PDittie

PDittie's Journal

December 26, 2017

Good for her!

December 23, 2017

He had a rendevous with

a large piece of chocolate cake in Mar-a-Lago.

December 19, 2017

You're probably the only person

on this platform that could post that and not get it hidden.

December 19, 2017

Sadly ...

... the predicate that Stein "stole", "siphoned", etc. votes from Clinton, as Nader "did" to Gore in 2000, rests on a false assumption: that people who voted Green would vote Democratic if the Green were not on the ballot. There's a raft of exit polling data that demonstrates that many of these folks would not be voting at all were there not a Green on the ballot. Certainly in 2016 it was shown that disaffected and disillusioned Democrats chose Gary Johnson to same degree -- or greater -- than they chose Stein.

(For those of you needing evidence of this contention, just look at this breakdown of the Florida electorate from 2000 by Jim Hightower, published before the SCOTUS made W. Bush's selection official.)

Now it gets really ugly for the Gore campaign, for there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. Hello. If Gore had taken even 1 percent of these Democrats from Bush, Nader's votes wouldn't have mattered. Second, liberals. Sheesh. Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader.

Alas, the truth is inconvenient.

Green votes are not Democratic votes lost entirely to the audacity of a Green candidate daring to enter the race. That Democrats are completely entitled to all Green votes is simply uncareful logic, and without empirical basis.

In sociology 101 I learned that sometimes everyone needs a cat to kick when they're down on themselves, and that's what's at play here.

December 16, 2017