Matt Gonzalez tells us to "Get beyond 2000"

by: Be_Devine

Sun Mar 02, 2008 at 10:47:20 AM PST

Matt Gonzalez, who, as BrianL pointed out, recently gave up his polticial career to run to be Ralph Nader's V.P., says we should get beyond the fact that Nader handed the White House to George Bush in 2000.  Gonzalez told Matier & Ross:

I'm not out to pull the election one way or the other, but people need to get beyond 2000.

Matt's theory is this: Nader handed the election to Bush in 2000, but Perot handed the election to Clinton in 1992. So we're even, right? No harm, no foul. Or, as MattyG says:

You have to be fair, both sides have benefited from this.

Um, yeah. "Third parties: Spoiling Elections Since 1992."

Matt, if this is the best argument you can come up with for the legitimacy of your candidacy, you are lost. And as we'll see on the flip, even your weak and ill-conceived argument is just flat wrong.

Let's start with 2000.  There really is no question that Nader handed the White House to George W. Bush. The "official" election results in Florida were 2,712,790 for Bush and 2,712,253 for Gore, a difference of 537 votes. Ralph Nader got 97,488 votes in Florida. Even if you assume that 99.5 percent of Nader supporters would have stayed home, his absence from the race would have meant that Al Gore would have been our President in 2000.  Even Matt Gonzalez seems not to dispute this.

Now let's go to 1992. Outside of crazy conservative talk radio, there also is no serious question - Ross Perot did NOT meaningfully affect the 1992 election results. A couple snipits:

The Washington Post reported on 11/8/1992:

Ross Perot's presence on the 1992 presidential ballot did not change the outcome of the election, according to an analysis of the second choices of Perot supporters.

The analysis, based on exit polls conducted by Voter Research & Surveys (VRS) for the major news organizations, indicated that in Perot's absence, only Ohio would have have shifted from the Clinton column to the Bush column. This would still have left Clinton with a healthy 349-to-189 majority in the electoral college.

And even in Ohio, the hypothetical Bush "margin" without Perot in the race was so small that given the normal margin of error in polls, the state still might have stuck with Clinton absent the Texas billionaire.

The Associated Press reported on 11/4/1992:

Exit polls suggest Ross Perot hurt George Bush and Bill Clinton about equally. The Voter Research and Surveys poll, a joint project of the four major television networks, found 38 percent of Perot voters would have voted for Clinton and 37 percent would have voted for Bush if Perot had not been on the ballot. Fifteen percent said they would not have voted, and 6 percent listed other candidates.

Matt has drank Nader's Kool-Aid.  And apparently it is not laced with truth serum. 

Next time Matt wants to blather on about why it's fair for Nader to have crowned George II, perhaps he should check the facts.