[EM] Kerry and Nader

[Adam Tarr]

Firstly: The idea that Nader electors voting for Kerry would eliminate the 
spoiler effect is unfounded - that only matters if Nader carries the state.

Secondly, I'll agree that there's no strong reason to suspect that Nader 
has more support than Kerry.  Possible, maybe, but unlikely.

It's clear that Kerry won the primary mainly because mainline democrats 
thought he was the most appealing candidate to the independent voters 
vis-a-vis Bush.  They were probably right, and this was probably good 
strategy.  But it is not clear that Kerry was even the most popular 
Democrat in democrats' sincere preferences.

>         What exactly is it about Kerry that you find to be so sleazy?
>         I have learned quite a bit about Kerry in the last few months, and he
>strikes me not as a sleaze, but rather as a well-intentioned and
>intelligent person who is under an inhuman amount of pressure, since at
>this point, there is so very much riding on him... the weight of the
>world, in a very scary, literal sense.

I would broadly agree with that - Kerry is probably a decent guy, seems 
fairly intelligent, and has a huge amount of pressure as he is effectively 
the champion of the not-Bush faction of the electorate.

>         If you have any specific criticisms of him, I'd like you to bring 
> them
>forward. In your post, you seem to treat the notion 'Kerry is sleazy' as
>if it were axiomatic. But to me, it is not axiomatic, so I would prefer
>that you support it.

Basically, my problem with Kerry is that he, like many others, is largely 
funded by corporate sources.  Although he supported Campaign fincance 
reform (https://ssl.capwiz.com/aclu/bio/?id=298) the funding records 
(http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/donordems.asp) make it pretty 
clear how much of an impact that has had (i.e. next to none).  Really, only 
Dean (among the well-funded candidates) managed to avoid corporate 
sources.   (His largest contributor was in the 14k range - incredibly small 
given his overall fundraising.  Kerry got, I think, over 160k from 
Time/Warner, to name one.)

Some would argue that Dean's failure to take media money, as well as his 
opposition to several big media hot-button issues, were factors in the 
negative coverage he consistently received.  He was labeled an upstart, too 
liberal, and with too much of a temper to be president, when all three 
appear false given any rational analysis.

I didn't mean to get so into Dean there, but the contrast does help 
highlight a significant way in which Kerry is more like Bush than a paragon 
of all things non-Bush.

>P.S. I don't see much connection between Michael Moore and Nader.
>Actually, Nader has essentially been begging Moore to support him, in two
>separate open letters, and has been met with only a stony silence. I think
>that "Fahrenheit" is intended as an implicit endorsement of whichever
>Democratic candidate gets the nomination.

Fahrenheit is intended to defeat Bush.  Moore is probably staying silent on 
Nader because, although he may support Nader, he feels that publicly 
supporting Nader would reduce the chances of Bush losing.

We're getting way off-topic here...

-Adam