November 19, 2000

8:45 PM

Some of us made jokes in the days after the election about "Gore stealing votes from Nader", to ape those who said the reverse. But we didn't read the Libertarian Party's press release, wherein they said the same thing, and they were both serious, and believable. [quote inside]
posted by baylink (5 comments total)

The razor-tight contest between Bush and Gore almost certainly cost Browne votes, agreed Browne campaign manager Perry Willis.

<blockquote-cause-they-don't-work>
"The apparent closeness of the race could easily have cost us a few hundred thousand votes," he said. "In the final days, the press continually hammered home the idea that the race between Gore and Bush was very close. That's bad for us, because some people who might otherwise have voted for us thought it was important [to] vote for Bush or Gore, if only to keep the other one out of the White House."
</blockquote>

Whether "we" need voters that unprincipled is a running question, which will probably never be solved.

My question is: how many political activists will this election generate (and of the ones who say they're going to get out and do something, how many actually *will*)?
posted by baylink at 8:49 PM on November 19, 2000

I especially enjoyed the download instructions on Browne's website for his commercials:

===
Windows users: right click on the file you wish to download and save. [Either "Save Target As..." (IE) or "Save Link As..." (Netscape)] Left-clicking will download the file where you may not be able to find it and launch your Real™ player.

Macintosh users (OS 8 and above): control-click on the file you wish to download and save. [Either "Download Link to Disk" (IE) or "Save this Link as..." (Netscape)] Simply clicking on a file name will download the file where you may not be able to find it and launch your Real™ player.

UNIX users: you know what to do.
===

Classic. Really. :-) The site also notes that

Power users: you may access the FTP server directly @ ftp://208.179.186.31/realaudio/commercials/files

Wow. Expecting intelligence from your voters? Who'd do that?
posted by baylink at 8:55 PM on November 19, 2000

This has nothing to do with anything, but I was walking past a McDonalds a few weeks back, and they were selling election beanie babies. They had Lefty the Donkey and Righty the elephant, and right in the middle was LIBERTY the bear. Could it be they were selling Libertarian party stuffed animals? I looked for a Green party animal, as I could easily picture a bright green alligator or some nonsense, but I can't imagine that would have gone over all that well. Was pleased there were no sympathetic looking Socialist rat dolls either.
27 Libertarians elected, WOW. I'm not much of a joiner, but I love this party and might actually be moved to help out, especially since it seems there are people active in my area.
posted by thirteen at 2:02 PM on November 20, 2000

I hadn't even thought about that, but that's *really* a cool idea, 13. I'd bet cash there's a closet libertarian in their marketing department.
posted by baylink at 2:09 PM on November 21, 2000

Please do, thirteen.

Unfortunately, we have lots of people who want to see a libertarian president, yet when it comes time to vote, cant bring themselves to "waste their vote on someone who has no chance".

The success of Nader is certainly going to have future candidates at least acting attractive to third parties, I think, and libertarians could do the same thing the green party did.
posted by flestrin at 1:04 AM on November 22, 2000