"On issues related to the military and foreign policy, Obama’s worse than Bush, 'in the sense that he’s more aggressive, more illegal worldwide."

Said Ralph Nader, calling Obama a “war criminal."

“He’s gone beyond George W. Bush in drones, for example. He thinks the world is his plate, that national sovereignties mean nothing, drones can go anywhere. They can kill anybody that he suspects and every Tuesday he makes the call on who lives and who dies, supposed suspects in places like Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is a war crime and he ought to be held to account.”

Maybe it's time to end this cruel neutrality... and to dress up like a panda...

... and vote for Ralph Nader.

(Via Bloggingheads.)

"Don’t listen to people when they tell you not to run anymore. That’s just political bigotry."

Listen to your own inner citizen First Amendment voice.

This is America.

Just like every other citizen, you have a right to run.

Whenever you like.

For as long as you like.

Sayeth Ralph Nader.

ADDED: He's talking to Hillary Clinton... not to himself. It seems...

Ralph!

Ralph Nader throws his funny hat in the ring.

Ralph Nader just wants a little attention, a little love.

Is that so wrong?

"Democrats always know how to implode, how to be ambiguous, how to waver, how not to be authentic."

Says Ralph Nader, who's toying with the idea of running for President. And he's got this to say about Hillary Clinton:

She is a political coward. She goes around pandering to powerful interest groups on the one hand and flattering general audiences on the other. She doesn't even have the minimal political fortitude of her husband.

Well, now, give the woman some credit. She did really push the envelope with that short film she released the other day -- you know that psychodrama in which she reduced the former President to the role of First Gentleman by taking away his onion rings (≈ sex life) and forcing him to accept carrot sticks (≈ pared down phallus).

"A sepulchral RALPH NADER sat calmly eating peanuts, his lanky frame folded into his seat like origami."

I love that description of Ralph Nader sitting through the opening performance of that horrible new musical about John Lennon. After the show:

Upstairs, PAUL SHAFFER was making his way to the elevators when he passed Mr. Nader, who was standing near the wall. "You're Canadian!" Mr. Nader said, and they had a short discussion about Canada.

We asked Mr. Nader, who said he was invited by Ms. Ono, about HILLARY CLINTON's prospects for 2008, given her newly positioned centrist platform, and -

"She's not a centrist," Mr. Nader interrupted. "She's a social-services corporatist."

O.K. Would you run against her?

"Too early to tell."

He's good with the snappy epithet: Canadian! Social-services corporatist!

Why aren't Republicans and Democrats consistently compassionate?

What exactly did Ralph Nader say about the Schiavo case on "Crossfire" the other day? People keep emailing me about it. So, let's look at the transcript:

NADER: I must say, I don't see a government interest in denying the parents their desire to take care of Terri. I don't see a government interest.

I think that shifting the guardianship from Michael to the mother and father of Terri is the way to resolve this. Nobody knows what Terri would say. She was alleged to have said something, hearsay, to the side of the family of her husband. She didn't talk about feeding tubes. She doesn't have a ventilator. She doesn't have a heart pump. I don't see the government interest.

So, this puts me on a different political spectrum than Eleanor Holmes Norton. And so, let me put it this way. The Democrats usually are very compassionate about preventing occupational diseases and air pollution and medical malpractice deaths and so on. And, on this, they seem to be in the harsh arena. Apart from all the quibbles about jurisdiction, we're getting right down to who should be the guardian here.

And, on the other hand, the Republicans were so vocal with their compassionate statements on Sunday about this one person. And they are about as cruel as I have seen a political party on hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths on the job, in the environment, and in hospital malpractice. Can you bridge that gap?

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

NADER: Can you bridge that gap?

[National Right to Life legislative counsel Dorothy] TIMBS: Well -- well, first of all, you know, this issue is not about Republicans and Democrats. If you look at the House vote, you had almost as many Democrats who voted for this issue as we had -- as we had Republicans. In the Senate, we had some disagreement about the form that the bill should take, but there was no formal objection. So, I'm not going to speak to that. If you disagree with Republicans' positions on other things, you know, I'm sorry for that. We're not even a Republican organization. This issue is about the rights of just people with disabilities.

Senator Harkin recognized that. And that's why he took the lead on this as well. And I'm happy to hear that you agree that the guardianship should go to the parents, which...

Eleanor Holmes Norton, Alan Dershowitz, who, like Ralph Nader, is an honest guy, says that this -- if this were a death penalty case and the legislature was saying no, the liberals would be jumping up and down. If you had some murderer, a murderer who was about to be murdered and the -- and this sort of thing was going on to save -- to make sure he was killed, the liberals wouldn't like it. Isn't that true?

[Delegate Eleanor Holmes] NORTON: I don't know what Alan is talking about.

The fact is that the right to life, let's base this on the fact that murderers can in fact go into court, but on a much more limited circumstance than was allowed for this single person in this case. And that's the important thing to remember. Yes, if the state is going to deprive you of your life, it is she who said that she did not want to live under these circumstances.

If the state is going to deprive you of your life -- if the state is going to deprive you of your life, then, of course, habeas corpus obtains, very limited habeas corpus today.

Nader asked Timbs and Norton a great question: Why aren't Republicans and Democrats consistently compassionate? Timbs and Norton filled the airspace with words but made no serious attempt to answer the question.

I'm not a Nader fan, but I can recognize a great question when I see it. I haven't seen much blogging about the Nader's contribution to the Schiavo debate, but, judging from the email I'm getting, people are focused on the fact that Nader took the side he did. I'd rather read answers, from Democrats and Republicans, that really try to face up to the challenging question he asked.

UPDATE: I'm getting email and seeing some blog posts trying to answer this question. One answer is that "compassion" is just self-serving rhetoric, which is owning up to the hypocrisy Nader implied by asking the question. Liberals try to meet the challenge of the question by saying that it is compassionate to allow Schiavo to die. Social conservatives try to meet the challenge of the question by saying that conservative economic policies really are compassionate -- Nader would require such intensive regulation that there would be economic effects that would hurt people much more than a little more air pollution and lower recoveries for medical malpractice.

About that Corvette ...

I had thought politics was the subject that drew the most traffic to a blog. I was wrong. It's cars! Cars! Cars! Cars! People love their cars. I've gotten by far more email on that car post than on anything else I've ever written. And that was true even before it was linked on Instapundit. But I'm not much of person to be writing for car buffs, because I've been driving the same car for five years. And it's a relatively modest car, a New Beetle. It's certainly a sensible car. My previous car, which I kept for twelve years (including some years of overlap with the Beetle) was the most sensible, modest car possible, a Honda Civic. The only other two cars I've ever bought were a VW Jetta (in 1983) and a Chevette (the year Jimmy Carter was elected President). No, the Chevette didn't last from 1976 to 1983. I sold the Chevette (which at least was red) after less than a year and moved to New York City where I lived without a car. It was perfectly fine not having a car. So my lifetime car story is an amazingly modest and dull one. The only cool car I ever drove was the 1961 seafoam green Chevy Impala convertible that I drove to school every day when I was in high school, and I have my father to thank for that. And how little I appreciated that -- and just about everything else about my father -- in those days!



Now, I know the traffic -- good word for a car post! -- that has come to this blog over the "Should I buy a new car?" post was largely stimulated by the prospect of my buying a Corvette, the Audi and the Beetle being obviously much more sensible choices. It is the very lack of sensibleness that excites people. (It's like voting for Nader ... and, uh, Kerry's the Audi ... no, Bush is the Audi ... no, Bush should be the Corvette ... analogy abandoned ....) And the idea of buying a new car at all sprang up because of the Corvette brochure that came in the mail last week. And if you look back over that car-buying history of mine you can see that there's a Chevrolet theme. My father gave me the fabulous, classic Impala and, much as I rejected his values and believed in buying a small, fuel-efficient car in the depths of the fuel-shortage 70s -- the Impala got 6 miles a gallon -- I still bought a Chevy. (Hey, I still remember the Chevette jingle: "Chevy Chevette, it'll drive you happy!")



Doesn't it seem that some mystic force larger than myself wants me to get the Corvette? There's just one more thing I'm waiting for: Chevrolet, Oprah-like, gives me a Corvettte!

That 60s mindset.

"No More Miss America!" -- first mentioned in the previous post -- really is quite a fascinating screed, a nice window into the 1960s.

On September 7th [1968] in Atlantic City, the Annual Miss America Pageant will again crown "your ideal." But this year, reality will liberate the contest auction-block in the guise of "genyooine" de-plasticized, breathing women. Women's Liberation Groups, black women, high-school and college women, women’s peace groups, women's welfare and social-work groups, women's job-equality groups, pro-birth control and pro-abortion groups- women of every political persuasion- all are invited to join us in a day-long boardwalk-theater event, starting at 1:00 p.m. on the Boardwalk in front of Atlantic City's Convention Hall. We will protest the image of Miss America, an image that oppresses women in every area in which it purports to represent us.

Back in 1968—back before John Lennon came up with the Plastic Ono Band -- one really did worry about being "plastic." The one word everyone remembered from the 1967 film "The Graduate" was "plastics." Everyone understood why it was so ridiculous for an old man to advise a young man to enter the field of plastic. Frank Zappa was singing to us in 1967, "Plastic people! Oh, baby now, you're such a drag!" The idea that the new generation was going to permanently de-plasticize the human race felt quite real and important.



And note that back in 1968, groups that favored abortion rights went ahead and labeled themselves "pro-abortion."

There will be: Picket Lines; Guerrilla Theater; Leafleting; Lobbying Visits to the contestants urging our sisters to reject the Pageant Farce and join us; a huge Freedom Trash Can (into which we will throw bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, and representative issues of Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, Family Circle, etc.- bring any such woman-garbage you have around the house); we will also announce a Boycott of all those commercial products related to the Pageant, and the day will end with a Women's Liberation rally at midnight when Miss America is crowned on live television. Lots of other surprises are being planned (come and add your own!) but we do not plan heavy disruptive tactics and so do not expect a bad police scene. It should be a groovy day on the Boardwalk in the sun with our sisters. In case of arrests, however, we plan to reject all male authority and demand to be busted by policewomen only. (In Atlantic City, women cops are not permitted to make arrests -- dig that!)

So this was all back before the word "Liberation" was excised from the term "Women's Movement." It fell within that short span of time when people used the word "groovy" nonjocosely.



"Bad scene" was a trendy slang expression of the time. And if you were arrested, it was always "busted." And note: "dig that."

Male chauvinist-reactionaries on this issue had best stay away, nor are male liberals welcome in the demonstrations. But sympathetic men can donate money as well as cars and drivers.



Male reporters will be refused interviews. We reject patronizing reportage. Only newswomen will be recognized.

I tend to think that much of this, like the "demand to be busted by policewomen only," was a pretty effective way to send a message about what was very real employment discrimination at the time. I remember reading "Help Wanted—Male"/"Help Wanted—Female" classified ads at the in the newspaper, and I had an English teacher in high school who informed my class that women could not be TV or radio announcers because of their unacceptable voices.



Next comes a list of ten points of protest, including the one that appears in my previous post. I'll just call attention to a couple more:

The Consumer Con-Game. Miss America is a walking commercial for the Pageant's sponsors. Wind her up and she plugs your product on promotion tours and TV--all in an "honest, objective" endorsement. What a shill.

This really displays a sort of hippie mentality that one still finds in the wit and wisdom of Ralph Nader. What exactly was so wrong with—gasp!--products? You were supposed to already understand that was was part of what made you plastic!

Competition Rigged and Unrigged. We deplore the encouragement of an American myth that oppresses men as well as women: the win-or-you’re-worthless competitive disease. The "beauty contest" creates only one winner to be "used" and forty-nine losers who are "useless."

We know how this idea played out in the culture: let's boost everyone's "self-esteem" with games where everybody wins. I think in 1968, it really was possible to think that people, en masse, were going to "drop out" of the evil, competitive world of commerce. Maybe a nice little life of subsistence farming on a commune -- what do you say?



1968 was really happening.



UPDATE: Speaking of 1968, I was just following an Instapundit link to ReasonOnline's "Who's Getting Your Vote? Reason’s revealing presidential poll," and I ran across this, from P.J. O'Rourke:

Most embarrassing vote: A 1968 write-in for "Chairman Meow," my girlfriend’s cat. It seemed very funny at the time. As I mentioned, this was 1968.

Exactly.

On not subscribing to Wired.

The Wired that just arrived (see previous post) is not the newest issue, but the September issue. Wired does that annoying thing that magazines do when you subscribe, which is to send you an older issue, even though you might very well have bought that issue on the newstand. This practice makes subscribing to magazines less of a bargain than the card in that copy you just bought makes it seem.



Yet, in fact, I did not subscribe to Wired. I did something even more foolish. I paid for the premium subscription to Salon.com, because I figured I'd go there often enough that it was worth buying off the commercial they make you watch to get through to the content. But Salon turns out to be less enticing when it isn't walled off with a commercial. Anyway, the subscription to Salon included free subscriptions to Wired and U.S. News & World Report, magazines I now feel that I must at least flip though. Wired and U.S. News & World Report each sent me a postcard offering to cancel my subscription for a $12 (or so) payoff, but I missed my chance. Now I receive these rather silly publications in the mail and waste time looking at them.



I knew it was dumb to say "awesome," but Wired helps me stay hip by advising me to replace "amazing" with "audacious." That's asinine. And Wired's coverage of politics is fatuous. Little sidebars in the September issue identify problems with American politics. Problem #2 is: "The electoral college is broken." A checked box appears next to "SOLUTION." There is a half column explanation of the amazing, audacious solution Wired's genuises have hit upon:

Move to a popular vote. And make it count with instant runoffs. In this system, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If the first "winner" doesn't get 50 percent of the vote, the least favorite candidate is dropped, and those votes go to the voters' next favorite candidate. You do a new count, and repeat the process until someone gets 50 percent. This way votes aren't wasted: If voters don't get their first choice, they get something close - their second or third choice. It also allows third parties to emerge without "spoiling it" for like-minded candidates. In 1992, for example, many votes for Perot would have transferred to George Bush Sr., and Clinton might never have triumphed. (The reverse applies to Gore and Nader.) The system hasn't been tried partly because the big parties selfishly don't want to encourage competition, and partly because all that recounting is logistically tricky. But now that we're moving to electronic voting, "the technological barrier vanishes. Computers can do those recounts in an instant," says Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy. Digital tech could usher in an age where your vote finally matters.

Do you think you might come down for a moment from your high-tech high and apply some of your intelligence to thinking through the ramifications of how this system would play out? Without the Electoral College system, we would have completely different candidates and many more of them, including many strange niche candidates and extremists who would have unpredictable clout. You want to give a chance to a third party candidate? Your solution gives a chance to a tenth party candidate! You think the "big parties" are just being selfish? Have you ever tried to understand the beneficial moderating effect of the two party system?



I recommend Alexander M. Bickel's book Reform and Continuity: The Electoral College, the Convention, and the Party System, published in 1971, which I reviewed, a propos of the 2000 election, in "Electoral College Reform Déja Vu, 95 Northwestern University Law Review 993 (2001). People spent a lot of time considering abolishing the Electoral College in the decade that followed the very close 1960 election and discovered important safeguards it provides that would be lost with a switch to the superficially appealing popular vote. In any case, given the difficulty of amending the Constitution, especially when shifting the states' power is concerned, it isn't going to happen.

Nader off the Wisconsin ballot.

Madison.com reports:

A Dane County judge Tuesday kicked Ralph Nader off the Wisconsin ballot, prompting an immediate appeal by the independent presidential candidate with the state Supreme Court. While Judge Michael Nowakowski ruled Nader should be left off the ballot, he also prohibited the Elections Board from sending county clerks a certified list of presidential candidates until Wednesday afternoon to give Nader’s backers a chance to appeal. There was no immediate word from the Supreme Court whether it would accept the case. ... State Democrats sued to kick Nader off the ballot, claiming he had failed to comply with state law that requires presidential candidates to list 10 electors on their nomination papers. The statute says the electors shall include one from each congressional district and two at-large. One of Nader’s electors listed as living in one congressional district actually lives in another. Electors cast ballots in the electoral college to decide the presidential race.

Well, what's the excuse for making a mistake like that? I know the Nader people worked hard to get him on the ballot, but what can you do? A rule's a rule! (I'm no expert on this law, and maybe there's a pro-Nader angle I'm missing. Email me info you know.)



UPDATE, OCTOBER 1: For Wisconsin, change "a rule's a rule" to "close enough."

Can it be that Bush has a 14 point lead in Wisconsin?

The Capital Times reports today on a new poll that shows Bush 14 points ahead:

The poll, sponsored by The Capital Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, shows Bush with 52 percent support among likely voters, Kerry with 38 percent, and independent Ralph Nader with 4 percent.

When Nader is removed from the choices, his four points are evenly split between Kerry and Bush and the 14 point spread remains. A week ago, a poll showed Bush with only a 2 point lead, well within the margin of error. How could so much change have taken place in the last week?

Badger Poll director G. Donald Ferree Jr. noted that the timing coincided with the revelation that CBS News had received fake documents calling into question Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

"It looked like he was being unfairly attacked," Ferree said, adding that the temporary boost for Bush "could be a bubble" that may burst, particularly after next week's first presidential debate.

Asked about the conduct of the campaign, 29 percent of those in the Badger Poll said they believed Kerry has been "unfairly attacking his opponent," compared to 23 percent who complained Bush had done so.

On the detailed questions Kerry beat Bush only on "protecting the environment." The biggest spread was on what is arguably the most important issue, "protecting the United States from terrorism." Here, Bush had 53 percent, with Kerry at a mere 15 percent--a 38 point spread.

Meanwhile, Kerry is coming here to Wisconsin to do his debate preparation. He's staying in Spring Green at the House on the Rock Resort. The House on the Rock is a great, absurd tourist attraction, a crazy counterpart to the elegant Frank Lloyd Wright attractions that are also in the area. The House on the Rock is an architectural mishmash, patched together, built into the rock in places and teetering way out over it in another. It is conjoined to a maze of a museum that houses a demented collector's overload of junk and minor treasures. It is only too easy to offer up the House on the Rock as a metaphor for the mix of positions and issues and contradictory statements that Kerry has piled together over the long months of striving to make his way to the Presidency.

But welcome to Wisconsin, anyway, Senator Kerry. I hope the people of Wisconsin are nice to you, and that you get a chance to enjoy the beauty of our state, to practice up for your debate, and to recover from your laryngitis, even though--I must say--that lost-voice effect might win some people over by reminding us of our old and well-favored President, Bill Clinton.

UPDATE: Here's a better link for the House on the Rock, from the Roadside American website, which specializes in offbeat attractions. The description begins:

Alex Jordan, Jr. wanted to teach Frank Lloyd Wright a thing or two about architecture. The lesson started years ago.

Jordan's dad, a budding architect, had been dismissed at Wright's Taliesin home, near Spring Green, with the declaration, "I wouldn't hire you to design a cheese crate or a chicken coop." Soon after, the senior Jordan chose a pinnacle rock south of Taliesin to build a parody of Wright's fancy-pants architecture, a strange "Japanese house." The ceilings were dangerously low (padded now to accommodate tourists) and the structure seemed to cling precariously to the odd contours of the rock.

There's much, much more, including the "Infinity Room," which seems as if it goes on forever.



Suffice it to say: the House on the Rock is a metaphor goldmine for people writing about the Kerry campaign.

What is Nader's game in Wisconsin?

I just got a computerized telephone call asking me to hit phone buttons in answer to a series of questions: would I vote in the coming election, who did I think I'd vote for, and what chance was there that I'd vote for Nader. When I pressed the button indicating "slight or no" for that last question, I was thanked and the call ended. It seems like a pretty efficient way to identify potential Nader voters. Too bad I didn't think of that and pick a different answer on that question so I could monitor what they planned to do with that information.

For Democrats looking for ways to spin the devastating Time poll.

I emailed the link to the Time poll to my son, John Cohen, and he wrote back what seemed to me to be a fine effort at putting the best face on it. So, with his permission, here it is:

Clearly Bush has a really good trajectory. Remember that in 2000 Nader got surprisingly few votes. There might be a lot of people defecting from Nader to Kerry at the last minute out of pragmatism. Nader has 3%; assuming (arbitrarily) that two-thirds of Nader voters will end up defecting to Kerry, then we should consider Kerry to be at 43% right now instead of 41, which would mean we should consider the split among likely voters (which is the headline of the story) to be Bush 51 / Kerry 43. The margin of error is 4%, so that's a statistical tie. (Even if you don't buy my calculation about Nader voters, it's still CLOSE to a statistical tie.) So I would consider this one poll obviously a great sign for Bush, but it's not proof that Bush is in the lead. Bush can only be considered to have a strong lead if other polls corroborate this one.

He adds:

The poll was done from Aug 31 to Sept 2. It will be interesting to see what the numbers are like after the convention. As I've said before, considering that Kerry got almost no bounce from the convention, I think it will be terrible news for Kerry if Bush gets a significant bounce out of his convention, since people's views of Bush are more solidified. If Bush doesn't get much of a bounce out of his convention, then you could say that both conventions were ineffective for reasons unrelated to the specific candidates or parties (the country is polarized, the conventions got relatively little coverage, etc.).

Yes, when Kerry got no bounce, the spin was: conventions don't really produce bounce anymore. So what can you say now? I predict: the Republicans did very bad things at the convention and thereby unfairly obtained the bounce that they got; if they had conducted an honorable convention, like the Democrats, there would have been no bounce.

UPDATE: An emailer observes:

I wanted to note this:  a 51/43 split with a margin of error of +-4 is not a statistical tie.  It does indicate that there is the possibility that there is a statistical tie in the actual populace, but there is no reason to think that the likelihood of this possibility is any different from the likelihood of a 55/39 split in the actual populace (which would render Kerry about as significant as I am in the coming election).  Moreover, neither of those extreme possibilities is as likely as a 51/43 split in the actual populace.  Similarly, rolling a sum of 2 on two dice is as likely as rolling a sum of 12 is, but neither is as likely as 7.  Obviously, the dice rolling is not correlated in the same way that the polling is, and while this correlation does support your son's comment, it does so only weakly.

I agree, definitely. But what I like about my son's comment is that it's amusingly in the vein of what would Susan Estrich say if she had to figure out something positive to say. I'll see if John comes back Estrichishly and re-spins.

ANOTHER UPDATE: If you want to shore up your knowledge of what "margin of error means," go here. And Matthew Yglesias argues about that here. I don't think you really need to invest a lot of time in studying all that, but if you're bummed out about the poll, it might cheer you up. Especially the first link. I'm pretty sure John is literally correct about the meaning of the term "statistical tie." At the same time, the emailer is right about likelihood of different results. But if you were trying to spin the bad news, you would avoid pointing that out. Indeed, I think Yglesias, who supports Kerry, was saying what he was saying because he was enjoying polls that showed Kerry ahead and he didn't want his pleasure spoiled by people wielding the "statistical tie" concept.

"Althouse Independents."

Much as I like to see my name in print, I don't know if I'm to feel flattered by that term, coined over at Daly Thoughts to refer to people who call themselves independent and even feel independent, but are really predictably Republican or a Democrat when it comes to voting. Daly has read this post of mine, in which I recount my presidential preferences going back to 1960 and reveal that I've only voted for one Republican (Gerald Ford)(and that I also supported Nixon in 1960 and Goldwater in 1964, before I was old enough to vote). (Yes, I'm quite old, readers--older than John Edwards.) Daly writes:

She may be undecided right now, but when push comes to shove the overwhelming majority of those just like her are going to end up going for Kerry. And those who are like her except for that they usually vote Republican will overwhelmingly end up going for Bush.

First, a modest point. I've actually never labelled myself an "independent." Everywhere I've ever registered to vote, I've registered as a Democrat. It has, however, been almost 20 years since I've needed to register, but I've never felt the call to go declare myself something other than that. I vote in the Democratic primaries. (I voted for Edwards, in case you're interested.) I do frequently call myself a "moderate" or a "centrist." But this is the much more important point: this is the first election since 9/11. In every other election, I was presumptively for the Democratic candidate all along. When I voted for Ford, I was for Carter until I was halfway to the voting booth. In none of those years--save for the 24-hour period before I voted for Ford--would I ever have called myself undecided. During the 2000 campaign, I was mocking the late undecideds just as many of you are now: What's wrong with these people? Why can't they decide? Why do they keep interviewing these losers on TV? Or are they just posing as undecided to get on TV?



I'm really not one of those people. I'm one of the people whose politics were changed by 9/11. Prior to 9/11, my disagreement with the social conservatives kept me from having much of any interest in Republican presidential candidates. After 9/11, I became quite bonded to George Bush. If I had to vote today, I would vote for Bush, because at this point, I cannot trust Kerry on security matters. Kerry has allowed himself to stand for so many different things, according to what is expedient at the moment. I didn't buy the strong-on-security pitch of the convention, which I know was aimed at shoring up support from centrists like me. The problem there is that I just don't believe them. (And I note that I've just written "them" and not Kerry. I was going to edit that out, but I'm going to leave it in, because it signifies my queasy feeling that Kerry is a device for returning to power a party that doesn't stand for much of any of the things that were promoted at the convention.) What would appeal to me from the Republican side, along with a convincing case that they really are competent about the security issues we assume they care more about, would be a more libertarian approach to social issues.



Unfortunately, both parties have to attend their "base," and, whenever they do, I don't like them. Because of that, I keep my distance. I don't love any of these people, and I don't have to vote today. So I will wait and see what happens in the world between now and November, and I'll watch all the debates (and blog about it). And, given my kiss-of-death history of voting, I'll probably vote for the loser.



Finally, let me just comment on my two recent blogpolls. First, I did not sign the petition to get Nader on the Wisconsin ballot. At the time of this post, 69.6% percent of you thought I did. Why didn't I? One reason is that I don't like to sign any petitions. But another reason is, as a general rule, I don't want to see an overloaded ballot, so a place on the ballot should be reserved only if there are enough people who actually want to vote for Nader. I don't want to vote for him. And I'm not so devoted to Bush that I would sign just to try to help him. What makes all you readers think I would? On this other poll, the votes make more sense. Nearly everyone either believes me when I say I'm undecided or thinks I'm taking an objective perspective as a way to write a better blog. Only twenty percent think I'm posing as an undecided voter as a strategy to influence people to support a particular candidate, and I'm heartened to see that the twenty percent split right down the middle about whether my secret preference is Kerry or Bush.

Answer revealed: the Republican Presidential candidate I voted for.

Here's the final count in the blogpoll asking which Republican Presidential candidate I voted for. I had said that I've been voting in presidential elections since 1972 and have only once voted for the Republican candidate. Seventy-seven people voted and the clear favorite was Reagan:

Ronald Reagan--48.1%--37



Bob Dole--18.2%--14



Gerald Ford--13%--10



George H.W. Bush--13%--10



Richard Nixon--7.8%--6

Now what was the thinking there? Why did Reagan come out on top by such a wide margin? Reagan ran twice, and I could only have voted for him one of those times, so the fact that he's the only one who ran twice in the stated time period should not have caused you to pick him. I guess there was a trend of Democrats switching over to Reagan, and just on sheer numbers, the chances of a Democrat voting for Reagan in 1984 are high, given the abysmal numbers for Mondale. But, in fact, I voted for Mondale. Up until Bill Clinton, I had never voted for the winner in a Presidential election. So now, you have enough information to reach the correct answer: Gerald Ford! Why on earth did I vote for Ford—especially when I voted for every other loser up until Clinton? It means that I voted against Carter when he won and for him when he lost! Who does that?



I was all set to vote for Carter in 1976. I had voted for Carter in the New York primary, and actually set out on Election Day in November intending to vote for Carter. I was walking to the poll with another person with whom I'd been talking about the election throughout the campaign. Both of us had been struck by a statement Carter made the day before the election. Carter was asked what he would do if he lost, and he answered that he would just go back to his peanut farm. That statement undermined my support for Carter overnight, strangely enough. He seemed thin and weak to me after that. Here was this man who'd only been the governor of Georgia, and he thought he could be President, yet he had no other vision of a role in the world for himself than to stay in Georgia and be a peanut farmer. Peanut farm, Presidency—what's the difference? We sat down on a bench on the way to the polling place and talked about it and both decided to vote for Ford! What was there in Ford's favor? He was already President so there was no issue of elevating an inadequate man to the Presidency. He may have been inadequate, but he was already President. And I found something reassuring in the fact that he, uniquely, had not sought the Presidency.



But let me say something about Nixon. I didn't support him in 1972, the first year I voted, or in 1968 (when I was a senior in high school), but I absolutely loved Nixon in 1960, the first election I was old enough to have an opinion about. I was nine. I wore a huge Nixon button to school in those days, and all the kids I knew loved Nixon. I vividly remember a schoolmate observing, "If kids could vote, it would be a landslide for Nixon." As I noted above, I have voted for every loser from the time I started voting until Clinton came along. But if you go back to 1960, the first year I started having an opinion, I supported every loser except Clinton. Not only did I support Nixon in 1960, but I supported Goldwater in 1964, and then Humphrey in 1968. My record of supporting losers, in fact, is so extraordinary—remember I supported Carter when he lost, but opposed him when he won—that my support ought to be dreaded as the kiss of death.



Here's a new poll to test your understanding of my political predilections. I was walking on State Street today, when a young man with a clipboard asked me to sign a petition to get Ralph Nader on the ballot. I'm in Wisconsin, which is an important swing state, as you probably know.

"Ego, I don't know the meaning of the term."

The NYT interviews Ralph Nader. He shows his contempt for the Democratic Party ("decadent") and its little show last week: "This is repressed conformity." Of himself, he says: "Ego, I don't know the meaning of the term."



The article includes a nice picture of Michael Moore and Bill Maher, on Maher's HBO show, on their knees, begging Nader to drop out. Nader is laughing.

"He's been encountering some animosity."

That's what I overhear as a walk into a State Street café this morning. Two men are talking about Ralph Nader's problems getting on the ballot in key states, including Wisconsin. I get my cappucino and sit down with my laptop and search for an article on the subject. I find this editorial in today's Register Guard (of Eugene, Oregon).

In Oregon, Nader twice attempted to qualify to have his name listed on the November ballot by holding conventions at which 1,000 voters would sign petitions. At both conventions, organizers fell short of the mark. The second event was torpedoed by Democrats, who were urged to attend the convention and then decline to sign the nominating petitions. It was not an inspiring performance by a party that bills itself as pro-choice.



Republicans are also playing games. In Michigan, the GOP helped circulate petitions to get Nader on the ballot in hopes that he'd siphon voters away from Democrat John Kerry in that battleground state. Republican or conservative groups are also said to be helping Nader's ballot access efforts in Oregon, Wisconsin and Florida. The efforts betray a lack of confidence in President Bush's chances of defeating Kerry on his own, and require GOP activists to work for a candidate they would never consider supporting.

Now, some people might say that Ralph Nader is distorting the process of choosing between Kerry and Bush, and that the Democratic obstruction and Republican help should be conveying the message that he should just stay off the ballot in the battleground states. This is essentially response of the Green Party candidate:

David Cobb says he won't campaign in states where the Bush-Kerry race is close, for fear of pulling votes away from the Democrat. Cobb will offer himself as an alternative, in other words, unless there's a chance that voting for him would affect the result. If the Greens don't want people's votes, perhaps they should disband and reconstitute themselves as an adjunct to the Democratic Party.

The Register Guard looks at the Democratic obstruction and Republican help this way:

Ralph Nader is running for president because he believes both major parties are fundamentally indistinguishable. Nader's quest for ballot access is inadvertently proving his point, as Democrats and Republicans resort to cynical tactics to thwart or promote his candidacy.

I don't think attending the conventions but then not signing the petition really amounts to much of a dirty trick, but this editorial is portraying the tactic as a reason to conclude the parties are "indistinguishable." Well, sure, they're indistinguishable in their willingness to fight hard to win. Are the Democrats supposed to lie down and welcome Nader into the game lest they look like bad sports? Are there really many people who would be so upset that the Democrats aren't nice enough that they'd migrate into the Nader camp? There seem to be at least a few in Eugene.

The Nader-Dean debate.

I'm working at home and overhearing the TV playing back the Nader-Dean debate from last Friday. Here's a write up of the debate from the Washington Times, with this catchy-sounding quote from Nader:

"You were an insurgent," Nader said of Dean's momentum before the Democratic primaries. "Now (you're) a detergent for the dirty linen of the Democratic Party."

I just overheard this exchange:

NADER [responding to criticism of him for taking contributions from a Republican]: Republicans are human beings too.



DEAN: The right-wingers may not be.