Nader has new vote goal – 7 percent

I finally see just what serious chance Ralph Nader has to get votes come the Nov. 4 elections being held for president across the country – he could be the guy who convinces 7 percent of the U.S. electorate to “Vote for Ralph” for the White House.

Where do I get this 7 percent figure? It comes from the latest Gallup Organization poll, which continues to show Democrat Barack Obama in a slight 3-point overall lead over Republican John McCain.

THAT LEAD ACTUALLY ballooned up to a 6-point margin on Monday, with the polling group suggesting it was due to the positive press Obama is receiving for his Middle East sojourn this week.

Yet on Tuesday, the tracking poll reverted back to what seems to be the pattern of recent weeks – Obama with a 3-point lead over McCain (45 percent to 42 percent, to be exact).

But unlike other recent polls done by Gallup (or any other organization that will survey voters, for a fee), this one broke down the remaining 13 percent – the people who didn’t commit to either Obama or McCain.

As it turns out, just over half of those “undecideds” say they are disgusted enough with both Obama and McCain that there’s no way either one will get their vote for president come the general election. One percent is voting for a third candidate (unspecified), while 6 percent is merely saying “no way” to Barack and John.

ACCORDING TO THIS most recent survey (which will be obsolete by Wednesday afternoon when Gallup will come out with yet another of their daily tracking polls), only the remaining 6 percent of the potential voter population is truly trying to figure out whether to vote for McCain or Obama.

That’s roughly one of every 16 people – the other 15 have made up their minds (and it’s only July).

So what should we think, aside from the fact that it is the Electoral College totals and not the popular vote that decides who wins the presidential election?

The trick will be to see if the 7 percent who say they are disgusted with both candidates truly are. Will their distrust of both McCain and Obama remain hard-line enough that they seriously decide to vote for a third-party candidate? If so, Ralph Nader awaits them with open arms.

OF COURSE, THERE’S the possibility that Ralph’s hard-line stubbornness on certain consumer issues will turn these people off (there’s a good chance that these people who hate both Obama and McCain are ideologues determined to vote for no one if they can’t find someone who matches their views on every single issue).

It’s going to depend on just how seriously the ideologues are determined to vote for somebody. Nader could easily become the name that fills in for the often-fantasized option of “None of the Above.” The number of people who actually believe Nader’s hard-line, uncompromising stridency is fit for the White House is seriously small.

But what happens if most of these people decide to just boycott the polling places on Election Day? They cease to matter (that’s the reality of our electoral system, the only people who count are the ones who bother to take the time to cast a ballot).

Then it would become the remaining “6 percent” who will decide the election – the ones who truly are not sure what to think, and who likely will not make up their minds until some time in early November – quite possibly at the moment they walk into the voter booth and are confronted with the choice.

IN THE CASE of these people, it may well turn out to be some sort of unpredictable gaffe on the part of one of the candidates that causes them to vote for the other guy.

And if McCain were to get the bulk of that “6 percent” of the undecideds, then he gets a lead over Obama of just under 50 percent that would be enough for victory, IF Nader’s 7 percent of supporters/Election Day no-shows comes in states with significant Electoral College members and costs Obama electors.

I can already hear the nonsense rhetoric – Nader will be the guy who cost both Al Gore and Barack Obama the presidency. I call it nonsense because I think Nader’s influence in the 2000 presidential election is seriously overrated by Bush bashers. I’m not convinced Nader has enough influence to truly take an election from anybody.

So in the end, that “7 percent” could turn out to be the figure representing the share of people who are just cantankerous enough that they have to be against everybody.

I’M WILLING TO guess that most of them just won’t bother to vote, and Nader could easily get 1 percent of the overall electorate – scattered about various urban states in such a manner that he does not influence the Electoral College vote at all.

Of course, there’s also one other aspect to consider when taking any poll into consideration – it is a very small sample of the population, no matter how professionally it is done.

This particular poll is based off the results of 2,645 registered voters who happened to be at home and answer the telephone. When you think about it, just over 2,600 people representing the views of all of the United States, no matter how scientifically they were chosen, is puny.

I have seen minor league baseball games draw larger crowds than that.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: One percent of potential voters say they are voting for a third-party candidate (http://www.gallup.com/poll/109006/Gallup-Daily-Presidential-Contest-Remains-Close.aspx), while 6 percent more say they won’t vote for either Barack Obama or John McCain. They are Ralph Nader’s best chance of actually getting electoral support.

Consider this amongst yourselves – were both Obama and McCain correct in their views (http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/07/22/public-opinion-barack-obamas-war-opposition-versus-john-mccains-surge-support--which-is-more-important.html) on the war in Iraq?

What a surprise! The American electorate believes that their preferred candidate will run an issues-oriented campaign, while the opponent will use campaign tactics bordering (http://www.gallup.com/poll/108919/Unfair-Campaigning-Depends-Whom-Ask.aspx) on nasty. Or so concluded the people with Gallup in a survey compiled and released last week, during the time this weblog was inactive.

Nader wants to get on Illinois ballot

Call it the pairing of the political malcontents – the Green Party and the Libertarians are combining their efforts in Illinois to back the 2008 version of consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s presidential fantasies.

The activists who worked to get nearly 50,000 signatures of support on nominating petitions for Nader (out of hope that at least 25,000 of them are found to be valid, thereby qualifying Ralph for a spot for president on the Illinois ballot) are a combination of the two factions that in theory are ideological opposites.

GREENS IN THEORY are people who push for a pro-environment, highly liberal vision of government, while Libertarians in theory are people who would like to have no government because it often interferes with their socially conservative views on many (but not all) issues.

The two factions have one thing in common – they think the current two-party system is messed up, and they are more than anxious to have a third person to vote for when they walk into their polling place Nov. 4 to cast ballots for president.

Nader’s allies filed their nominating petitions at the Illinois State Board of Elections offices in Springfield, hoping that the powers that be with the two established political parties do not figure out a way to knock off enough signatures of support to kick Ralph off the ballot.

Under the rules governing elections, officials with the established political parties now have one week to decide whether they want to challenge his ballot position on grounds that the signatures of support are not valid.

MY GUT FEELING says Nader got enough signatures that any challenge will amount to little more than political harassment. He will be on the Illinois ballots along with Obama and McCain – and Nader already is going after Obama, claiming he is changing his mind on everything from NAFTA to public spending limits for political campaigns.

Now nobody seriously expects Nader and his running mate, former San Francisco board of supervisors member Matt Gonzalez (who even by California standards is considered a touch eccentric), to win the Electoral College process and actually becomes president.

Nobody even expects him to win any states, or to get any significant number of votes in Illinois.

This is more about giving the people who just can’t bring themselves to vote for Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama a person to support. If in the process, Nader manages to advance public debate on their pet issues, then so much the better. He will have achieved something, in their eyes.

IN FACT, ONE look at Nader’s campaign platform makes it very clear he doesn’t expect to get much real voter support in Illinois – or anywhere in the now-flood-covered Midwest.

Besides calling for health care access reforms, Nader is campaigning against the concept of ethanol – the motor fuel that is a blend of byproducts made from corn. Nader is following the West Coast party line that says federal subsidies to encourage ethanol production are actually doing more these days to drive up the price of food.

That may get him a couple of votes in San Diego, but in the rural Midwest, it will hurt him. Farmers in the regions surrounding Chicago have always liked the idea of encouraging ethanol production because it means that someone else will be interested in buying their corn crop so it can be turned into motor fuel.

Rural Illinois farmers will see Nader as a guy who wants to take money from their pockets, particularly at a time when many of them have suffered severe financial loss due to the Mississippi River flooding that has wiped out their crop altogether for this year.

URBAN ILLINOIS (A.K.A., Chicago) will care less about this issue, other than to see Nader as someone who is spending precious time worrying about something that won’t drive down the price they pay for gasoline.

So the real trick in Illinois will be to see how little Nader gets in the way of votes. When he ran for president in 2000 (the year he allegedly cost Al Gore the presidency), just over 103,000 people cast ballots for Ralph.

But this year, Obama is expected to dominate the Illinois political scene – in large part because of his hometown Chicago popularity. Cook County, Ill., gave Obama nearly 70 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary (his largest primary victory margin anywhere in the United States), and some people are convinced he will do equally as well against McCain in the general election.

There’s a very good chance that the 50,000 or so people who bothered to sign nominating petitions for Nader will be the only people who will vote for him come Nov. 4.

BUT WHAT THEY’RE shooting for is to get enough votes to qualify for automatic ballot positions in Illinois.
State law gives candidates running as Democrats and Republicans advantages in terms of getting on the ballot, based on the belief that the established parties have shown they have significant support among Illinois residents. Third-party candidates have to come up with more signatures of support on their nominating petitions.

Receiving a significant number of votes could put whatever party label Nader chooses to use in line to become a recognized legitimate political party, just like the Dems or GOP.

That’s the odd part of Nader’s campaign this year. He has run on the Green Party label in the past, but this year, he’s going as an independent, using a mixture of his old Green Party followers and other people who view the political establishment with distaste.

SO THAT’S THE real goal of the political malcontents – use Nader to advance their cause in hopes that the day will come that they can put together a campaign for a candidate who stands a real chance of getting elected to a government post.

Some political observers might take one look at the often amateurish campaign tactics used by these people and figure they’re never going to get to that point. But that is their dream.

And as for Nader, he’s willing to use the oddball coalition of Greens and Libertarians to feed his ego and let him make yet another run for the White House.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Ralph Nader hopes to get more votes in Illinois this year than he did in 2004, when his (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2008/06/nader-says-hell.html) write-in campaign received about 3,500 votes.

Did Nader manage to stop off at Norb Andy’s for a “horseshoe” on Monday in between his visits to (http://www.votenader.org/media/2008/06/20/Illinois/) the Statehouse and the State Board of Elections offices? Somehow (http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Sandwiches/HorseshoeSandwich.htm), I doubt it.

He might not be their actual candidate, but Green Party officials will be talking up the Nader candidacy (http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/06/23/why-isnt-nader-running-as-a-green-candidate/) when they hold their national nominating convention July 10-13 at the Palmer House Hilton and the Symphony Center.

Illinois’ Green Party has its own activity beyond supporting Nader (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/04/greens-will-go-way-of-solidarity-and.html), while his running mate, Matt Gonzalez, has a record (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/2008/02/nader-choice-doesnt-boost-latino.html) of being – to put it politely – a colorful character.

Greens will go the way of Solidarity and Washington (political parties, that is)

I recently made a wisecrack in one of my commentaries implying that the Green Party, which has acquired status in Illinois as a fully legitimate political entity, is destined to go the way of the Harold Washington Party.

That party in Chicago, along with the Solidarity Party in Illinois, experienced a few years of equal status to the Democrats or Republicans due to an electoral fluke, only to wither away when they were unable to maintain their popularity.

OF COURSE, MY wisecrack resulted in a completely serious response from a Green Party spokesman who tells me that the Green Party is here in Illinois to stay.

That reader pointed out the very thorough slate of candidates running for office on the party label. That slate was compiled earlier this week when Green officials picked people to run for office in the electoral districts to which they did not choose nominees in the Feb. 5 primary.

Hence, the Greens are not just Ralph Nader. In fact, he could very well be the least important aspect of the Green Party across the Land of Lincoln.

Ralph Nader and the Green Party will give Chicago its first nominating convention in 48 years for a political party other than the Democrats. Illustration provided by http://www.secondcitygreens.org/.

They have a U.S. Senate candidate, along with 14 congressional dreamers, several people wanting to run for seats in the Illinois House and state Senate and 26 others wishing to run for county government offices across the state.

BUT WHILE THE Obama/Clinton brawl is destined to culminate in Denver, and the people of Minneapolis-St. Paul will be swimming in a political love-fest for John McCain, Chicago is going to go Green.

Yes, the Green Party is going to have its own political convention this summer. Green Party backers from across the United States will converge on the Second City July 10-13 to heed the call for change in our electoral system, and it will culminate with Nader trying to stir up the troops to believe they have a chance to be relevant come the Nov. 4 general elections.

There goes my sarcasm, ringing like an obnoxious warning bell to tell me (and you) that none of this Green Party activity is any different than what happened with the Washington or Solidarity parties.

One of the safest bets anybody could make with regards to electoral politics these days is to put money down on the fact that the Green Party in Illinois will wither away in 2010 – the next year that state government posts are up for grabs.

NOW THE PERSON who chided me for mocking the Greens in Illinois said the difference between them and the other two third parties I have mentioned is that both of them were based around a personality, while the Greens are allegedly based around an ideal.

This person is half right. The Solidarity Party was created when Democratic gubernatorial nominee Adlai Stevenson III had his campaign thrown out of whack by followers of Lyndon LaRouche. His attempt to run separate of the “tainted” Democrats that year resulted in a political party with legitimate status that got taken over in future years by fringe candidates who used its legitimacy to make it easier for them to get spots on Election Day ballots.

The same goes for the Harold Washington Party, which was created following the death of its namesake mayor of Chicago who wanted a third political party in the city to support the concept of African-American political candidates to run against Mayor Richard M. Daley and the tokens put up by the Republican party.

Stevenson, Washington. To that list, we must add the name of Rod Blagojevich. Let’s be honest. If not for the existence of the governor and his unpopularity in certain circles, there’s no way the Green Party would have received so many votes.

NOBODY WAS VOTING in 2006 for Rich Whitney to be Illinois governor. Most people knew nothing of the man, and certainly wouldn’t have thought him fit to hold the gubernatorial post.

What they were using the Whitney vote for was a way of showing their disgust with Blagojevich, while also refusing to support the Republican gubernatorial dreams of Judy Baar Topinka. They really were voting for “none of the above,” although Whitney got to have his name used for that slot.

Because of that, his 10 percent of the vote is double the amount of support a party needs to show to claim legitimate status. So long as the Green Party can keep finding a candidate who can win at least 5 percent of the overall vote in an election, they can keep their equal status to the Democrats and Republicans.

The reason the Solidarity and Washington parties fizzled out is that the personalities that originally inspired them for a single election had no interest in maintaining them. Stevenson has always been a loyal Democrat, while the African-American politicos who admire Washington have also returned to the fold.

THE THIRD PARTIES turned into the place for people who perennially operate on the fringe of electoral politics. That is bound to happen to the Greens.

The perception of the Green Party among many people, particularly those so far to the right on social issues, is of a group of people who have been so stoned for so many years that they don’t realize the year 1968 is over. We’re going to hear a lot of jokes about aging hippies coming to Chicago, perhaps to reprise the ’68 Democratic convention protests in Grant Park.

But that image really isn’t true. The Green Party is becoming the place for all the people who just aren’t practical about their politics, and they don’t have to be liberal.

IF THE GREEN Party were truly a liberal place, there’s no way that Chad Koppie of Gilberts, Ill., would have seriously considered using the party label to run a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Koppie is the retired airline pilot who has run so many fringe political campaigns for Senate, governor and Congress – usually to tout his pro-gun and anti-abortion views.

He’s the candidate who has aired graphic campaign ads depicting aborted fetuses and who has dumped bags of manure on the steps of the Statehouse in Springfield to protest the General Assembly’s actions.

Let’s also hear it for the Green Party’s choice for an Illinois House seat in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Rob Sherman, the atheist activist from Buffalo Grove who most recently is trashing state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, for her attack on his beliefs during a legislative committee hearing, is one of the Greens.

THE GREENS MAY have taken a pass on Koppie this time (Cathy Cummings of Chicago got the nomination), but these are the type of political people who are going to be attracted to the organization – those to whom the Democrats and Republicans are unappealing because they try to reach a middle ground on issues. These people would rather play hard-core politics around specific issues – and lose.

With a pair like Koppie and Sherman amongst their followers, the Green Party is not building up a structure that will ever appeal to the masses.

That is what makes it likely that no Green Party candidate will get 5 percent of the vote in 2010, and why we’ll be able to bury the Illinois Green Party corpse next to the remains of the Washington and Solidarity parties.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: If you care, a thorough list of all the Green Party candidates in Illinois (http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/04/07/illinois-greens-running-60-candidates-in-08/) can be found here.

Rob Sherman is using the Green Party label to run a campaign for an Illinois House seat from northwest suburban (http://www.pioneerlocal.com/wheeling/news/882275,bg-sherman-040708-s1.article) Cook County. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll ever be a colleague of state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago.