(no subject)

[prog]

Hacking on Frivolity all day. Learning that Nader has decided to run makes me light-headed so I guess it's time for lunch. I know that a lot of people who voted for Nader in 2000, buying the line that Bush and Gore were interchangeable (do you remember that? wheeeeeeeeew), won't do so this time around. But still. Argh. Is Ross Perot still around? Can someone talk to him?

Meanwhile, I don't know anything about Kerry other than than jokes on the Daily Show. He is so not Clinton... he really does have all the charisma of a Hall of Presidents robot. I support all Uncanny Valley candidates. Barf. And I'll grimly support him in a few months, probably.

My boss says: I would vote for a random-number generator over Bush.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Blame New Hampshire for 2000.

I blame Gore for being both uncharismatic and inconsistent, and the Democratic party elites for running such a stupid campaign. He didn't even take his own state, or Clinton's home state. I didn't not vote for Gore because he was "the same" as Bush, I didn't vote for Gore because he sucked (plus, I live in a non-swing state).

I also blame the lack of instant run-off voting. It would have been great to see how many people would have voted for "Nader OR Gore". (I also blame this for Schwarzenegger's election, and maybe even Dean's rapid demise.)

[xymotik.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should've included a "smiley" or at least a longer explanation in the comment on NH. It's only one of the top ten (or more, many more) reasons for the utter fiasco of 2000. As an expat-Mainer, I hold all the standard petty grudges against New Hampshire: the freeway tolls resulting in huge backups, its entire leech state status (shared with Delaware and Nevada), and of course the politics. It was the only state in the entire northeast to go for Bush and those three electoral votes would've swung the entire election. Florida wouldn't have mattered a bit. The only other disaster one can compare 2000 to was the sinking of the Titanic--if any one of a dozen or so things would've gone just a bit differently, the outcome would've been dramatically altered.

I agree that Gore ran a sucky campaign and that ultimately the election was his to lose. From my brief experience in Tennessee and Arkansas, it's no surprise whatsoever that Gore didn't win either state. It's the cultural reasons, yet again.

Instant run-off voting would be great. At least requiring a majority instead of just a plurality would greatly help matters by requiring coalition building. But at the moment it's more a matter of who sucks the least. (I also don't think that most voters could possibly imagine just how horrible the Bush Administration's record could or would be, but at least its actions may pave the way for Kerry, who may rival Gore for (lack of) charisma.)