Re: Dollars Per Vote: Green vs. Democratic (Historical accuracy)

[Julio Huato]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

It costs a left-wing candidate more to run in the Democratic presidential
caucuses and primaries than to run as a Green candidate in the general
election.  Howard Dean spent over $40 million, did not win a single
primary, and got forced out on February 18, 2004 [etc.]
I like Yoshie's reply.  It meets high standards of concretion.

But if we're going to do cost-benefit analysis in presidential elections,
then we should include the expected *benefits* as well.  And we need to
discount future benefits by the time preference regular people -- e.g.,
workers -- have.  That is, short-run benefits outweigh long-run benefits.
Past a decade horizon, "large" benefits mean next to nothing.  And that's
assuming the benefits are certain.  If they are only likely, the long-run
benefits will be more uncertain so, if people are not risk-loving (and risk
lovers tend to die sooner), long-run benefits will weigh little on the
expectation.
People expect some short-run benefits from policy changes when they vote for
the DP whereas those expected by voting Green are, er, next to zero.  By a
big factor, a Dem vote means significantly higher expected benefits than a
Green vote.  Expected benefits of policy changes are harder to add up than
campaign spending receipts, but some things are clear.  Just limiting Bush's
tax giveaways for the rich could make some difference in the lives of
workers in the near future.  Also in the near future, slightly deflecting
the course of U.S. foreign policy would pay off handsomely in U.S. and
foreign lives, not to mention the pecuniary gains.  Etc.
On the other hand, Helping Nader build the Green party (so that, God
helping, by the middle of the century it is in a position to challenge the
two-party system) doesn't seem to make sense to large masses of people.  I
understand the volatility of political life can make a big difference down
the road, but with volatility things can go either way.  IMO, "radical"
changes that may come as a result of chance not preceded by a large effort
of grassroots organizing are very unlikely to be good.  And history seems
clear in showing that much.
Shane Mage suggests an interesting argument to justify supporting Nader now,
namely, that it'd allow for the left to better negotiate with the DP as the
elections near.  I can't reply to Shane in categorical terms, but my
impression is that the asymmetry between the left and the DP is much bigger
than we need to assume in pulling off the stunt.  It's not only that the
corporate interests that rely on the DP don't trust the left.  It's that the
bulk of U.S. workers and middle classers don't take it seriously either.
That means that the left must start from a lower point and build up on the
basis of a lot of grassroots organizing and humiliating tactical
compromises.
It is these conditions -- and not the spinelessness of leftists -- that
impose compromises in the left's electoral politics.  But they don't
necessarily tie the hands of Marxists and socialists willing to agitate and
propagandize their radical ideas, and organize at the grassroots.  What it
does is discipline their tactical moves.  And good tactical moves is what it
takes for them to advance and materialize their radical ideas.  So, we don't
need dollars spent per vote.  We need dollars spent per unit of short-run
political benefit.  I bet that'd flip Yoshie's figures altogether.
Julio

_
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Re: Dollars Per Vote: Green vs. Democratic (Historical accuracy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

(Cf. In 1996, Nader "opted to cap his campaign expenditures at
$5,000 and ended up with 581,000 votes.  Nader's DPV: $0.01," says
Norman Solomon in "News That Still Goes Unreported: 'Dollars Per
Vote'" at  -- our
Consumer Advocate sure knows how to get his money's worth).
*   Ooops Department: Last month, in a column about "Dollars Per
Vote" (the amount of money a candidate spends for each vote
received), I wrote that in the 1996 general election, "the man who
finished fourth in the presidential balloting, Ralph Nader, opted to
cap his campaign expenditures at $5,000 and ended up with 581,000
votes."  But I made the mistake of citing only a preliminary tally of
ballots cast for him.  The official, final results show that Nader
actually received 685,128 votes nationwide.  So, Nader spent about
seven-tenths of a penny per vote.  Compare that to the "DPV" totals
of the men who ran ahead of him in the '96 presidential race: Bill
Clinton, $1.36; Bob Dole, $1.63; Ross Perot, $3.67.
(Norman Solomon, "Bumpy Media Road For A Wellstone Presidential
Drive," )   *
--
Yoshie
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Dollars Per Vote: Green vs. Democratic (Historical accuracy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 10:46 PM -0500 3/17/04, Julio Huato wrote:
Today in the U.S., continual agitation of the sort described by Marx
can and must be conducted (not only but also) within the DP.
Not cost-effective.  It costs a left-wing candidate more to run in
the Democratic presidential caucuses and primaries than to run as a
Green candidate in the general election.  Howard Dean spent over $40
million, did not win a single primary, and got forced out on February
18, 2004 -- five months before the Democratic Party National
Convention on July 26-29 and more than ten months before the election
day in November.  The losers who gave money to Dean spent $40 million
-- and the losers who gave to Dennis Kuninich spent $5 million --
without earning a single vote for their candidate in the general
election.  In contrast, our man "Ralph Nader spent only $8.5 million
on his national presidential campaign" in 2000 (Yvonne Abraham,
"Clean Elections Offers a Big Lift to Green Party," _The Boston
Globe_, March 3, 2002,
) and got
2,882,955 votes in the general election ("U.S. Presidential
Elections: Leftist Votes,"
)
-- about $2.9 per vote in the general election, which is far less
than $100 per vote for Dean, $80 per vote for Kucinich, and $7 per
vote for Al Sharpton in the Democratic caucuses and primaries (Cf. In
1996, Nader "opted to cap his campaign expenditures at $5,000 and
ended up with 581,000 votes.  Nader's DPV: $0.01," says Norman
Solomon in "News That Still Goes Unreported: 'Dollars Per Vote'" at
 -- our Consumer Advocate
sure knows how to get his money's worth).
*   The New York Times
February 29, 2004, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 18; Column 1; National Desk
LENGTH: 1017 words
HEADLINE: THE 2004 CAMPAIGN; Political Points
BYLINE:  By JOHN TIERNEY; Rhasheema A. Sweeting contributed reporting
for this column.
. . . Add Up the Dollars, Er, Votes

THAT old promise of a chicken in every pot looks like a bargain
compared with the sums politicians are spending this year to win
votes. Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri spent $18
million in his presidential campaign, which ended after he won fewer
than 14,000 votes in Iowa. That works out to about $1,300 per vote,
which would be enough to buy every voter a chicken, a pot and a
full-featured stove.
To be fair, you could include the votes that Mr. Gephardt has been
picking up in primaries since he left the race. Counting them, his
per-vote cost stands at about $600. So he can point to at least one
bigger spender in the past: Steve Forbes, whose quest for the
Republican nomination in 2000 cost $86 million, or about $650 per
vote. But Mr. Gephardt is still comfortably ahead of another
plutocrat: Michael R. Bloomberg paid about $100 per vote while
spending more than $73 million to win the race for New York mayor.
Among this year's Democrats, the next highest roller was Senator
Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who spent $17 million, or a
little more than $200 for every vote he won in the primaries until he
withdrew. Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, spent the most,
$42 million, but took back enough of America to average about $100
per vote until his withdrawal. Gen. Wesley K. Clark spent $22
million, or just less than $60 per vote.
Among the active candidates, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of
Ohio has spent $5 million, or about $80 per vote so far. Mr.
Edwards's $22 million in spending works out to nearly $24 per vote,
and Mr. Kerry's $31 million to $21 per vote. But the most
cost-effective of all is the Rev. Al Sharpton. By spending a little
more than $600,000, he's paying less than $7 per vote, which is just
about the price of a chicken.   *
$18 million (Gephardt) + $17 million (Lieberman) + $42 million (Dean)
+ $5 million (Kucinich) + $22 million (Edwards) + $600,000 (Sharpton)
= $104,600,000 = wasted dollars of the Democratic losers and their
contributors who do not get a single vote in the general election.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
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