Semi-Daily Journal

Nader may have done some good when he was younger, but the 2000 election erased all that and more. His megolomania was truly evil and he should be held accountable for the consequences of his actions.

Exactly the reason why I no longer care what Eric Alterman has to say.

Alterman doesn't even mention the most venal aspect of the 2000 Nader/Green campaign. It was all about a couple million dollars in campain finance matching funds for the Green Party. Everyone seems to have forgotten that now. But as I remember it, the primary reason that Nader stayed in the race was the pursuit of that magic 5% to trigger matching funds. The Greens even created schemes for voters in "safe" states to trade Nader votes for Gore votes with voters in close states. The 5% goal was the biggest argument the Greens made for why you should vote for Nader even though he didn't have a chance to win. And it's the one that I always heard from Nader supporters when I challenged them before the election. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew why they were doing it.

During the 2000 campaign, Nader spent a great deal of time claiming that the two parties were no different from each other. His main argument was that they were both beholden to special interests for campaign cash. But frankly it was the lust for cash by the Green Party that sold this country to the Republicans. And in holding out to the very end, during what everyone knew was going to be a very close election, the Green Party demonstrated the same willingness as the other parties to betray their ideals for cash.

That's why I can never forgive Nader and the Greens. They sold out the country for a few million dollars in cash. What's really pathetic is that they didn't even get the cash. Silly idealism is one thing. But deliberately throwing the election to Bush had nothing to do with idealism, it was simply a fundraising strategy.

A couple of million dollars in matching funds sure looks like chump change now compared to the multi-trillion dollar bill that the Bush Administration is going to be passing on to my children--for his war in Iraq, his tax cuts for the rich, and to clean up all the environmental damage that will be the legacy of this administration, to cite just three things.

I would love to see some economist tally up the bill that future generations will pay as a result of the Green/Naderite's pursuit of matching funds.

Was it worth it guys?

I would feel more charitable towards Nader if he would speak up and explain in Q4 2003 why there is "not a dime's worth of difference" between the parties. And address the facts while doing so, of course.

Not bloody likely.

That said, Alterman's bitterness on the topic is palpable and has been for some time. Still, I don't see why every ill that has happened has to be laid at Ralph's door. How many Democrats stayed home instead of vote in 2000? Why did the media play so hard on the Republican side and allowed to get away with it? Why were so many Republicans allowed to keep their seats in congress in 2002? Ralph is/was a wakeup call, and too many people just hit the snooze button and went back to sleep.

During the 2000 campaign, Nader spent a great deal of time claiming that the two parties were no different from each other. His main argument was that they were both beholden to special interests for campaign cash. But frankly it was the lust for cash by the Green Party that sold this country to the Republicans. And in holding out to the very end, during what everyone knew was going to be a very close election, the Green Party demonstrated the same willingness as the other parties to betray their ideals for cash.

Seriously weak. Do you really equate agressively pursuing government money, and attempting to build a third party in a democracy which routinely ostraciszes 50% of its citizens in each election with accepting millions of dollars from the likes of Phillip-Moris, or Halliburton? Whatever Ralph Nader's failings in the 2000 election were, and there were many, do you fault the simple act of trying to build a third party? Is that in itself unethical? Perhaps if your beliefs are included among the pluralities, but what of those beliefs that aren't? The blame for the 2000 election relies soley with the people who stole it directly, the Supreme Court of the United States. Every time Eric Alterman publishes yet another rant against Ralph Nader with an aside like (not that the Supreme Court doesn't share some blame) I lose quite a bit more respect for his judgement.

nader probably had very little effect on the outcome of the 2000 election. the votes in florida
disenfranchised by being purged wrongly as "felons", i.e. given the carcereal statistics, afro-americans, probably far outweighs any effect that nader voters had in that state. (but this is an old tradition in american elections.) the fact of the matter is that the preponderance of nader voters simply would not have voted for a center-right democratic ticket. add to that the incredibly unfocused and anemic campaign run by gore, starting with the choice of sen. lieberman as running mate- (remember all those sighs during the debate about "fuzzy math", an incredible gaffe for a seasoned politician)- and the fact that bush, media abetted, ran a deceptively moderate campaign- ( i myself did not realize how far right he would, thinking of his father, until jan. 2001)- and you have a recipe for the disaster. but the democrats contracted congenital spinelessness starting all the way back in reagan's first term and clinton's contortionism was very much to the point: remember "school uniforms" and how come no one talks anymore about our highly successful welfare reform program? add to that the acuity of their political response post 9/11 and the blank check that they preponderantly handed bush over iraq together with the 2002 congressional elections and i don't think nader's point has been exactly refuted. yeah, i voted for nader, but i live in vermont and voted for anthony pollina, as well. perhaps the only real hope now is the formation of a genuine popular coalition movement rather than relying on the "formal politics" so beloved by liberal elitist pundit pontificators- (all chiefs, no injuns, this is what accounts for their pique at the naderites: they simply wouldn't follow the charge, as ordered!). needless
to say, i have no illusions about howard dean, but if he really allows a strong input from a self-organized base-(technological innovation isn't the half of it, prof. delong)- and can reach across to labor and minorities- (doubtful, since vermont is one of the whitest states in the union), and, in turn, such a broad and self-organized base can put together a strong across the board program, then perhaps, if he were to win office, when his waffling starts, then perhaps a strong coalition base would remain in place to maintain the required pressure as the arduous task of reversing, cleaning up and rebuilding from the bush 2 legacy begins. or perhaps we could just turn the whole job over to the french, under u.n. auspices, of course.

Nader had EVERY effect on the outcome of the 2000 election -- CNN's exit polls show that if he'd stayed out, Gore's margin over Bush would have increased in each state by about half of Nader's total vote. That would have been enough for Gore to take not only Florida, but New Hampshire, by tens of thousands of votes. The Supreme Court may or may not have stolen the 2000 election -- but both the Electoral College and Ralph Nader definitely did. Without the Electoral College AND Nader AND -- maybe -- the Supreme Court, Gore would have been elected.

Nader said repeatedly during the campaign tht he intended to throw the election to Bush in order to "force" the Democrats toward the Left. Exactly how you "force" millions of Democratic primary and caucus voters -- who now pick the nominees, rather than party bosses doing so -- toward the Left this way is yet another thought that never crossed his self-righteous little pea brain. John DiIulio's "Mayberry Macchiavellis" are not, alas, limited to the Right.

Well, I'm not an American, so I guess I have less say in this than the other posters, but I have to say that this "blame Nader" line seems pretty weird to me.

I always thought the idea in a democracy was that some people put forward their ideas, and everyone voted among the candidates. In most countries, there are third (and fourth, and fifth) parties that split the vote all the time. (Here in Canada the Liberals look like being in office for ever because the Alliance and Tory parties to their right divide the vote up between them.) The idea that it is somehow wrong for someone to stand for election seems very peculiar.

Seems to me that if Al Gore and the Democrats lost, it is Al Gore and the Democrats to blame. Or maybe the Supreme Court at a strecth. But Nader is just a convenient scapegoat.

Bruce made a great point about the primary voters and I'd like to expand on it. There IS a way to "force" the Democratic party to the left and that is to show up at meetings and vote. That's all there is to it. That's how the Christian Right has taken over the Republican Party, so you can see for yourself how effective it can be.

The Democratic Party is nothing more than who shows up and votes. It is not some "they" who run everything and work with corporations and decide who does what and where. You show up at your county meetings and you VOTE and that's all there is to it.

Imagine if instead of leaving the party, the Greens had done THAT! Where would we be today? Where would the country be today?

And by the way, people reading this, have YOU been to YOUR local Democratic club, or county central committee meetings? Try it. You'll be surprised.

Go here, look for "Get Local" and choose your state: http://www.democrats.org/

Mark R. -

Exactly. I stopped dropping by the Altercation blog a while ago for just that very reason.

Tom Slee -

Canada has a Westminster parliamentary system - third, fourth and fifth parties can play an effective role in government. We have a strong presidential system, with no place for the coalition-building that gives smaller parties importance - the Democrats win, or the Republicans win, and a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. Nader had no chance of winning, as he himself acknowledged. The Greens argued that they were playing a longer game, and that it was worth risking a Republican victory to succeed at it.

I'm with Alterman - Nader performed a real disservice in 2000, which makes his high-minded sanctimony shtick just about unbearable. Oh, and he shares something else with Dick Cheney: he's never made a mistake.

>Dave Johnson at September 18, 2003 07:22 PM

>"...The Democratic Party is nothing more than who shows up and votes. It is not some "they" who run everything and work with corporations and decide who does what and where. You show up at your county meetings and you VOTE and that's all there is to it..."

That's exactly right, Dave: for a day or two every two or four years. But then, a stopped clock is exactly right twice a day too....

>Dave L at September 19, 2003 01:01 AM

>"...We have a strong presidential system, with no place for the coalition-building that gives smaller parties importance - the Democrats win, or the Republicans win, and a vote for a third party is a wasted vote..."

We have a duopolistic ONE (corporate) party system, with--thanks to the pernicious effects of the Electoral College--two 'factions': each of which exercises political control over its own respective 'safe' (uncontested) states with all the political 'enlightenment' of a nineteenth plantation owner AND where, NOT incidentally, a 'third party' vote is most certainly NOT a 'wasted' one...

I don't know why people always blame Ralph Nader for Bush's victory in 2000 when it's clear that God could have prevented Bush's election by smiting Bush, or alternatively letting him be hit by a meteorite. So don't blame Ralph. It's God's fault. Blame God, not Ralph.

I don't know why people always blame Ralph Nader for Bush's victory in 2000 when it's clear that God could have prevented Bush's election by smiting Bush, or alternatively letting him be hit by a meteorite. So don't blame Ralph. It's God's fault. Blame God, not Ralph.

I'll have to agree with Tom that I always thought the idea in a democracy was that some people put forward their ideas, and everyone voted among the candidates. Of course, I'm also a canadian, so this might explain that.

Dave makes an excellent point about the futility of having multiples parties in an american system. Still, being true to one's ideas is good, non?

Besides, you won't have Nader to kick around on this election, so besting Bush should be a walk in the park, right? Right?

Besides, you won't have Nader to kick around on this election, so besting Bush should be a walk in the park, right? Right?

No, because now Bush is an incumbent. Which is again because of Nader. What a stupid, dishonest argument.

>alkali at September 19, 2003 06:11 AM

>"I don't know why people always blame Ralph Nader..."

It's simple: People who think that way figure [and have figured for MUCH too long now] that they 'own' the votes [and voters] that Nader [and the Greens] 'stole' from them. To their way of thinking they was robbed.

Besides, 'failure'--ESPECIALLY abject failure--is ALWAYS "somebody else's" fault. Isn't it?

(AND it's a whole lot safer for a 'house liberal' [like Eric Alterman] to demonize 'field lefties' [like Greens] than it is to point a nervous finger at his 'establishment masters' [fill in the blank of your choice] OR one of his 'well-kept housemates'. [Does Tom Friedman read this stuff <];?)

Doesn't anyone remember Gore's bizarre performance during the election? He imploded. He became a robot. He was a ghost of himself. He seemed completely unnatural. I cringed to see him. What was up with that? Gore lost the election himself.

Mike and Mark R.

I assume that you LIKE the Iraq War, because the Green party that you support made it happen. The bottom line is that a lot of people are dead today that wouldn't be if you and your fellow ideologues hadn't supported Ralph. (And don't say the democrats supported the war because the one who gave the strongest speech against the Iraq war last October was a guy named Al Gore).

As Greens, you also must LIKE the "Health Forests Initiative" (who can be against Healthy Forests?), because it is your doing. On the enviro front, I give you kudos for the increases in air pollution, the impending elimination of wolves in Wyo-Mt-Idaho, the killing of the reintroduction of the Grizzly Bear in Idaho, the logging of wilderness in the Tongass, the driling for gas in national parks in Utah, and, if you play your cards right in 2004, you may be able to finally turn the Artic National Wildlife Refuge into an industrial site.

Like the war, the environmental issue is a permanent loss because the thousand year old trees being cut due to Ralph's silly run will never be replaced, and another democratic presidency would have made it impossible for the republicans and their corporate buddies to repeal the roadless rule.

In the REAL world, people care about such things. I certainly care a lot more about results than slogans.

But I agree with you that the democrats shouldn't worry about the Nader vote. It will hurt in another close election, but we just have to focus on not making this one close. It is too important of an election to let Bush win again.

Seems to me that blaming any one thing for the outcome of the 2000 election is simple-minded at best, deliberately obtuse at worst. Did Nader have an effect on the outcome? Without a doubt. Did Gore run a completely weird campaign? Indeed - his constantly shifting styles in the debates most likely turned off a bunch of swing voters. Did the Supremes steal the election for the GOP? I go back and forth on this one, but I sure do think they dropped the ball (and, no, I don't trust Scalia or Thomas any farther than I could throw them...).

There are probably at least a half-dozen other factors that contributed to the political world in which we now find ourselves. Blaming one paints the situation in bold but disingenuous black-and-white - favored by Dear Leader, don't you know - while, back here in reality, the situation is clouded by many shades of grey.

I like alkali's theory. Blame God. For, if nothing else, it'll piss off the Freepers.

And I think Alterman just needs to get over it already. Let it go, Eric. Let it go.

And I *also* think the Nader apologists need to wake up. He's not the savior we all thought he might be. He's little more than a sanctimonious prick with an overinflated sense of importance. As someone mentioned earlier, he did a lot of good when he was younger - the PIRGs are his baby, no? - but he just needs to get out of the way now. His time has passed.

And with that that, I'm done. :)

"In the REAL world,"

pj at September 19, 2003 08:19 AM

Greens, environmentalists, laborers, progressives and PLENTY of 'just plain folks' were IN THE DAMNED STREETS--LOUDLY, WIDELY AND FREQUENTLY--AGAINST that damned war: BEFORE 'professional' Democrats in Congress predictably, irresposibly, unconstitutionally AND cravenly signed Bush's--even then obvious to any reasonably well informed and conscious adult--BOGUS 'blank check'.

But you 'shouldn't worry about that', since you clearly DON'T--live "in the real world", I mean.

Mario and Tom: the chief virtue, it is argued, of America's non-parlimentary system is that it forces more voters to reach a far more broad consensus than they would otherwise. This keeps the government and the prevailing political winds more moderate. Most Americans don't realize this about our system and so they don't consider the implications of it in regard to how they should cast their vote. Specifically, our system *should* force voters to place their votes on a practical, outcome-based judgment....*not* on an individual expression basis. The analogy I've used before is one of having to collectively make a decision about driving an automobile. Only one course of action is possible (not several) -- but not only that, you often can't compromise, either. We all have to force ourselves to come to a consensus on a most desired (or, more likely, least undesired) outcome and select it. This is like jury duty. It's also similar, in a way, to the Iroquois consensus democracy where everyone had to agree on a particular decision.

This is good, I think, because it forces everyone to be accountable for the decision that is made.

The big problem, though, is when people don't realize this. People like Nader, and people like the voters who voted for him. The simple reality is that our system is *not* friendly to the "speak one's mind" philosophy of voting. It's not just about stating a preference. It's about taking responsibility for the outcome of the election *regardless* of what one's particular and idealistic preferences are.

ONE, "simple reality"...

>Keith M Ellis at September 19, 2003 09:26 AM

...is that we need to do away with the Electoral College: Before it (AND/OR the people who depend on it) 'do away' with whatever remains of our republic.

Jesus, I wonder if Republicans were this vicious to Ross Perot supporters.

Damn that Ralph Nader for appealing to people and saying things that made sense! How dare he!

Doesn't he know that voters are easily misled children that aren't capable of making a decision when given choices? The two parties in America cover every possible alternative, after all.

pj, so everyone who supported Nader personally pulled the trigger on every Iraqi killed? Wow. What about people who live in states where Bush got the electoral votes by a wide margin?

What an insightful and serious comment. You have my respect, sir. No, really.

Personally, I'm a little tired of the blame-the-Nader-voter mentality. Maybe a case can be made against Nader voters who lived in battleground states, but the voters in, say, New York or Texas had no effect on the election.

In any case, Gore was the successor to a generally successful eight-year presidency, with the nation at peace and enjoying it's most prosperous period in a generation. Plus, his opponent was W. He should have knocked this out of the park. Yet Gore managed to even lose his home state. Is that Nader's fault, too?

Had Gore and the Democrats ran a decent campaign, Nader would have been a footnote, like he was in '96.

And for those who suggest Nader should work within the Democratic party, clearly the DLC-ites would slam him with the same vitriol they used when he ran as a Green.

Yea, I'll bite. Three comments:

First, since 1952 it has been very difficult for one party to stay in the White House more than 8 years.
Only Carter (1976-1980) + Reagan/Bush (1980-1992) managed to break what was otherwise a regular cycle of alternating 8 year periods. This suggests that voter fatigue (on the winning side) plus voter motivation (from the political outs) makes it hard to consistently maintain control of the presidency.
I therefore find the claim that Gore should have easily won to be ill-supported historically.

The second is that Nader was not the sole factor, and there are not many Democrats who would disagree. There were big problems with the Gore campaign and the structure of the party in 2000. However, his candidacy was one of a number of contributing factors to the ascent to power of Bush. Nader forced Gore to spend resources on states that should have been safe for him (washington, oregon, minnesota) rather than on states that were close (florida, ohio, tennessee, etc.) This tactical cost far exceeded the technical vote totals.

Bush has been a disaster for the country, and Nader etc. helped to put him in the White House. The resulting impact of the Nader candidacy on the USA is therefore, understandably,
viewed as highly negative by folks who feel that Bush has been terrible for the country.

Finally, why are Democrats so angry about this?
I think it is the false claim that there is no difference between the parties. The Dems have their significant flaws, but Bush has clearly shown that he is a good deal farther away from Green ideals than Gore could ever have been. A lot of Greens are still pushing the Dems=GOP line. It was misleading in 2000, and it is infuriating in 2003. If the Nader defenders could give some ground here - e.g. admitting that Bush is a lot worse than they thought he could have been - it would go a long way towards bridging the green-democratic party divide. I think that most Dems are much more realistic in assigning blame to themselves for the Bush admin than Greens are.

Marc

In regards to parliamentary vs non-parliamentary systems, I would point out that Canada, India and the UK all elect their parliaments the same way we elect the US House, through single member districts using a plurality or first past the post system. Yet all of these have more than two parties in their national legislature. In India and Canada, this seems to be due to regional differences. In the UK, the Liberal party was established and survived the expansion of the vote and the introduction of the Labor Party.

The US had a fairly vibrant multiparty system prior to 1896 due to fusion or cross-endorsement voting (i.e. multiple parties could nominate the same candidate, thus allowing some avenue of deal making prior to the election). The Democrats dominated the South and cities after that and the Republicans everywhere else. Fusion was struck from the books.

Two parties are not a given in most countries. Most of Europe, New Zealand and plenty of other countries elect their parliaments using proportional representation (http://www.fairvote.org/pr/index.html) and, in some cases, use instant runoff voting (http://www.fairvote.org/irv/index.html) to elect their presidents.

A two party system means that the views of many voters will not be represented and that a minority of voters can represent a majority of the legislators. If you are not a Democrat in Massachusetts, you might as well forget about having any one to represent your views in congress. Competition is pretty low as a result and voter turn out is also low.

The Center for Voting and Democracy has analyzed prior election results (http://www.fairvote.org/2004/index.html) and projected the winning party in 99.9% of over 1,200 Congressional races from 1996-2002. Their predictions are made all the easier as both major parties gerrymander districts to maximize their chances of their incumbents winning. If you don't think the stakes are high with that, just take a look at the wrangling over re-redistricting in Texas.

I find it amusing that people would blame the 2000 election results on Nader when half of all the people who are legally entitled to vote did not and twelve times as many Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader.

Of course not all Democrats believe that Nader cost Gore the 2000 election. Al From, chair of the Democratic Leadership Council, wrote in the DLC's Blueprint Magazine (1-24-01):

"The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race."

Check out http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?cp=3&kaid=127&subid=179&contentid=2919 if you doubt me.

So we have a political system that favors the two major parties and their backers and leaves many people without representation and or even a desire to vote. But when the Greens challenge this corrupt system, we get attacked. Hmmm... who is in denial, now?

>Jesus, I wonder if Republicans were this vicious >to Ross Perot supporters.

Apparently not.

Or, if they were, the press kept their complaints under wraps.

If the US had a runoff (or, better, an instant-runoff) system, there would have been absolutely nothing morally illegitimate about Nader staying in the race to the end. We don't have such a system, he knew that the polls showed he had not a snowflake's chnce in hell of winning but an excllent chance of throwing the election to a right-wing candidate favored by a minority of voters. Which is bloody outrageous, whether it's done by a left-wing or a right-wing splinter candidate.

If Nader had been honest and/or non-idiotic, he would have run for the Democratic presidential nomination -- if he couldn't get a majority of Democrats to support him for President, he sure as hell wasn't going to get a majority of the general population (or even a third of it) to support him in a general election. Jamie, the Greens' supporters were hardly being kept "under wraps" -- they could have marched out and voted in Democratic caucuses and primaries, and the party bosses and financiers would no more have been able to keep them "under wraps" than they could keep McGovern's or Hart's supporters under wraps in the nominating process. And as for Al From -- who has an ideological ax to grind by trying to prove that Gore would have lost anyway because he was too "left-wing" -- I'd love to see those "exit polls" of his, which fly in the face both of elementary common sense and of CNN's exit polls showing that 2/3 of Nader's voters would have gone for Gore as a second choice, while 1/6 would have gone for Bush and 1/6 would have stayed home. Jamie, you are, I think, a fairly typical Nader supporter. Would YOU have voted for Bush over Gore?

And, Pouncer: the reason the GOP complained less about Ross Perot (although they did complain about him) is that Perot did NOT throw either the 1992 or 1996 elections to Clinton -- exit polls consistently showed that Perot voters split about evenly betwen Clinton and the Republicans as their second choice. (By the way, the same thing was true of John Anderson's voters in 1980 -- for all the foofaraw about how they were bleeding votes off Carter, exit polls showed them splitting about evenly between him and Reagan as a second choice.)

Change the last part of my first paragraph to: "We don't have such a system, he knew that the polls showed he had not a snowflake's chnce in hell of winning but an excellent chance of throwing the election to a right-wing candidate favored by a minority of voters, and he deliberately decided to do just that. Which is bloody outrageous, whether it's done by a left-wing or a right-wing splinter candidate."

Nader, as I say, decided to destroy democracy in order to save it.

The reason so many Democrats are ticked off at Nader is that he very clearly acted deliberately to deny Gore the election. In the final run, he targeted the swing states like Florida almost exclusively, when he could probably have picked up more votes campaigning either in safe Gore states or safe Bush states. Yes, Gore's own campaigning incompetence put himself in a condition where this mattered, but Nader's clear intent (and disingenuousness about it) mean that serious Democrats won't forgive him for it.

A few other points:

What few people realize is that Pat Buchanan swung enough states to Gore (if you assume that most Buchanan voters would have voted for Bush otherwise) that had he not been in the race, Bush could have won without Florida.

In the American political system, for both cultural and structural reasons, coalitions are formed within political parties, whereas in most parliamentary systems, coalitions are formed between political parties. I don't see either system as necessarily better, or more democratic, but they do have different dynamics. Nader could have run in the Democratic primaries, gotten most of the Democratic left, and appeared in all sorts of debates with Gore (which is why I had no sympathy for his whining about being shut out of the final debates).

Finally, I don't think you can really compare the Perot candidacy, because he wasn't on an end of the political spectrum. It is not safe to say that the large majority of his votes would have gone to Bush in 92. His campaign focused on deficit reduction, and his plank advocated some pretty significant tax hikes. Interestingly, when Clinton was elected, he ended up abandoning his own campaign's election platform, and essentially adopted Perot's (but his tax hikes were mild compared to what Perot advocated, so it was kind of Perot-lite). And then Perot had the gall to slam Clinton for them...

To Nader voters:

Grow the fuck up. The world can't afford your self-indulgence.

"Grow the fuck up. The world can't afford your self-indulgence." A friend's comment about this when we talked about it this evening was, "They are laughing on the inside". This awful outcome that resulted from their actions *validates* their fear and anger, and that is -- as is always the case with the chronically outraged -- more important to them than actual political change. This is the mark of the naive, self-indulgent idealist as opposed to the pragmatist. (I don't mean to imply that all idealists are naive and self-indulgent. Indeed, I believe that a sort of practical idealism that results in an effective pragmatism is possible. That's my way, anyway.)

Alterman's basic point, I think is flawed. Regardless of the many ways in which the country would be better off had Al Gore been elevted president (no war in Iraq, no deficits as far as the eye can see), does anyone seriously beleive that the Republican Congress would have spent any more on cities in a Gore administration than they have under Bush?

Regardless of how much one should blame Nader for Bush's victory, or how angry one should still be about it, I think Alterman's basic argument is flawed. Does anyone actually believe that the Republican Congress would have spent any more on cities under a Gore administration than they have under Bush?