will NOT run or finance if he can’t win. He’s not a “statement” guy. He’s a run you over with a truck kind of guy.
Warren Terra
A writer on Livejournal about whom I know little (an Irish medical student perhaps) but whom I occasionally read (from when LG&M linked to an essay he wrote that pointed out how if you compare a documentary about WWII to a scripted science-fiction drama, it’s WWII that seems over-the-top and unbelievable, with multiple Deus Ex Machinas, etcetera), wrote a parable about the election:
(the guy’s previous post, a Halloween tale, was also quite good).
BH
An idiotic quote by a political fool about a total fantasy. Thanks, Ralph!
Oliver
Bloomberg is one crazy motherfucxer. As somebody has already said, he would never spend big gobs of his money on someone else; his ego is at least as big as the Empire State Building.
Warren Terra
@Comrade Luke:
See, that’s where your scenario becomes unrealistic.
Joseph Nobles
From an Allahpundit tweet, I’m ranking the choices of Republican response to the SOTU.
1. Nikki Haley – everything Republicans wish Sarah Palin was, she is.
2. Marco Rubio
3. Chris Christie
Comrade Luke
@Warren Terra: You know what’s funny? I rewrote that phrase three times trying to figure out the best way to put it.
Guess I failed :)
gwangung
@Bnut:
which is much more 2016 than 2012.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@freelancer: Well yes, there is that!
But really, I realized that my sense of despair is more about who they are, than about what they did last night. It’s the same despair I’ve been feeling since 2000. It’s just that after 2008, I was able to avert my gaze now and then, and dial the despair down to, say, 8.7.
Now it’s back up at 11. Same despair – BUT LOUDER.
JGabriel
Tim Heffernan:
It would be an interesting piece of performance art, a comment on Citizen’s United, a way of saying, “Now that the gates are down, any billionaire can buy his own candidate.”
I doubt Bloomberg is capable of quite that level of sardonic irony though.
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arguingwithsignposts
Reposting from previous thread:
Warning: Shameless blogwhoring ahead.
Well, the TS and I are still working on the Sept. music reviews, but in the meantime, we’ve found another gem for you. Check it out here. (a bit slow of tempo, but some Simon and Garfunkel-ness that might score with BJ readers).
And thanks for checking out the new blog effort everyone. Hope it’s fun for you all too. Lady Smudge thanks you too.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@BH: An idiotic quote by a political fool who handed us W. on a petulant platter.
Fuck Ralph Nader.
jayjaybear
Besides, it’s a LOT harder to repeal the 22nd Amendment than to suspend a city ordinance.
marcopolo
Who is paying these folks to parrot this third party 2012 presidential race crap? I ask that because it sure sounds like everyone is reading from the same idiotic playbook–see the fantasy “Palin wins the R nod, Bloomberg jumps in, Obama loses when he doesn’t get 270 electoral votes and the decision is thrown to the R-led house” vomitation that various pundits were pushing last week.
On a totally different note, what Krugman says from earlier today:
Apologies to the copyright Gods. And I do blame Summers, Geitner, and, yes, Obama for a failure to pursue a much more bottom-up instead of top-down approach to economic stimulus and the mortgage crisis.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@arguingwithsignposts: And she appears to be very genuine as she does so! “No really, thank you so much!” She seems to say. (But I like her back leg salute the best).
KG
@Warren Terra: I don’t know, if a Tea Partier gets the nomination, I could see the establishment freaking out and quietly (quietly) backing an independent run by someone else. I don’t think it’ll be Bloomberg, I agree with everyone else that’re saying he’d be more likely to run in 2016.
End of the day, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to run an independent campaign and create a three way race when an incumbent is running
JGabriel
@Joseph Nobles:
Wait, are you saying Haley puts out for wingnut bloggers?
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jl
@marcopolo: On process, I agree with you and I agree with Krugman. It is cold comfort that the policy legacy of the ‘brilliant’ Summers will be two huge failures: financial market deregulation, and airily dismissing serious policy analysis (by Romer) for bogus political expediency (or because of arrogant, dumb, orders from the WH).
MikeJ
@KG: Meh, I don’t think a teabagger nominee would upset the republican establishment if they can convince them that a balanced ticket will win. Balanced of course meaning Dick Cheney mark II leads the veep hunt.
The GOP has experience dealing with candidates that really have no interest in being president other than hearing music every time they enter a room. Sarah Palin could be derailed with an iPod.
Comrade Luke
FWIW, the reason I think all of this breaks down is because when you get right down to it, the Tea Party is funded by the same people who will fund the Republican presidential nominee. They are going to have a ton of money to spend since it’s the first presidential election since Citizens United, so they’re going to put it all behind one person to unseat Obama.
And that ain’t gonna be a Tea Partier.
Anton Sirius
@Joseph Nobles:
Clearly it’ll be door #2. Haven’t you heard? Rubio is exactly like Obama, only he didn’t stupidly leave himself open to charges of being a Muslim by growing up in Indonesia.
I saw it on Sully today, so it must be true.
jwb
@KG: So what, we’d get centrist Obama versus centrist money guy versus batshit crazy guy or gal? The problem is that centrist money guy is not going to be able to govern any better than Obama and probably would have a harder time because he would have little legislative backing. The only way this has a prayer is if Bloomberg et al are willing to drop a real shit load of money, some figure well north of the rumored $4 billion spent this cycle to start and fund a whole new party financed to run candidates across the board.
Yutsano
@gwangung:
Which by when Bloomberg will be pushing 70 and most likely will be much more interested in winding down his life rather than adding to his stress levels.
KG
@marcopolo: pundits do this every few cycles… let’s create a crazy constitutional scenario. I remember it happening in 2000 during the recount, then it went something like this:
What if one Bush elector abstains and we have a tie? It goes to the House, where we can’t get 26 states to pick someone. The Senate votes for Lieberman (50-50 Senate with Gore casting the tie-breaking vote). Inauguration day comes and we still don’t have a decision by the House, Lieberman is sworn in as Veep and becomes acting president.
Having studied political science and constitutional law, it’s a fun little exercise for me to play with different scenarios. But I just don’t see a way that it actually happens.
Lolis
Bloomberg didn’t even win his own re-election by that big of a margin. Why are these so-called progressives hyping Bloomberg? He is far more conservative than Obama. I don’t get it.
Citizen Alan
@Michael:
Well I’m not surprised because, no offense, but that’s a silly argument to make. The conservative wing of the Court was bound and determined to put Bush in the White House, and the way you win the presidency is by winning in the Electoral College. I feel confident that there was no conceivable popular vote margin that would have led Kennedy or O’Connor to vote differently.
Personally, I think picking Bob Graham as his running mate instead of Lieberpig would have probably done a hell of a lot more to put Gore over the top than having Nader out of the race. This relentless scapegoating of Nader, ten years after the fact is only counterproductive, particularly if Obama (as I anticipate) takes even farther to the right over the next two years and effectively dares Nader or someone else on the left to run a third party campaign.
sven
@Joseph Nobles: Reading Sarah Palin and State of the Union in the same post just made me very uncomfortable. Sarah Palin’s version of the address… pure agony,
JGabriel
@Bnut:
Bloomberg will not run for president. I remember one time, when he was asked, he made a joke about America voting for a 5’5″ Jew.
I wish I could find the reference, but it just feels wrong typing Bloomberg 5’5″ Jew into the Google search field.
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gbear
@Joseph Nobles:
I’m guessing it will be “YOU LIE!!”
Hawes
It would be interesting if the GOP nominates someone like Sarah Palin (Palin-Bachman ’12, Setting Women Back Five Decades), whether there might coalesce some sort of Turd party campaign for a guy like Mitch Daniels.
More likely some suit like Thune wins the GOP and Tancredo runs as a Turd party candidate.
Suffern ACE
@Lolis: Bloomberg is all of that Finance Industry money that backed the Dems in 2008 that the high end Dems in New York want back. That set tried to get it back with Harold Ford for Senator but it did not work.
I think there is a split in the money between oil and finance that isn’t quite settled yet, even though they all have abandoned Obama this election. The New York vs. Texas republicans. Or GEs huge bet on electric based green solutions, wind power and whatnot vs. oil. Bloomberg is just so amazingly green.
But also, too. In reality. Mike Bloomberg owns a profitable media company and those are hard to come by.
Just a speculation.
Tinfoil hat off.
JGabriel
Suffern ACE:
And Bloomberg likes being mayor of NYC. I don’t know what he’ll do when he leaves office, but I get the feeling he doesn’t think being president would be much fun.
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danimal
Just not seeing a third party unless the High Priestess of the North finds the GOP candidate insufficiently conservative.
sven
@marcopolo: A friend of mine once said he didn’t like Krugman because he ‘seemed bitter’. Huh, wonder why….
jpbelmondo
Bloomberg barely got reelected 2 years ago against a candidate with no name recognition. He is not beloved in New York, and the only reason he has gotten so far — in just one city, no matter how large — is because he has boatloads of cash and distributes it generously. I am highly skeptical that he would get any more traction in a national election than Rudy Giuliani did.
Suffern ACE
@JGabriel: I don’t think he’s running. I wouldn’t be surprised if some group of people had dinner and fretted, “what if they really mean no more bailouts.”
Edit: They like to think that they are more popular than they really are and that the people they like are also popular, so it isn’t necessary that he himself is creating a “buzz.”
jwb
@Suffern ACE: And they think centrist money guy is going to deliver another bailout with no legislative support?
ETA: the thing is at this point the Dems are more likely to bail them out if it’s needed than are the Goopers, who really believe that tax cuts are the solution to every problem.
Suffern ACE
@jwb: Yep. Jejeje. I said I was wearing a tinfoil hat.
JGabriel
@jpbelmondo:
He’s not reviled either, like Giuliani is. Even people who voted against Bloomberg, as I did, will largely admit he’s been an okay mayor. The reason Bloomberg barely got elected two years ago was because the way he ran roughshod over the term limits law rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, not so much because of actually disliking him or poor performance.
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lawnorder
If a charismatic 3rd party candidate inspires and woos the young voters, Obama is history.
Shouldn’t have taken the youth vote for granted, if he was planning on winning due to first time voters
Roger Moore
@Comrade Luke:
So the Bloomberg would siphon away some fraction of the Republican vote. He might get some of the Republican-leaning independents. But why would anyone expect a substantial fraction of the Democrats to vote for a third party candidate instead of an incumbent from their own party? They’ve already shown a real willingness to vote for a Black guy. I don’t expect him to be substantially less popular in 2012 than he is now unless he does something incredibly stupid. This strikes me as a bunch of pundits who want the 2012 election to provide them with interesting stories, not people making realistic judgments about political outcomes.
jwb
@Suffern ACE: No, I got that you were wearing the tinfoil hat. I think your reconstruction of the dinner conversation is probably accurate. I just can’t believe these guys are the masters of the universe when they can’t even think their way out of a paper bag. You know in many respect I prefer my conspirators to be wickedly smart evil bastards to the entitled, smug, and supremely stupid set we seem burdened with. Better villains please!
MikeJ
@lawnorder: You mean he should have done things like cut the middlemen out of student loans? Perhaps he should have allowed kids to stay on their parents insurance until they were 26?
Comrade Luke
@Joseph Nobles:
The NY Times is already ahead of you.
Marco Rubio, the Great Right Hope.
Spaghetti Lee
Well, there’s a first time for everything I guess. If I recall, the all-time record for a third-party candidate in terms of electoral votes is James Weaver, with 12. But as we all know, Bloomberg would win the East Coast, Florida, and California, along with Skokie, IL, Brookline, MA, and Israel, so he’d probably top 12.
Violet
@Comrade Luke:
Rumor has it Rubio’s got a mistress…
KG
@Citizen Alan: If Gore would have carried Arkansas or Tennessee in 2000, Florida would have been a historical footnote. Or Ohio, Nevada, Missouri, Louisiana, or Arizona… all states that Clinton carried in ’96. Any one of those states and it would have been President Gore.
MikeJ
@Spaghetti Lee: Weaver got 22. Teddy R got 88 as a Bull Moose.
Redshift
Feel the power of Unity 12! I’m sure it will make just as big a splash as Unity 08 did.
Yutsano
@Spaghetti Lee: I thought Teddy got more than that as a Bull Moose. I could be wrong on that though.
@MikeJ: Or this. I’m too lazy to do my own Googles tonight. But in my defence I am doing housework.
Corner Stone
I just hope someone has hidden that oversized gavel Pelosi had during HCR. Otherwise we may see the real life version of NANCY SMASH! As she destroys the Hill with it.
Can you imagine a more pissed off politician than Speaker Pelosi? She’s gotta be gettin’ her hate on for a lot of motherfuckers about now.
mai naem
@Joseph Nobles: Not Nikki Haley. She’s Indian American and after Peeyush Jindal’s disaster they ain’t trying another Indian American. My guess would be Marco Rubio but it could also be Susana Martinez, the new GOP gov. of NM or Allen West because he’s black. If they followed my advice I would have Rick Scott of Fla. Hell, may just as well let Americans know right off the bat that you’re a bunch of crooks.
I like Bloomberg. I wouldn’t vote for him against any Dem who had any halfway decent chance of winning but I would vote for him if it looked like the Dem was going to lose huge. I would definitely vote for him if he ran as a Dem but I don’t see a NY Joo who controls some part of media and finance winning in this country. Too much anti-semitism. Also too he’s divorced.
hildebrand
@lawnorder: Of course, said charismatic 3rd party candidate would be need to be visible now. They would have to start campaigning today – with a message that both resonates and solves unemployment issues today. Because unemployment is still issue #1.
Do you see anyone like that on the horizon?
Nope, me neither. Not even close.
Perot, the who got the best vote tally by a 3rd party candidate since TR, scored a whopping 19%. I don’t think that even in our present condition that a credible third party candidate would do any better. Which means they could play the spoiler, but that is about it.
Michael
Heh – the more things change, the more they stay the same.
FDR in 1936:
JGabriel
1912, Theodore Roosevelt, 88 electoral votes, on the Progressive Party (aka Bull Moose Party) line.
Edited to Add: Oops, looks like MikeJ got there first. Sorry for the redundancy.
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MattR
@Suffern ACE:
Actually, Bloomberg Media loses money. What Mike Bloomberg owns is a highly profitable financial information company.
@JGabriel:
A thousand times this. Bloomberg is not going to settle for the job of President where his ability to do things his way is severely limited by Congress.
@Yutsano: The Connecticut governor race is much more interesting. The Democratic Secretary of State called it for the Democrat, but the AP has the Republican leading. They have both announced transition teams.
Yutsano
BTW did anyone else notice Bennett won today? I’m waiting for Dino to finally give it the fuck up.
Redshift
@Comrade Luke: How odd. Tonight, Michael Moore was on Lawrence O’Donnell declaring that if Obama didn’t pursue policies on a range of issues that just happen to match Moore’s preferences, he would undoubtedly have a challenger from the left in 2012.
MikeJ
@Yutsano: I knew Patty was going to win when I looked at the headlines for Washington elections and everything was about Reichert. Nothing was going to stop the Seattle times from trumpeting Republican victory.
Suffern ACE
@jwb: I will try harder next time, but sometimes, you have to work with the villains that you have, and not the ideal villains that you so desperately need.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Luke:
It’ll be Mitt Romney. There are never any surprises with the Republican presidential nomination.
Stillwater
Open thread? (Semi-rant ensues)
Just read a TPM piece by David Kurtz (who is kind of a putz) and he said that three Iowa judges were not re-elected because of ‘anti-gay’ activism. “Anti-gay”? Look, being anti-gay just is being homophobic, right? Isn’t it just that simple? I realize that politicalcorrekness implores us to take anti-gay arguments, which tease out the subtle and nuanced societal hazards of openly accepting gays, seriously. And I also realize that sentiments have been flipped on their head in such a way that criticizing tolerant and compasionate people for homophobia is intolerant and uncompassionate. And I also also realize that when a large number of people reallyreally believe something (with all their heart), it is accorded a certain amount of inherent (tho undeserved) respectability. But really, doesn’t every single anti-gay argument end up with fear of teh homos ensnaring the young and impressionable (and everyone else) in their radical agenda (or something equally ridiculous)?
I’m fucking tired of the bullshit. Anti-gay anything = homophobia. Let’s just make it a societal norm that it gets called that.
Suffern ACE
@Redshift: Maybe Michael Moore is that charismatic third party candidate who will inspire our dispirited youth to the polls.
But also, what about Johnny Knoxville? What are his politics like?
Yutsano
@MikeJ: Heh. I knew she was toast when I was home for my birthday at my parents’ place. My mom asked me who I voted for. When I told her Patty, she promptly announced, “Me too. Me and your father.” If Dino couldn’t get my die-hard Republican parents to vote for him, I knew right then he was a total dead duck.
Spaghetti Lee
Yeah, TR got more. Sorry. I think a two-term president is coming from a different place than Weaver, who was just a 3-term Rep when he ran.
Calouste
@Yutsano:
Dino doesn’t give up. He’s like a zombie who comes back around every second Halloween.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@MikeJ: The Seattle Times still publishes a dead tree edition? Was it the SPI that went broke? And why would a paper think it would be a good idea to be the ideological opposite of most of its readers?
JGabriel
@Stillwater:
We did. Oddly enough, the homophobes objected — I ain’t skeered o’ no fags, I just don’t want’em hittin’ on me or pushin’ their AGENDA on my KIDS!
So now, some media organizations are reverting to anti-gay, some to appease the homophobes in their audience, others because they’re homophobes themselves.
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Yutsano
@Calouste: Ugh. Don’t remind me. At least she was up by a full percent last time I looked at the numbers. I really really want to hear Dino concede for the third time. He’s too obtuse to realize how done he is, but after his third smackdown maybe he’ll give up finally.
tomvox1
Hope Bloomers does run. He will siphon off what’s left of the Rockefeller/Eisenhower/Nixon GOPers and insure an even bigger wipeout by Team Obama over a rump Republican party. Can’t wait for that shitstorm to rain down on all those cocky Teatard heads in 2012. Muhaha…
RadioOne
Bloomberg has no shot as a third party candidate, and after his insanely close win in NYC, despite spending millions of his own money last year, should have confirmed that for him. His candidacy is purely a product of New York pundits like John Heilemann trying to imagine a situation in which moderates buy his own ridiculous narrative so much that Sarah Palin could be elected President in 2012.
Stillwater
@JGabriel: We did.
But here’s my point – TPM bills itself as a lefty-liberal site, and even they don’t have the cajones to tell the fucking truth. Christ, everyone speaks Orwellian anymore. We bitch about the MSM all the time, but even our own (ie., liberal) use of language is corrupted by bullshit. And admittedly, I’m a bit ramped up about this after watching every bobble head on the tube last night dodge the truth like Neo dodging bullets.
Anne Laurie
@Violet:
__
Female, or male? Over the age of consent? Of the same species?
He is a Republican, after all…
MikeJ
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: I didn’t see the dead tree edition, but I assume they still print one. My google news page had a sidebox of Seattle news, and two of the three were from the S Times about WA-08, no mention of the Senate. So I knew Patty must have won.
JGabriel
@Stillwater:
Whoa. I missed that the quote was from TPM. You’re absolutely right.
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Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: It would, of course, be irresponsible not to speculate. But I’m afeared the only thing that could kill him in Florida is underage man-on-man passion.
Geoduck
From a Washington state resident.. Yes, the Seattle Times still publishes a dead-tree edition, although it’s bleeding cash. As already noted, despite Seattle’s liberal reputation, Blethen, the guy who inherited the Times, is very conservative, and evidently filters almost everything through the prism of “how will this affect my personal bank account?” His paper infamously torpedoed Richart’s last opponent with a last-minute hatchet-job about her educational record. The Post-Intelligencer was better, ironically, because the Hearst Corporation had far less of a personal stake in the whole thing.
And it takes forever for King County (where a large chunk of the state’s population lives) to count all their paper ballots, so no, there is no official Senate winner yet, but the county’s a total liberal stronghold, so it looks like Murray’s going to win.
Socraticsilence
How exactly would Bloomberg- do anything at all in Congress- I mean if Democrats wouldn’t stay in line for Obama and the GOP split from Bush over things like immigration and social security- why on earth would either party listen to a third party canidate.
John - A Motley Moose
@Socraticsilence: Because of starbursts! And puppie dogs! And pink unicorns! That’s why! Now STFU!
Jebediah
Elections DO have consequences, damn it! In my case, physical consequences. I am sitting here literally butthurt (feels like I sprained my coccyx- is that possible?) and it can’t be a coincidence that it is the day after the election, an election which left me metaphorically butthurt because, among other reasons, not enough of Snowgrifter’s endorsees went down in flames.
Luckily, my job does not require the use of my coccyx.
EDIT: Cute puppeh/kitteh pictures would probably help ease my turrible, turrible pain.
BC
All this talk of third party runs is just so much fantasy, sort of the Unity08 for the times. When I see armies of petitioners trying to get a third party on the ballot in all 50 states, then I’ll think there is actually a third party run. Otherwise, it’s just a way to escape the reality that we have a crazy party and a dysfunctional party running the most powerful nation in the world. Pundits are beguiled by the number of independent runs made by people like Lieberman in 2006 and by Tancredo in Colorado this year – but Lieberman had been secretly getting petitions to run as a third party and Tancredo used a party line that was already on the ballot. Starting a third party is not child’s play and cannot be done in 1 year, much less in 3 to 6 months.
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John Caruso has a trio of posts debunking the shit out of the standard Democratic apologist historical revisionism. All you Nader Haters feel free to go get an education. And feel free to fuck yourselves senseless afterward.
policomic
@Citizen Alan: Nader told the biggest lie of the 2000 campaign, and he told it over and over:
It won’t make any difference whether Bush or Gore (sorry, “Gush or Bore”–he’s so clever!) becomes president.
Anybody who is not an idiot should have known that was a lie. Anybody who understands the simple fact that a president can appoint Supreme Court justices should have had some idea of the consequences. Anybody who understands that the Electoral College–like it or not–means that third-party presidential bids are inevitably futile, have always been so (and don’t bring up Lincoln as a counter-example, because it’s an idiotic one) should have known that Nader’s real and deliberate purpose was to be a spoiler. Anybody who is not an idiot would not have voted for Nader in 2000, and anybody who defends that vote now (using the same old canned, illogical, utterly disingenuous arguments–“Gore ran too far to the right, and he couldn’t even win Tennessee!” “Florida Nader voters would have voted for Bush otherwise!”–is as self-deluded as George W. Bush, the president you helped elect.
And the fact that it’s an “old story” doesn’t change anything. History is history, facts are facts, math is math (not “games with numbers,” as Naderites are fond of saying). If Nader had dropped out, if he hadn’t campaigned so hard in Florida (on purpose–he knew what he was doing), Gore would have won. It’s as simple as that, and to deny it is to ignore reality.
chopper
@Comrade Luke:
thing is, bloomie would piss off the conservative vote. they’d go full teabagger and vote for palin or whatever nutjob the teabaggers got on the ballot. bloomberg would have to hope for the moderate vote which is fickle. not too many dems would split away from a popular president from their party.
Trinity
Have you heard of this endeavor; Americans Elect?
Bulworth
I’m thinking of going Galt.