> >So you agree that for you politics is a means of self-expression,
>>rather than an attempt to make the world a better place?
>
>
>>Brad DeLong
>
>Or that acceptance of the inevitibility of the 'iron cage'
>guarantees it, whereas fighting might defeat it.
>
>Brad, I can understand your anger. I feel it also
>(especially when some Nader supporter smugly said that
>we could count on her help in fighting Bush for the next
>four years).
>
>
>However, they do have two good points:
>
>1) Given a s**tload of advantages, the campaign in the
>end could be lost for the Democrats by a minor spoiler -
>not a 19% Perot, or a 6% (?) Perot, or a Wallace, or
>something like that, but by a 3% Nader. That says something,
>and not something good. Every economic model which was
>touted in the papers several months ago not only gave the election
>to Gore, but by various huge margins. So not only did something
>happen to Gore, but something *huge* happened. Which means that
>Gore was bleeding arterially without Nader...
Which has nothing to do with whether Nader's intervention in this
election helped make the world a better place. If someone's bleeding
arterially, you get a tourniquet: you don't cut their throat.
It didn't.
But it was very effective as a means of self-expression...
Brad DeLong
