Nader's Bloody Foot

It occurred to me last night that Ralph Nader is deluding himself badly about the outcome of this race. He is claiming victory, despite missing his 5% mark, because he has helped create a new party that will be a "watchdog" over the other mega-parties. They'll do as he says, or he'll cost them votes.

I don't think Ralph envisioned the bizarre conundrum we have now. He might have stayed in bed if he'd seen this coming. Why?

Think about it:

The Political Punditry is claiming this election depends on Florida. Forget the fact that Gore didn't carry Tennessee, Arkansas or West Virginia. Never mind that Bush failed to land Pennsylvania and Michigan, and that he made a brain-damaged, Quixotic and expensive run at California. It's all about the Sunshine State.

The Pundits will remind us, we the voters, the frustrated and the screwed, that Nader got over 90,000 votes in Florida. Most of those would have gone for Gore, or so we are told. So Ralph made the difference in the context of our current circumstances. Had those 90,000 votes gone to Gore, even a bare majority of them, we'd have a President-elect and would be talking football this morning.

People are pretty freaked about all this. The GOP and the Democrats have gone fully insane. Gridlock and chaos will reign whoever wins. The Pundits will lay this substantially at the feet of those 90,000 people who voted Nader.

Rather than endure this madness, I think the American voting public will avoid pulling the lever for third-party candidates for the next 1,000 years. Who needs this craziness? Not us, not me, not you. Ralph may have unintentionally murdered third party politics, not because he knew this would happen, but because it happened and many who helped it happen by voting Nader will vow never to do it again.

We'll have to see how this plays out. But I can tell you one thing: Nader voters in Florida are likely kicking themselves all around the room right now because Florida has frozen the election process, and their votes (maybe 300 of them) would have kept it from happening. Fear of something like this happening again will keep people from voting third-party. Ralph, without meaning to, has shot the feet off the third party movement. They'll be limping and bloody for a long, long time.