I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

That's really disingenuous, I don't think Iraq really constitutes "not that different". You know how much money we spent on that shit? Of course you do.

xp to morbs

it's idiotic to waste time here when people never stop with the strawmen

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, September 14, 2016 6:51 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So quit wasting time here, idiot

admitting that gore would've been different than gwb, esp re the Iraq War and climate change - two things the good doctor pretends often to care most about - would make his decision to vote for nader damning in its carelessness and force him to face some hard truths about the glaring deficiencies in his ideological façade

Gore was Mordylike as a senator

tbh I'm impressed he kept the weed-smoking under wraps, sounds like a cool guy

Human lives as well

No xpost notification anymore, eek oops

IIRC Morbz voted for Nader in a solid blue state (as I did in a solid red state) so I don't think that really has to enter into it.

why not? he doesn't have to be personally responsible to understand the repercussions of the nader movement. he would just have to be willing to learn from it for the future. [hint hint the future is now.]

now that i think about it tho you're right. really the problematic belief is that "they are all alike" in whatever form that takes. gore v gwb is a particularly dramatic rendering of that delusion but nader doesn't really need to enter into it at all.

Not gonna go so far as to shit on anybody who voted for Nader in 2000 (I was a fucking week too young and would have voted Gore without hesitation) - no way could we have anticipated how much damage Bush would do, and it sure didn't help the Democrats' cause among progressives when Gore selected a running mate who made Hillary look like, well, Bernie Sanders almost

it's funny tho bc one of the big arguments for why nader didn't really cost gore florida is that gore lost something like 11% of the democratic vote to gwb. putting aside the reality (that the parties hadn't been as ideologically sorted out as they are today and there were still a lot of republican voters registered democratic) it illustrates the contradiction. did he lose because he was too right-wing or because he wasn't right-wing enough? too right-wing for nader voters, not right-wing enough for right-wing dems. but like nader voters explain, way more dems defected than there were nader voters. so the lesson from that deflection isn't he should've been more progressive. it's that he should've been much more right-wing.

nb that i don't think he should've been more right-wing - i was in high school in 2000 and i remember wishing he had campaigned more to the left. i was still tremendously disappointed when he lost the election. this was around the time that i still took chomsky seriously.

speaking of chomsky btw this is super off-topic but did anyone else see this? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/ -- i was listening to mcwhorter lectures on universal grammar today and felt some synchronistic glee seeing the article.

dems who defect and vote gop are also 'worth' 2x as much as dems who defect and throw their vote out the window xp

yeah picking lieberman was really the worst move of the whole campaign, not only ideologically but also just strategically - if you have a wooden, charisma-free leading man, for god's sake get a running mate who can tell a joke or an anecdote or something. i think the importance of running mates to a ticket is often overrated (witness devastating game-changer mike pence) but in an election that close, i think it matters in terms of shaping people's overall impression of the ticket as a package. two boring stodgy robots is not a great look. one robot and one blood-stirring man of the people might make the robot look more like the cool collected helmsman. i think gore probably could have won ohio with like, a joe biden in there. or dick gephardt, which might have also helped in missouri. i guess lieberman was supposed to help in florida?

he would just have to be willing to learn from it for the future

...and the lesson to be learned from the nader movement in 2000 is: never attempt to challenge the two party system, except from within? because if the deep lesson for the future you are referring to is not that one, which seems rather an overreach to me, I can't figure out what other lesson you seem to think is self-evident.

if challenging the two party system = pushing for ranked voting + similar types of reforms: that's obv not the lesson. if challenging it means not voting for the better candidate in the system we've got - yes, that's the lesson to learn.

If a candidate appears on a ballot, does that make him or her "in the system we've got"?

I wa also a pretty big Chomsky stan back in '00. Thanks to which I found 9/11 and the subsequent response relatively unsurprising (if still thoroughly depressing) after W's 'victory'.

xp no it makes them a spoiler. you can't beat fptp w/ force of will

he repercussions of the nader movement

none, other than leading to where Clinton cheerleaders are now: Nixon Republicans

Don't remember Gore saying shit about climate change til he made it his post-surrender career.

admitting that gore would've been different than gwb, esp re the Iraq War and climate change - two things the good doctor pretends often to care most about - would make his decision to vote for nader damning in its carelessness and force him to face some hard truths about the glaring deficiencies in his ideological façade

― Mordy, Wednesday, September 14, 2016 9:00 PM (fifty-three minutes ago)

voting for nader in NY is not careless, even if all the rest of what you said were true

dnftz

sez wiki:

Prior to this, Gore supported Clinton's Operation Desert Fox (the bombing of Iraq that started in 1998), the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (regime change), and the sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children.

Don't remember Gore saying shit about climate change til he made it his post-surrender career.

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius)

he wrote a book before he was vice president

lol yes and he spoke about it throughout his vice-presidential term. i remember bc he was always popping up on educational videos at my school and in those school magazines they handed out.

Lol morbz yr memory is gone too eh old bean

There's no way anyone other than dubya wouldve invaded iraq. He wanted to and he made up a reason. Gore would not have had either the desire nor the reason.

This is a stupid digression why are we bothering

9/11 never forget

Lol morbz yr memory is gone too eh old bean

yes, and the drugs. come sit with me during an infusion.

fine Sen Gore, i apologize for my mistake. still waiting for yours on Lieberman and Tipper.

http://i.makeagif.com/media/8-14-2015/xWuvk2.gif

xp no it makes them a spoiler

so, insofar as I can understand your answer, you assert that the lesson of the nader movement is that one must always choose one of the two candidates nominated by the two major parties and a refusal to accept this idea constitutes an obstinate unwillingness to learn an inescapable lesson, rather than a legitimate disagreement as to how to cast one's vote. I don't know that you've made an adequate argument for delegitimizing someone who disagrees with you on that conclusion. not surprisingly, you'd have to count me among those who disagree with you on that, too.

now, if you'd asserted that morbs has offered little or no substance on these threads other than repetitive sniping, I'd agree with you on that. but saying he didn't learn his lesson because you know how he ought to think about the nader movement is just presumptuous.

yeah ok i don't think it's a v complicated argument but if you feel i didn't adequately make it that's ok i don't really feel like spending the rest of my night prosecuting the case

the problem with it being a simple argument is that it supports an overly simple conclusion.

election results are pretty simple conclusions tbf.

election results are pretty simple conclusions

sadly, this rule of thumb didn't seem to apply to the 2000 election, the results of which were unprecedentedly complicated

I'm always amazed when a Nader apologist is willing to go as far as "actually Gore would have invaded Iraq too". A great way to avoid the very simple question "Looking back were the two major candidates really the same?". Maybe a case can be made that the long term goal of Green Party support is still worth that risk but instead you get the cheap denial of "It didn't happen."

The Iraq war is up there with the worst foreign policy mistakes ever, and the world will live with the repercussions for decades. But Tarfumes, are you really against removing Hussein in principle, even pressure through sanctions (the idea that they killed 500.000 children though, I've never seen anything about this that doesn't sound massively conspiratorial) Saddam Hussein invaded other countries and used chemical weapons on civilian populations. He needed to be stopped. And he was. Then George Bush decided to invade anyway without having a clue about what to do afterwards.

yeah the assertion that the sanctions led to the deaths of 500,000 kids has i think at this point been pretty throughly discredited, though albright's famous answer to that question still...says a lot

Saddam Hussein invaded other countries and used chemical weapons on civilian populations.

With the United States' express support and financial and material backing.

oh cool! This discussion again. brb gonna listen to George Michael's "Shoot the Dog."

Which is not to suggest he was anything other than a ghoul, but hearing someone on ILX use that sort of credulous, warmed-over-CNN-style rationalization is more shocking to me than the claim that Gore would have invaded Iraq.

speaking of "shocking," shall I repost the Al-Tipper clip

xp i really don't know how you read that as a rationalization for the iraq war... he began with "The Iraq war is up there with the worst foreign policy mistakes ever," ffs

"actually Gore would have invaded Iraq too"

NO ONE FUCKING SAID THAT EITHER

free brain transplants for the whole thread

i mean it's either "Gore would have done the same thing on Iraq as Bush" or "not invading Iraq wouldn't have been THAT different." at least i'm not sure what else to do with "Gore wouldn't have been THAT different."

Maybe like this

http://www.ecorazzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/gore_guitar_indi.jpg

Gore coulda been jammin at bohemian grove with Kissinger and Clint Eastwood