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Independent Bernie Sanders

OldGaffer

Governor
The fringe argument always leaves me cold, I still blame Nader and his "purists" for 8 years of Bush, the worst President since Hoover.
 

EatTheRich

President
If not for candidacies like Nader's, competing with the Democrats on the left, the Democrats would compete with the Republicans on turf farther to the right. Sure, in theory, we can talk about the lesser of two evils, but where do you draw the line? If you are willing to vote to re-elect a Democrat who runs concentration camps and assassinates U.S. citizens, then (to paraphrase Malcolm X) all the capitalists have to do is show you the Republican wolf to get you to run straight into the arms of the Democratic fox.

In 1844, James Birney, the Liberty Party candidate, running on an antislavery platform, cost Henry Clay, a candidate with a moderate position on slavery, enough votes in New York state to cost him the Electoral College and the presidential election, which instead went to James K. Polk. Polk, one of the worst presidents of all, invaded Mexico to get additional land opened up for slavery to expand into. So if you look at it from the narrowest point of view, Birney's candidacy was a self-defeating failure for the abolitionist cause.

However, there's more to the story. Agitation on the slavery issue led an ambitious Senator from Polk's own party to propose the Wilmot Proviso banning the extension of slavery into conquered territory. Wilmot and others then organized the Free Soil Party which elected 16 people to Congress and forced many Northern Democrats and Whigs to declare themselves forthrightly for or against slavery. Free Soilers then became part of the founding nucleus of the Republican Party that elected Lincoln and ultimately did away with slavery and made Blacks citizens.

Whereas if antislavery folks had confined their electoral work to support for Henry Clay as the lesser of two evils, the Democrats would have maintained their role as the main national party of the planter class, while the Whigs would've continued seeking any unprincipled compromises with the slave power that gave them a shot at political success.
 

fairsheet

Senator
My point was that I like Sanders because he's NOT Nader or Kucinich. Sen. Sanders has never run for president, nor will he ever. He understands that our's is a 2-party system and that he can effect way more positivity acting within and upon the Democratic Party, than from his one lonely soapbox.

Rather than going clear back to the mouldering Birney, Clay, and Polk, let's talk about what good (if any) came of Nader's run in 2000.
 

EatTheRich

President
Hmm. I don't think a lot of good came of it, which is why I was not and am not a Nader supporter. But it probably pushed Gore (and with him the Democratic Party) to take more advanced positions on the environment, and the fact that over 2 million Americans voted for an Arab-American for president may have done something to delegitimate anti-Arab bigotry.

BTW isn't Kucinich a Democrat?
 

fairsheet

Senator
Hmm. I don't think a lot of good came of it, which is why I was not and am not a Nader supporter. But it probably pushed Gore (and with him the Democratic Party) to take more advanced positions on the environment, and the fact that over 2 million Americans voted for an Arab-American for president may have done something to delegitimate anti-Arab bigotry.

BTW isn't Kucinich a Democrat?
I didn't say Li'l Lord Dennis isn't a Democrat. But, Dennis made almost the entirety of his reputation, by "hating" on his own - the Democrats. Some people seemed to think that his willingness to call out other Democrats, made him special. I don't. On the flipside, Sanders is routinely challenged to criticize Democrats who are to his right. He never takes the bait. He politely schools the challenger as to how even as he may not be in full agreement with that righter-Democrat, and he's working to change their view, he understands their political reality. And then...he reminds us that as a matter of our politic, virtually any Democrat is better than virtually any GOP.
 
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