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And let's be honest. If Ralph Nader hadn't stepped in, GM would still be making cars like this for profits' sake.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I don't think that "lesser of two evils" is the correct characterisation of voter behaviour over the last couple of decades. I'm sure you've seen Colbert's timely video on Nader. It's currently right over there in the sidebar ---->

Nader was an idealistic stand against the establishment for many people. The result was that it lost Gore the presidency and gave us Bush and Cheney for 8 years. In my opinion, the worst presidential period in my lifetime.

Vote idealistically if you want– me, I'll be holding my nose trying to fend off the apocalypse.

Nader on Clinton

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Ralph-Nader-on-Hillary-Clintons-Transparency-1

A Man Named Ralph Nader has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.

Ralph Nader on Hillary Clinton's Transparency has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

Remember Howard Stern's movie "Private Parts"? a quote:
Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes a day. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How could this be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given: "I want to see what he'll say next."

Maybe Trump has the same thing going for him. He's crazy enough and ego-inflated enough to serve the "Ross Perot" or "Ralph Nader" role in losing the election for his party.

I'm all in favor of that, as someone who would tend to agree with a lot of the foundation principles of the Republican party, like "small government" and "fiscal conservatism". The problem is that the modern Republican party has exchanged those "foundation principles" with batshit crazy counterparts. It needs to go ahead and implode already to let some measure of sanity back in.

I agree she'd probably be better than Hilary, and probably more electable too as the right (especially the Tea Party) hate's Hilary and Bill so much they'd pull out all the stops to make sure Hilary lost. They'd probably come out in force against Warren as well, but the loss wouldn't be as big. I'd say the progressive's best hope lies with Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich (oh to dream) or some other high end member of the CPC. Bernie has explored the option, but unless he's willing to run on the Democrat ticket, I'd think it'd end up hurting the progressive cause due to the first past the post voting system we're stuck using here. Ralph Nader would be another good option, but again, he'd have to run the Democrat ticket, which is unlikely. I could see Sanders coming to the Democrat ticket if they'd put him on the main post, with Warren as VP perhaps...

I think the Democratic voters failed to turn out for a few reasons. All the media made it seem like it was going to be a Republican win, even the "liberal media" was portraying it that way. This led to a defeatist "what can I do?" mentality. Another is that Democrats failed to really push a couple key issues, namely raising the minimum wage and equal pay for equal work. Heck, even just saying that minimum wage will be tied to inflation and go up with inflation each yet, even if it isn't fully adjusted to where it would be now, would have been a big step forward. They shied away from those, just like when they passed Obamacare they shied away from single payer or the government option that was promised and instead gave us an old Republican plan under the assumption Republicans would be glad the Democrats caved in and accepted a Republican idea.

The Democrats failed to deliver largely because Republican obstructionism. This isn't to absolve them of their failure during the two years they could have really moved forward with a true progressive agenda.

Fox News and the pulpit have the Republican voter base convinced to vote Republican, that Obama is singlehandedly destroying America (I'm surrounded by these people every day, I have to unfortunately live with them, I used to be a right wing, Christian Republican myself, then became a right wing Christian Libertarian before I actually started applying real critical thought to the economic impact of the policies as society stands now and became more Liberal). The pulpit has convinced these people that it doesn't matter Jesus said to help the needy and the poor, to heal the sick, and basically everything 100% opposite of the beliefs of the Republican party, to vote Republican anyhow, and it to be the Christian vote. They deny being Christian Reconstructionist while being clearly Reconstructionist. They say things like "if you actually think about it critically, CO2 is good for plants, so their argument is silly" and they accept it, because plants absorb CO2 they think that CO2 emissions can't be as bad as the environmentalist say it is, after all, greenhouses pump CO2 into them to make plants grow better. Again I was guilty of repeating that sort of non-sense. Then it occurred to me there are no walls around plants in the wild, there is no ceiling to help keep CO2 near where plants are, and the fact that very little of the Earth is filled with green (let alone the fact most plants are doing as much CO2 exchange as they can already).... that most of the Earth is blue... that yes the ocean absorbs CO2, but in doing to warms it and that drives massive changes including storms in of itself and learned the real consequences of CO2 emissions.

As Ralph Nader recently pointed out (http://videosift.com/video/Ralph-Nader-on-GOP-8482-s-2014-Wins) the Democrats can't just blame Citizens United or attempts by Republicans to try and limit voting among the poor, they have to take a look at the fact they didn't push the issues that most Americans stand behind but didn't push.

I like the idea of moving elections to the weekend. That probably would help more than some calls of late to make it a Federal Holiday. Most places don't close on Federal Holiday's anyhow, so that won't really help as much as moving it to a weekend... of course one could also argue that people might not want to take time out of their weekends to vote.

Ayn Rand talking about the non-aggression principle among other things... Seems to me that her philosophy has more in common with Ralph Nader and Ron Paul than with Paul Ryan or anyone in either of the two major political parties.

Oh no! My first time was with Ralph Nader!

I was feeling adventurous and a little curious! He was just so interesting and persuasive and I wanted him to be in the debates, how was I to know he wouldn't so much as call me the next day?

to be fair, Paul is not a republican, so dunno why he seeks the Republican nomination.

I swear, this is the 2000 and the 2004 elections all over again. Ron Paul is "republican" version of Ralph Nader who will siphon off republican votes and give Obama an even bigger victory.

and it's just like 2004 in that the republicans are chanting "anyone but obama" just like dems chanted "anyone but Bush" in 2004. Kerry is a weak candidate just like Romney is.

First off, Romney does not equal Obama. This kind of thinking is truly what frightens me, and it's not because of the reasons you probably think.

Some 20 years ago, the overwhelming majority of the population were ignorant of politics and apathetic. Political games were played, cheap shots were utilized, but in the end, in the big scheme of things, on the truly big issues, both sides would compromise and do the right thing. Clinton and the GOP Congress balancing the budget, Bush Sr. raising taxes, etc. etc. Stuff got done. And the majority of people were wholly ignorant on things like federal budgets, that kind of thing. There was also some kind of understanding on basic principles where regardless of your ideology, you couldn't do catastrophic things just because it suited your ideology.

Now, that's gone. Extremists in both parties are labelled fascists or communists, or whatever, but now moderates are being labelled as either part of the same extremist groups, or they're called sell-outs, part of a completely corrupt system, and perpetrators of that system, not as agents trying to work within a system that was built long before they got there, who could change the system while they work within it. When they do the right thing that violates ideology, it's not because it was the bipartisan right thing to do; it's because they're extensions of the corrupt system. The bailouts are an absolutely perfect example. I hate to break it to people here, and I know most won't agree with me, but the bailouts were the right thing to do, even if you're against too big to fail, etc. The banking system was already in place when the economy collapsed. It's like being in a boat as its sinking. You can critique the design of the boat all you want, but the boat sinking kills you all. It's ridiculous to talk about actions that will blow up the boat. Plug the holes, do what you need to do to get the boat to land. THEN figure out how to fix the design, or build a new boat. But what happened? The bipartisan policy by both a Democrat and Republican president was tarred and feathered as government being in the pocket of big business. Those same people don't seem to realize the boat didn't sink. We didn't face another depression. Be critical the banking system wasn't significantly reformed after that was done, I have no issues with that.

To the person who said Obama's policies haven't worked in three years? Again, are we in a depression? No. Those policies worked. And how can you expect a macro-economic shift within a year or two of his other policies? Go back and look at economic history. Things don't change on a dime just from macro-economic policies instituted by the government. It takes several years before the effect can be measured. Again, sheer ignorance. The difference today is the ignorant are far more willing to participate in the political debate even though they don't have a clue what they're talking about. This is a problem on both sides.

Both sides are stoking the ignorant to get involved in the public debates, and not encouraging a very very basic understanding of crucial facts about history. Like... WWII was a Keynesian economic exercise effectively, which in the end was a gigantic gov't deficit that did end the Great Depression. This is a very straight forward basic economical historical fact. But there's 30% of the population that will not believe it because it blows apart what they politically favor today. It's ridiculous.

I disagree with Romney, and I probably won't vote for him. But he's not a fascist. There's a significant difference between him and Santorum. And there's a significant difference between him and Obama. Is there a choice as clearly different as say Ron Paul vs. Ralph Nader? No. Is that a bad thing? Not in my book.

My fear is in our political ecosystem, the moderates, the good ones who truly aren't compromising for the wrong reasons, but do it to get things done, and have a willingness to ignore ideology for practical solutions that help the country are getting drowned out, and characterized as corrupt when they're not. I disagree with Romney, but he's not corrupt. I disagree with Obama, but he's not corrupt. We don't need a revolution to fix our current political system, but an increasing number of people think we do. And the last decade we're seeing a rise in the extremists on both sides enough to drown out the political moderates we desperately need. This just can't continue indefinitely.

>> ^deathcow:

>> ^lantern53:
Obama's policies have not worked for the past 3 years. If you believe some improvement is coming, you have far more faith than the average Catholic bishop.

obama = romney = anyone else they put forward

Shenanigans are certainly a problem when they crop up. In 2000 it seemed all of it had to do with attempts to not count ballots by valid voters, and none of it to do with people voting under false names, so voter ID wouldn't protect us from that.

But I don't understand your claim that the electoral college lessens the problem of shenanigans, it actually amplifies it. Because a truly massive scale of fraud is required to sway an election by popular vote when there are 100 million voters, but a much smaller scale is needed when it comes down to a few counties in a single swing state.

Honestly, the absolute biggest problem with the electoral college is the fact that entire states are forced to vote as a block. Even if we were to keep the electoral college in place, complete with enhanced voting power for small states, we could still improve it tremendously by just having each state distribute it's electoral votes by the proportion that went to each candidate. Then you still wouldn't see legal battles that could sway entire states, but you would see third party candidates like Ron Paul or Ralph Nader actually pick up some votes.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.
The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

I'm holding my vote for Ralph Nader.