[EM] To Blake, re: strategy

[Rob Lanphier]

Digging up an older email I hadn't responded to....

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Anthony Simmons wrote:
> Rob Lanphier made a distinction between two types of
> strategy:
> 
> >> I think the strategy issue manifests itself in a couple of ways:
> >> 1.  Tendency of voters to engage in tactical/insincere voting
> >> 2.  Tendency of candidates/parties to position their candidate in the
> >> strategically best position of the political spectrum based on voting
> >> system.
> 
> These two can combine to create a third:  Tendency of voters
> to engage in tactical voting (1) in order to manipulate the
> tendency of parties to position candidates (2), or,
> presumably, to choose differently.
> 
> One might suppose there are voters who vote for third party
> candidates in order to convince their favorite party to
> change strategy.  For example, there may have been Democrats
> who voted for Nader in order to convince the Democratic Party
> to shift to the left.  Or there might have been Republicans
> who voted for Nader in order to convince the Democratic Party
> to shift to the left.

This would be a very clever thing to do if I understand where you are
coming from, though I doubt that very many Republicans did this.  Those
Reps would have run the risk of getting Nader up to his 5% threshold. 

Nonetheless, I absolutely agree with your general point.  The interaction
between candidates and voters through the system is very complex, and all
sorts of messages are being sent both directions (candidate->voter and
voter->candidate) during the election, and during the polling beforehand. 

> One of the valuable functions of third parties is to
> eliminate the automatic advantage of hugging the center.

Or to serve as convenient scapegoats when the election is lost.  :)

I think I'd rather have a system where we have several, sincere candidates
hugging the center, surrounded by diverse voices on all sides poking holes
in their positions.  Those candidates in the middle would then be judged
not only on the "median-ness" of their positions, but on the quality of
their character, their leadership ability, their intelligence, and other
"secondary" characteristics that we have to put aside when we vote in FPTP
elections.

Rob
----
Rob Lanphier
robla at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla