Jackson Free Press

Will Nader run again? Of course some Republican pollsters would like it, but he doesn't appear to have the same support he had in 2000 -- he may not even run as a Green Party candidate. (He was never a card-carrying Green anyway.) At this point, his persistent desire to run looks like it involves more than a little hubris, especially in the face of this:

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in October found two-thirds of Americans did not want Nader to run again, and he acknowledged that some of his supporters in 2000 might back a Democrat this time because they were focused on beating Bush.

"There are a lot of people who supported us in 2000 who are anybody-but-Bush adherents, and going back into the fold of (Howard) Dean or the Democrats," he said.

That's 2/3 who don't want him to run not 2/3 that wouldn't vote for him.

A multi-party system would be nice, but until you have some election reform -- in particular, instant runoff voting -- then a third-party vote will be a spoiler vote -- the 93,000 Nader votes in Florida paved the way for Bush II in 2000, just as the 20 million votes Ross Perot got nationally let Clinton slip in at 43% of the popular vote in 1992.

Previous Comments

ID

136854

Comment

Bruce Bartlett at NRO begins by pointing out the obvious in this column -- third party candidates are spoilers in our elections -- and suggests that both Democrats and Republicans have potential third-party candidacies the worry about. Democrats have Nader and (potentially) Dean if he doesn't get the election; Republicans have "small government" conservatives and anti-war/anti-PATRIOT ACT Libertarians to be concerned with. His solution -- aggregate election results like the New York State system, which allows third parties to endorse a major party candidate and then have those votes count toward that candidate. The candidate then knows where his votes came from (the Right to Life Party or the Liberal Party) and can, presumably, work to serve that constituency.

Author

Todd Stauffer

Date

2003-12-22T12:16:34-06:00

ID

136855

Comment

Update: If Nader does run, it won't be as the Green Party candidate. He's still exploring his options as an independent.

Author

Todd Stauffer

Date

2003-12-23T18:14:25-06:00