At 9:20 PM -0400 8/10/04, Michael Hoover wrote:
maybe post header should have read: anybody but kerry and cobb, in
any event, no need to limit oneself to left petit-bourgeois
deviationism of nader, choose between several real-live socialists
(commies even)
Only Nader/Camejo represented a potential to threaten the Democratic
Party's hegemony over the left side of the political spectrum by
taking 2-7% of the votes, according to the polls
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/08/nader-2004-nader-2000.html> --
hence the Democrats' well-organized attacks on Nader/Camejo.
Among the parties that you listed, only the Libertarian Party, whose
core supporters are well-to-do, will have its candidate on the
ballots in all 50 states:
<blockquote>Democratic strategists have long fretted that Ralph Nader
could draw votes from their presidential candidate. But a new survey
suggests that President Bush faces a potential threat of his own from
a more obscure spoiler: Michael Badnarik.
In the survey, conducted in three Midwest battleground states, some
voters who said they would choose Bush over Sen. John F. Kerry in a
two-candidate race also said they would pick Badnarik, the
Libertarian Party nominee for president, if he were added to the
ballot.
The survey was conducted in Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin by the
University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public
Affairs. It will be made public today.
The numbers for Badnarik were small: He drew 1% to 1.5% of the vote
in a four-way race with Bush, Democratic candidate Kerry and Nader,
an independent. But analysts said the results suggested that the
small-government Libertarians could attract enough conservatives
disaffected with Bush's leadership to swing a tight race, just as
Nader attracted discontented liberals in 2000.
"This shows us that there is a small, but potentially very
significant, number of upper-Midwesterners who are interested in
voting for the Libertarian Party, and that they appear to be hailing
from the wings of the Republican Party," said Lawrence Jacobs, a
Humphrey Institute political scientist, who directed the poll.
The survey suggested that the Libertarian had potential to steal
support from Bush where it could hurt most: among much-coveted
independents.
In Wisconsin, the survey showed that 8% of independents would back
Badnarik. That cut Bush's performance among independent voters in the
state from about 50% to 43%.
"Those voters, without even knowing the candidate, are so upset with
Bush they are willing to say, 'I'm going to vote for a Libertarian,'"
Jacobs said.
The telephone survey, conducted June 21 to July 12, had a margin of
error of 4 percentage points. It included 589 registered voters in
Minnesota, 575 in Wisconsin and 614 in Iowa.
Of those states, Badnarik has secured a place on the ballot only in
Wisconsin. But ballot access is so easy in Minnesota and Iowa that
the Libertarians are all but certain of success there, Richard
Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, said. "Since there have been
Libertarians, there has never been a presidential election where the
Libertarians were not on the ballot in those two states," he said.
Nader has drawn far more attention than Badnarik, 49, a computer
programmer from Austin, Texas. In the Humphrey Institute poll, Nader
drew as much as 5% of the vote in a four-way race, and he appeared to
draw more support from Kerry than Badnarik took from Bush.
But it is unclear how many state ballots will include Nader. Badnarik
is already on the ballot in 30 states, Winger said, and the
Libertarian Party says its candidate has made the ballot in all 50
states for the last three elections.
The impact of third-party candidates has received renewed attention
since 2000, when Nader ran as the Green Party candidate and won
thousands of votes that many analysts thought would have gone to
Democrat Al Gore, likely putting Gore in the White House.
Republicans sought to discount a threat from Badnarik, noting that,
even in the Humphrey survey, Bush won support from 90% of Republicans.
Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who is
advising the Bush campaign, said the impact of the Libertarians would
be so minimal that it fit more in the category of what the weather
was like on election day.
"I have not been involved in a single discussion yet where the impact
of the Libertarian Party has been raised as a significant risk
factor," Weber said. (Peter Wallsten, "Libertarian Badnarik May Cost
Bush Support, Poll Finds," <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/whitehouse/la-na-poll21jul21,1,4355572.story?coll=la-news-politics-white_house";>July
21, 2004</a>)</blockquote>
The Republicans don't appear to be too upset with Badnarik, leaving
him alone, unlike the Democrats who have used everything from
lawsuits to slanders to keep Nader off the ballots. Probably the
Republicans are counting on Badnarik's obscurity, just as the
Democrats do not fear David Cobb on the Green Party ballots and
candidates of socialist sects, both of whom are completely unknown to
nearly 100% of voters.
Voters who would consider voting for the Libertarian Party candidate
must be affluent white men who are socially liberal, fiscally
conservative, and very strongly opposed to the occupation of Iraq.
They can't be a large group, but they aren't non-existent.
Badnarik, as a matter of fact, sounds pretty eloquent and
clear-sighted on foreign policy, including on the matter of Israel
and Palestinians, and I'd think that what he says here compares
favorably to what mealymouthed liberals come up with:
<blockquote>Military Policy and the War in Iraq
The War in Iraq is a failure, and the U.S. government should never
have waged it. As your president, one of my first tasks will be to
begin the orderly process of bringing our troops home as quickly as
can safely be accomplished.
More and more Americans are coming to oppose the war, the war hawks
and high government officials are beginning to distance themselves
from the president, and the U.S. seems more willing than ever to pull
out of Iraq.
But this is not enough. We need to learn how this disaster happened,
so we can prevent future disasters from happening.
First, allow me to dispel a myth. People in the Middle East do not
hate us for our freedom. They do not hate us for our lifestyle. They
hate us because we have spent many years attempting to force them to
emulate our lifestyle.
The U.S. government has meddled in the affairs of the Middle East far
too long, always with horrendous results. It overthrew the
democratically elected leader of Iran and replaced him with the Shah.
After making Iranians the enemies of Americans, the U.S. government
gave weapons, intelligence and money to Iran's mortal adversary,
Saddam Hussein. The U.S. government also helped Libyan Col. Qaddafi
come to power, propped up the Saudi monarchy and the Egyptian regime,
and gave assistance to Osama bin Laden.
Most Americans have forgotten these events. But the people of the
Middle East will always remember.
It was because of American troops in Saudi Arabia, lethal sanctions
on Iraq, support for states in serious violation of International
Law, and siding with Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians to
the tune of more than $3 billion per year in taxpayers' funds that
terrorist leaders were able to recruit those individuals who caused
3,000 Americans to pay the ultimate price on September 11, 2001.
The proper response would have been to present the evidence as to who
committed the heinous act both to Congress and to the people, and
have Congress authorize the president to track down the individuals
actually responsible, doing everything possible to avoid inflicting
harm on innocents.
A Libertarian president would not have sent the military trampling
about the world, racking up a death count in the thousands, wasting
tax money on destroying and re-building infrastructure, creating more
enemies, and doing the kinds of things that led to 9/11 in the first
place.
We cannot undo history, unfortunately.
The U.S. government has never succeeded in establishing freedom and
democracy in any of its foreign adventures in the last fifty years.
Freedom and democracy are blessings any people must establish for
themselves.
Here at home, war leads to a decline in civil liberties, higher
taxes, and wartime economic measures that blur the line between
business and state, allowing politically favored corporations to
profit at the expense of taxpayers.
Libertarians understand the importance of adhering to the
Constitution, because it is designed to limit the power of the state
here and abroad. And we especially understand the danger of war,
which expands the power of the government far beyond its
constitutional limits.
The founders of this country knew that war should not be initiated at
the president's whim, and so the constitutional authority to wage war
rests with Congress.
James Madison, father of the Constitution, said, "If Tyranny and
Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a
foreign enemy." He also said, "No nation could preserve its freedom
in the midst of continual warfare. . ."
In short, a libertarian foreign policy is one of national defense,
and not international offense. It would protect our country, not
police the world.
<http://www.badnarik.org/Issues/IraqWar.php></blockquote>
For all I know, 2004 will be the year of the Libertarian Party in the
independent/third-party pack -- mainly because of failure of nerve,
as well as lack of strategic thinking, on the part of too large a
sector of organizers and intellectuals on the left.
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
