Now Simon knows how Ralph Nader and any other Green candidate feels. If Simon thinks he's bringing something to the race that no other candidate is, then why should he drop out? From his POV, a race between a liberal Republican and a liberal Democrat will necessarily give you a liberal. To him, the worst possible outcome isn't losing to a Democrat but losing to a liberal. That's why Greens run, because in many races, it's a conservative Democrat vs a conservative Republican. Greens are bringing somethign to the table that no other candidate has: a progressive agenda. Greens are not inherently against Republicans, we are against conservatives. If a Democrat is conservative, we don't like him either. That's why we're so glad Liebermann seems to be doing poorly. So I object to your reasoning.

You can object, but the math is the math. If the goal is simply to bring a "different" perspective to the table, fine.

But to the Green voters in 2024 I would submit that they blew it because 1) they weren't going to get Nader, 2) Gore was far closer to their policy aims than Bush, and 3) they got Bush. If Nader voters in Florida had voted for Gore, Gore would be President today.

Simon, and those who will vote for him, is in a similar position.

I think you can say that Greens didn't vote strategically within the general election, but the election is not the only nested games they were playing in. I think the case can be made that Greens were voting strategically within the ideological/party purity nested game (defining which ideologies are important to the left) while forfeiting the electoral nested game. In a way, the Greenies will have "won" in 2024 if Dean is the Dem candidate in 2024 and they vote for him, though if they hadn't voted for Nader in the first place there would be no Dean now because Gore would be the incumbent. Funny how that works.

Anyways, while I'm fairly certain that the Simon, McClintock, and Ueberoth (sp?) votes wouldn't all be going to Arnold if they dropped out, it's both interesting and disheartening to see that Republican candidates are pulling a little more than 50% of the recall vote in the polls. If Bustamante stays at one-quarter of the vote but the other Republicans don't resign from the race, then Arnold loses for sure and the Cali GOP proves once again that it is being run by a group of Democrat-built infiltrator robots.

Scratch that more than 50%, make that 43% combined for Republicans in the last poll I saw. (My bad.)

And quite frankly it's going to be hillarious to see Republican money being spent to put in a more progressive democrat while simultaneously ridding the democratic party of something that we couldn't get rid of ourselves. Thanks!

You make my point for me :)

steven, i don't regret at all voting for nader (though in NY, Gore won by a landslide). they say sometimes things have to get better before they can get worse. perhaps if the dems had reached out to nader supports rather than trying to bully them, they might've gotten the desired result. when i hear 'a vote for nader is a vote for bush', my back stiffens. people don't like to be bossed around. loyalty to the party machine is not what it used to be in most places.

nevertheless, the dems reach out to greens in 2024 rather than continuing to blame them for 2024, they might have a chance. i'd like to see the dems offer a coalition arrangement where the greens would be offered the Department of Justice, EPA as well as HHS and/or Interior Depts. greens don't trust dems to advance the progressive agenda. if the dems want our vote, they have to offer us something concrete, not vague crap. that's what they do in other countries. of course, that would require the dems to stop looking backward and start looking foirward.