[lhc-]

Why can't we blame the democratic candidate, who was so unappealing to progressive voters that they preferred Nader? I would suggest it is the fault of that candidate (and his party) that they lost the election. No one is entitled to anyone else's votes, regardless of how bad the competition is. Voters have agency, and have no compulsion to vote for one specific candidate to avoid another evil one (that specific candidate still must earn those votes).

[NoGravitas]

Yep. It's a myth that Nader lost Gore the election. In Florida, 10x as many registered Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader.

The main argument for voting for a guaranteed-to-lose third-party candidate is that it gives the parties a clear, quantitative signal about how many voters their base-unfriendly policies are losing them.

And also the down-ticket races, of course, though many of them are so gerrymandered here that your votes don't matter in them, either.

[jhugg]

> Yep. It's a myth that Nader lost Gore the election. In Florida, 10x as many registered Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader.

This isn't a counter-argument. Yes, there are innumerable ways Gore could have gotten the handful of votes needed to push him over the top in Florida.

But it's difficult to argue that, if Nader voters voted for their second choice instead, Gore wouldn't have gotten enough votes to win. To argue otherwise is to argue that a majority of Nader voters would have picked Bush as a second pick, and that's difficult to imagine.