Nader ’08
I am glad to see that the Reason symposium on the presidential election includes Bill Kauffman’s endorsement of Ralph Nader. Kauffman’s best answer was:
3. Is this in fact the most important election in your lifetime? Nah, it’s Coke vs. Pepsi. Though I’d prefer not to have Pepsi’s finger on the nuclear button.
Like Kauffman, I supported Nader this time, as I did in 2000. While I prefer Obama to McCain, the election is only of limited importance. Here in Knoxville, it has already being overshadowed by the departure, at the end of the season, of The University of Tennessee’s football coach, Phillip Fulmer. Like President Bush, Fulmer has had a rough time in the last four years. Unlike Bush, Fulmer has some genuinely great accomplishments and his time at the helm will be fondly remembered. Most people around here vote Republican, but in the coming days the Big Orange transition will eclipse the Red Blue one.
I’m curious as to why someone who writes for the magazine founded by Pat Buchanan supported Ralph Nader in 2000 rather than Buchanan. Wasn’t Buchanan on the ballot in Tennessee?
So far as I know Mr. Buchanan founded a magazine, not a cult.
Speaking for myself entirely, I voted for Nader in 2000 and don’t regret it. Of course I was much more of an orthodox lefty then and looking back it is possible I would have voted for Buchanan if my political shift had occurred a few years before. Still, Buchanan’s run used the decaying corpse of the Reform Party as its vehicle and the campaign wasn’t run nearly as efficiently as Nader’s.
Mr. Stooksbury’s political journey is likely much different than mine, but it is not as if a Nader vote in 2000 is something uncommon amongst readers and contributors to the wonderful journal Pat Buchanan helped create.
[...] are more important things to [...]
I decided to drop my tiny protest pebble on what promised to be the larger pile in 2000. I did vote for PJB in the 1996 Republican primary.
Dylan Hales is correct about TAC. Nobody asked to see my papers when I started writing for it five years ago.
Mr. Stooksbury,
Glad to hear you voted for Buchanan in ’96. Too bad there weren’t more of us.