[EM] Kerry and Nader

[James Green-Armytage]

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

	Yes. Unless Mike had something in mind such that the votes for the two
candidates would be automatically combined into a Kerry vote. That idea is
in many ways similar to the concept of "fusion voting", which is used in
the state of New York. Under that system, alternative parties can choose
to nominate the same candidate as one of the major parties, and votes for
the same candidate form a single total, even though they may be votes for
different parties. That is, I could have voted for Gore under the label of
the "working families" party... It still would have counted as an ordinary
vote for Gore, but the vote helps to bolster the party in one way or
another... which is why New York state continues to have a lot of these
extra parties.
	A better way to conceptualize the idea Mike was getting at, I think,
would be to have a system where you can vote for a different candidate,
and yet vote for the same elector. That is, you can vote for the
Kerry-electors via Kerry, or you can vote for the Kerry-electors via
Nader. This is similar to fusion voting, but a step "closer" to the
electors themselves.
	As far as the legality issue goes, I don't know. It would be nice to have
an election law specialist who kept up with the list. I don't see why it
should be any more illegal than fusion voting. In which case, it wouldn't
be prohibited by the federal constitution, but would have to be accepted
on a state by state basis.
>
>Secondly, I'll agree that there's no strong reason to suspect that Nader 
>has more support than Kerry.  Possible, maybe, but unlikely.

	In an election where Kerry and Nader were the only candidates, would
Nader win? Unfortunately we'll never know the answer, but I think that
Kerry would probably win.
>
>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.

	No, I didn't make that claim. If the Democratic party members alone were
deciding the President, and the method was Condorcet, who would have won?
Again, we won't know, but Dean would have had a very strong chance.
However, that doesn't necessarily reflect badly on Kerry, since the
non-Democrats obviously need to be taken into account when deciding the
President. The only danger is that the Democrats may have been
over-cautious, that is, perhaps Dean might have been able to beat Bush
after all.
>
>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.)

	Hmm, going to opensecrets.org, it seems that Dean got 77k from Time
Warner, 22k from Viacom, and 20k from News Corporation (parent company of
"FOX").
http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/contrib.asp?id=N00025663&cycle=2004
	Kerry, on the other hand, has received 154k from Time Warner, and 90k
from Viacom. (If News Corp gave him anything, it's not big enough to be
listed among his top contributions.) It doesn't say when Kerry got this
money, whether it was during the early primaries or more recently, but my
guess is that he's had it for awhile.
>
>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.

	Yes, it seems like the media took a conscious choice to butcher Dean, to
stab him while he was down after the Iowa results. At this point, I still
don't understand what was behind that choice, although I'd very much like
to understand it.
>
>We're getting way off-topic here...

	Well, yes and no. I think that some discussion of real life elections is
valuable, as long as we stay within the context of critically evaluating
the election methods being used. I'm all for hardcore utopian theorizing,
and I agree that such is the main purpose of the list, but it's
interesting to evaluate how election methods are actually working in
practice. How does the election method interact with the voters, with the
media, with the campaign finance system, etc.?
	In this case, we were partly talking about the effectiveness of the
primary system and the question of when it is justified to run outside of
the primary system. 
	As I see it, Nader's running in the general election but not in the
primaries is almost like a candidate skipping the first round of a two
round runoff but running in the second round.
	Also, Nader supports IRV. http://votenader.org/issues/index.php?cid=40
This adds an interesting new wrinkle to the situation. For those who
prefer Kerry to Bush but also want to change the voting system to one
where we have more choices, we are left with the question of WHEN and HOW
we will have the right historical conditions to push for such changes. My
opinion is that Nader should use a carrot-and-stick approach, offering to
endorse Kerry in exchange for concessions on certain issues... in
particular, trying to get Kerry on board for measures that erode two-party
control, such as a non-binding proxy DD system, a proportional
representation project, a Condorcet project, etc. But Nader hasn't even
given Kerry a chance to do anything like this. Instead of
carrot-and-stick, his attitude is that he's running no matter what. Which,
to me, is a big waste of the advantageous position that he (Nader) is in,
i.e. a position where he has leverage to make chance in Kerry's platform.

best,
James