[EM] Re: Kerry-Nader negotiation initiative

[RLSuter at aol.com]

You misinterpreted my message, though I'll admit I could
have phrased it better. I neither said nor meant to imply
that Nader is "the most important third-party candidate
in recent history." I said that Nader is the worst instance
of the spoiler problem in recent history. Actually, I was
mistaken about that, because I strongly suspect that Perot
did much more to spoil the 1992 and 1996 elections than
Nader did to spoil the 2000 election or than he threatens
to spoil the 2004 election. What is unique about Nader
is the extraordinary attention that has been paid to his
spolier role, along with the lengths to which Kerry
supporters and anti-Bush progressives have gone to
exclude Nader from ballots and to discredit him with
arguments of all kinds, many of them either totally
spurious or extremely debatable. There is even
reasonable doubt that Nader actually did spoil the
2000 election. A recent study (sorry I don't have
time to get a citation) showed that the additional
people Nader's campaign brought to the polls, many
of whom ended up voting for Gore as a last minute
decision, may have helped Gore more than the Nader
campaign hurt him overall and that if Nader had not
run, Bush might actually have won decisively. All
the pundits have ridiculed such arguments, but few
have taken them seriously and looked at them
carefully.

-Ralph Suter

In a message dated 9/3/04 11:23:46 PM Central Daylight Time, wschudy at WPI.EDU 
writes:

> Nader is *not* the most important third-party candidate in recent history.  
> In 1992 and 1996, Perot got 19 and 8 million votes respectively.  
> (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781450.html). In the past century, third 
> party candidates exceeded Nader's 2000 2.8 million votes in 1996, 1992, 
> 1980, 1968, 1924, and 1912.
>  
> According to the same website, the last time a third party got second
> place was 1912. The last time a third party (the Whigs) won was 1848,
> though back then the Republicans did not exist, and the Whigs were one of
> the big two.
>
> -wjs
>  
> On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 RLSuter at aol.com wrote:
> 
> > In any case, if the U.S. had a reasonably adequate system for
> > electing presidents, no initiative like the one I'm proposing would be
> > necessary. What is dismaying is that I have not heard a single
> > political scientist or other expert in the mainstream media who
> > has provided a very clear explanation of why we are cursed with
> > the spoiler problem and why Nader's candidacy is merely the worst
> > instance of this in recent history if not all of U.S. history. I'm
> > wondering if even most political scienstists understand this,
> > fundamentally important and profoundly consequential though
> > it is.