Nathan wrote:
>...It just does not cut it to argue that Nader voters did not help elect
>Bush....
We could only have "helped elect" Bush if Bush had in fact been elected.
Which, of course, was the opposite of what happened...
>National exit polls said that half of Nader voters would have supported
>Vice>President Al Gore had Nader not been on the ticket. Thirty percent
>said they
>would not have voted and the rest would have gone for Bush.
>
>In Florida, that would have translated into an additional 30,000 vote margin
>for Gore.
This counterfactual, plus rotten data (no option to vote for any other
candidate?),
allows no inference about the Florida vote. If I had voted in Florida,
and Nader had not been on the ballot, I would most certainly have
voted proudly for David McReynolds, the Socialist candidate, who *was*
on the Florida ballot. Absent a Nader option, why should any voter
disgusted enough with Gore and Clinton to vote instead for the
leftist Nader-LaDuke ticket, *not* have voted for McReynolds?
Do you know of a single Florida voter whose electoral preferences
went 1) Nader, 2)Gore, 3)McReynolds?
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
