Third party watch

Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr was on Ed Schultz's radio program a few days ago. He said he is likely going to appear on the ballot in 49 out of 50 states.

He didn't mention the one he's having trouble with is the Mountain State.

His deputy campaign manager Shane Cory talked to West Virginia Public Radio about their efforts:

He said West Virginia is one of the toughest states for the third party candidate to get on the ballot. To qualify, Barr must get signatures from 2% of voters from the 2004 election. That’s more than 15,000 signatures.

“For us, it was a matter of resources,” he said. “We had not planned to make an effort in West Virginia. It was only in the last two weeks when we said, we can send in the manpower and we can make a valid attempt to get on the ballot in West Virginia.”

Independent candidate Ralph Nader's campaign turned in their signatures this week.

Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party will get the Mountain Party ballot line (as the Mountain Party's Jesse Johnson bombed in his own bid for the Green nomination).

Photo: Bob Barr, Libertarian Party presidential nominee, gestures as he answers a question during a news conference in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, July 15, 2008. AP

Quickies

- Pollster.com has a good map up on their front page showing how the Obama-McCain polls break down state-by-state and how the electoral vote stands if the election were held today.

- Ralph Nader's supporters have turned in signatures for ballot access in W.Va.

From AP:

The Charleston Gazette reports that petitions containing 7,500 signatures of state voters were submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office on Friday. More than 17,000 signatures were turned in previously and county clerks across the state already have validated more than 12,000.

To get on the November ballot, Nader needs 15,118 valid signatures of registered West Virginia voters.

Quickies

- Former White House Press Secretary and FOX News host Tony Snow has lost his battle with cancer.

- Arnold Schwarzenegger is quickly becoming my favorite Republican. On the Bush administration:

"This administration did not believe in global warming," Schwarzenegger told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview that will air Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

- Scott Saxton reports on his WSAZ blog that ballot access efforts for third party candidate Ralph Nader are underway in W.Va. Bob Barr's supporters are planning to kick off their signature drive Wednesday, Saxton says.

- Pete Seeger is still active at 89.

Seeger will headline a Sept. 13 New England Farm Relief Concert in Brattleboro to raise money for a new micro-loan program being developed by The Carrot Project and the organization that operates the town's annual Strolling of the Heifers.

- The Lie That Won't Die: Pennsylvania Edition!

Photo: White House spokesman Tony Snow conducts his first press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington Tuesday, May 16, 2006. Snow has died of cancer. He was 53. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Very disappointing

Obama says he supports the horrid FISA legislation. (Though he has given some signs that he'll work to remove the amnesty provision.)

This is his first real strike with the left.

Greg Sargent at TPM sums up exactly why it's so disillusioning to his supporters:

Here's what's so dispiriting about it. One of the riveting things about Barack Obama's candidacy is that since the outset of the campaign he's seemed absolutely dead serious about changing the way foreign policy is discussed and argued about in this country.

Amy Goodman has Ralph Nader on her show this week. If Obama gives us more decisions like this, people on the left might start being more receptive to a third party candidate who says something like this:

RALPH NADER: Barack Obama really now has to be examined very carefully. He has worn out the word “change.” We now want to know what change is involved. And it’s quite clear that he is a corporate candidate from A to Z.

Nader

has a new column:

In this year’s presidential campaign, the major media want you to focus on the candidates’ gaffes, their tactics toward one another’s gaffes, the flows of political gossip and four second sound bytes.

Over and over again this is the humdrum pattern. Is Obama an elitist because of what he said about small towns in Pennsylvania? Why do Hillary and Bill exaggerate? Will Bill’s mouth drag Hillary down? Will Barack’s pastor drag him down? What about the gender factor? The race factor? Will they figure?

[...]

On the Sunday talk shows, it is the same couple dozen members of the opinion oligopoly. There is Bill Kristol bringing home the neocon bacon with dreary frequency. There is the James Carville/Mary Matalin spouse show featuring their squabbling over ideology.

Meanwhile the daily struggle of the American people, absorbing the results of the power abuses by the rich, powerful and corporate, continues outside this inbred force field of insipid coverage and commentary.

Read the full thing here.

Photo: AP file

The spoiler effect

We see this every four years or so. A major party angers a group of voters by taking them for granted, then acts outraged when said voters form a third party. We then get the whining about the "spoiler effect," claiming the effort will elect the worst of all evils.

One possible solution to the problem is instant-runoff voting, which would eliminate the spoiler effect, by giving voters the option of a second choice should their candidate not get enough votes to be viable.

This would, of course, end the two-party system, allowing multitudes of parties to flourish, which is why it will never pass.

Julie J. Rehmeyer, writing for Science News Online takes a look at various voting systems. Our current system, in which the candidate who gets the most votes, regardless of a majority wins, is known as the plurality system.

Mathematician Donald Saari tells Rehmeyer "The plurality vote is pretty much the worst voting system there is."

As Rehmeyer's article shows, even if IRV passed, how to count the votes poses all sorts of questions:

Though this example is especially dramatic, Saari has found that determining voters' preferences from their ballots is often tricky. For example, suppose three candidates, A, B, and C, are competing. The preferences of the voters are as follows:

• 3 people rank A first, B second, and C third;
• 2 people rank A first, C second, and B third;
• 2 people rank B first, C second, and A third; and
• 4 people rank C first, B second, and A third.

Plurality voting would name A the winner, with 5 votes.

On the other hand, suppose one wanted the candidate that was least disliked. Six people rank A last, two people rank B last, and three people rank C last, so in that case, B should win.

Yet another method would be to assign 2 points for a first place vote, 1 point for second place and none for third. In this method, known as the Borda count, C walks away the winner with 12 points, beating out B's 11 points and A's 10.

Nader on the courts

Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently received the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service, Ralph Nader weighs in on Scalia from Princeton:

Nader referenced Scalia several times during his talk, mentioning that he has written several times to the justice but has yet to receive a response.

"This country is not designed for corporate supremacy. The preamble of the Constitution ... is 'We the people,' not 'We the corporations,' " Nader said.

While courts have interpreted the 14th amendment to protect rights of corporations, Nader does not believe that corporations and private citizens deserve equal consideration.

"[A corporation] doesn't vote. It doesn't die in Iraq. It doesn't raise children. Yet it has been given every single constitutional ight you and I have except the fifth amendment against self-incrimination," Nader said.

Re-examining the Nader factor

Apparently, there's another Heath H. out there.

Writing for The Denver Post, independent journalist Heath Haussamen says Nader deserves a large share of credit for the Democratic Party's recent resurgence.

Nader has taken the time during his presidential runs to foster excitement in independents and young people, and he had some success in 2000. That scared Democrats. But instead of looking inward and considering why they were failing to bring Nader supporters into the Democratic Party, they blamed Nader for Bush.

That’s like saying the car manufacturer is responsible when a drunken driver crashes its automobile into a crowd of people. Or like saying the gun maker is responsible when a psychopath goes on a rampage on a college campus. Nader didn’t force people to vote for him. They made that choice.

As proof that Nader wasn’t to blame for Gore’s loss, an equally uninspiring John Kerry lost four years later without Nader garnering any significant support. The problem wasn’t Nader. It was the Democratic Party.

[...]

I give Nader some of the credit for the Democratic Party’s awakening. The support he gained in 2000 forced the party to begin a serious examination of its own problems. It took another devastating loss in 2004 for the party to really take those problems seriously, and in 2008 we’ve seen a slate of Democratic presidential candidates much different than any in this nation’s history.

He's right.

Nader has pushed the party to reconnect with its base. They could have learned this as early as 2000.

Gore trailed Bush badly for the first half of that year. It wasn't until Nader began drawing nearly 10% of the vote in polls that Gore decided to retool his message and adopted a populist approach. The result had Gore leading Bush going into the fall.

This was a lead he maintained until he a abandoned the populist approach and agreed with Bush on nearly every issue in the debates. Immediately after, his lead evaporated and the two were in a dead heat going into election day. We all know what happened next.

Nader names running mate

Ant the pick is former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez.

From AP:

"I want someone who shares my sense of justice and opposition to corporate state control over our society," Nader said Thursday at a news conference announcing his choice. Nader launched his White House bid last weekend.

The Texas-born Gonzalez ran for mayor of San Francisco as a Green Party candidate in 2003 but lost to Gavin Newsom.

From the S.F. Chronicle:

"Nader said he got to know Gonzalez during a 2005 anti-Iraq war campaign in which they traveled up and down California. Gonzalez, an attorney, also worked on ballot access issues for Nader's 2004 presidential bid, when the candidate was listed in just 34 states.

"He has a great, steadfast commitment to justice," Nader told The Chronicle after the press conference.

"He's shown it in his work on the Board of Supervisors, he's shown it in his work on criminal justice issues, electoral reform and his work in urban politics and problems."

Nader weighs in on the Democratic race

:

Because I was away when he announced.

From CNN:

(On Obama)

"Above all, explain why you don't come down hard on the economic crimes against minorities in city ghettos: payday loans, predatory lending, rent-to-own rackets, landlord abuses, lead contamination, asbestos," Nader said.

"There's an unseemly silence by you, Barack -- a community organizer in poor areas in Chicago many years ago -- on this issue," he said.

(On Hillary)

Nader called Sen. Hillary Clinton the Democrat "most loved by big business," referencing a Fortune magazine article from last year.

The June article said Clinton had "probably the broadest CEO support among the candidates" at that point.

Photo: Ralph Nader speaks at a news conference in Reading, Pa., in this July 14, 2007 file photo. The consumer advocate will appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday Feb. 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Quickies

- Nader announcing run tomorrow?

From the Meet The Press schedule:

In 2000, many think Ralph Nader's presidential candidacy helped George Bush win the White House. He ran again unsuccessfully in 2004. Will he make another run in 2008? Find out Sunday in an exclusive interview with Ralph Nader. Plus, a political roundtable with insights and analysis on Clinton vs. Obama and McCain vs. the New York Times -- featuring David Brooks, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michele Norris and Chuck Todd.

- Cartoon up at WVaBlue and 50 State blog roundup by me.

- Saturday Night Live has picked their Obama impersonator.

Nader releases mine safety study

From Ralph Nader's Center for Responsible Law:

Nader said:

I have been involved in coal mine health and safety issues since before and during the passage of the landmark Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety

Act of 1969. All the data demonstrate that introduction of governmental
health and safety regulations has prevented injuries, disease, and death.
But as Christopher Shaw's report demonstrates, coal operators have
repeatedly acted to undermine the effectiveness of health and safety
measures.

The tragic disasters that have recently befallen miners serve to
highlight how the Bush Administration's misplaced priorities are
detrimental to the public interest. The quality of the Mine Safety and
Health Administration's efforts, while Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao
has been at the helm of the Department of Labor, has been poor. The Mine
Safety and Health Administration needs to focus on upgrading and rigorous
enforcement of all standards designed to protect miners.

The full report is available as a pdf here.

Photo: July 27, 1996 / The Associated Press.

Third party watch

While the Democrats and Republicans chose their nominees, a few people on the sidelines are worth mentioning:

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Independent is reportedly looking into ballot access for a third party bid.

From AP:

"Bloomberg's political operatives have spent several months assembling the skeleton of a nationwide ballot-access movement, one confidant of the mayor told The Associated Press.

Bloomberg's evaluation of his own plans could stretch all the way into May, contrary to conventional wisdom that he would make up his mind after Super Tuesday, said Doug Schoen, who was Bloomberg's pollster in his mayoral campaigns and remains part of the mayor's inner circle."

Ralph Nader has formed an exploratory committee and has started looking at another a run, either as an independent or with the Green Party. He's expressed more willingness to do so if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination.

From AFP:

"Vote "raider" and "spoiler" were some of the more printable names hurled at Nader by his critics.

"Political bigot," shot back Nader this week, as he launched a presidential exploratory committee to see if he can attract enough support and funds to launch his fifth bid for the White House as an independent."

And there's the possibility that Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul will turn his massive fundraising ability and devout following of his long-shot bid for the GOP nomination into an outside run. It wouldn't be the first time. Paul was the Libertarian nominee for president in 1988.

Whether any of these will be a factor in a general election is anyone's guess, but with polls for the fall already showing a tight two-party race, Democratic and Republican leaders shouldn't take the chance lightly.