councilor.org
| Source | Brad DeLong |
| Date | 00/11/09/00:52 |
| >Brad,
> >There's no place here for calling people incompetent. I voted for >Nader. I would not have changed my vote even if it could've been >decisive for electing Gore. I believe in the cold shower. You don't. >That's no reason to be nasty toward other people. The person whom I've called "incompetent" most often during the past week has been Al Gore. I presume you have no objection to me calling him "incompetent"? That it all depends on to whom the names are applied? As for Nader... You somehow think that the left in America is stronger today because Nader won 3% of the vote. You are wrong. Nader's 3% isn't the "cold shower" to make the core Democratic politicians rethink their allegiance to the DLC. Instead, it is a weak showing that confirms it. Look: 3% of the electorate is--by the standards of past third-party efforts, whether Perot or Wallace or even John Anderson--extremely unimpressive. And in the process he has thrown the election to the right-wing candidate, with important differences over the next four years for the Supreme Court... the EPA... the EITC... the size of government... the likelihood of Medicare expansion... Medicaid funding... and a host of others. This the left has sacrificed significantly as far as what policies are going to be over the next four years by throwing the election to Bush. And for what? To convince everyone in America that the left is weak. The DLC today is stronger than it was a week ago. What would you suggest I call this refusal to recognize that, for the American left, yesterday was a strong and significant defeat? |
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