If it wasn't for "third party" candidate Ralph Nader on November 7th, 2000...former Vice President Al Gore would have been elected the 43rd President of the United States...not George W. Bush. That is a fact.
If you're someone who is against the political views and the offensive behavior of Donald Trump...and you have no intention whatsoever of supporting the Republican nominee...but perhaps 
you're not fond of Hillary Clinton...so instead you plan to pull the lever for a third party candidate...don't. You will be throwing away your vote. Do not vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson. Do not vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party. Do not vote for any third party candidate or any Independent. An individual who is running for President on a third party ticket...or as an Independent...cannot win the Presidential election. But he or she could possibly cause Hillary Clinton to lose...thus giving Trump a 4-year address at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.
To clarify..."third party" is commonly defined as any political party other than the two major parties - Democratic and Republican. A person who is identified as an Independent...is not affiliated with any formal party.At this point...with only a little more than 19 days before the election...I remain overwhelmingly confident - as I have been for 18 months since she announced her candidacy - that former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be elected our nation's 45th President.But in our country...and on this planet...as the late Hall of Fame baseball player, Yogi Berra, was famous for saying..."It ain't over 'til it's over." So being confident - as I noted I am - cannot be an absolute and definitive certainty until after Americans express themselves with their actual votes on election day.
Let's not have a repeat of Election 2000. According to the final tally - which some Americans...including myself...are not in agreement with - Al Gore would have triumphed over George W. Bush if 538 of 97,488 Floridians didn't vote for Ralph Nader of the Green Party...but instead for the former Senator from Tennessee. Yes...in case you're unaware...either because you don't remember... never really knew because you were too young...or weren't born yet...the 2000 election was decided - after an intense recount - because Mr. Bush wound up with 537 more votes in Florida, which resulted in him capturing the Electoral College votes in "The Sunshine State." Those electoral votes took Mr. Bush over the 270 required to win The White House.
To quote the late NBC News Washington Bureau Chief and Moderator of Meet The Press, Tim Russert..."Florida, Florida, Florida." That is because...of nearly 6-million votes cast in Florida...the entire 2000 Presidential election came down to 537 people - which was the difference between votes for Mr. Bush...and votes for Mr. Gore. That's why if 538 additional 
Some of you may be asking why I don't concur with the results of the 2000 election. Despite the fact that the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount of disputed ballots in all counties in their state...the U.S. Supreme Court - on December 12th, 2000 - stopped the recount...which ultimately handed the Presidency to George W. Bush. And although Al Gore didn't agree with the decision of the highest court in the land...he conceded the election. My objection was that the U.S. Supreme Court should have ruled that every single vote in every single county in Florida needed to be recounted. That was the only way to know for sure...who won Florida...and who won the Presidency.
There were many, many controversies concerning Florida voting in 2000... including everything from "hanging chads" to ruined "butterfly ballots" and much more. But if you don't recall all of the issues...I'll leave it to you to do your own historical research.
Please, please, please...don't wake up on Wednesday morning, November 9th and be upset that Donald Trump had been elected President just because you voted for a third party or Independent candidate. No matter what state you live in...you don't want to be one of the people responsible for preventing Hillary Clinton's victory.
On Wednesday, September 28th, 2016...in a radio interview with Steve Harvey...President Obama warned Americans..."If you don't vote...that's a vote for Trump. If you vote for a third party candidate - whose got no chance to win - that's a vote for Trump."
total...who support President Obama... then you'll listen to him...and vote for Hillary Clinton to be our next President.On the campaign trail with Secretary Clinton in Miami, Florida - on Tuesday, October 11th - Al Gore cautioned the Democratic nominee's supporters...
Truer words have never been spoken. And if you voted for him in 2000...you know Al Gore is right. America can't make the same mistake again.
And that's The Controversy for today.
I'm Gary B. Duglin.
"We'll talk again."
The Controversy is a publication of GBD Productions. Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Controversy is Gary B. Duglin.
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Photo credits: nbcnews.com (Former Vice President Al Gore), timeinc.net (Former President George W. Bush), huffingtonpost.com (Republican Nominee for President, Donald Trump), Time Magazine (Democratic Nominee for President and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton #1), Wikipedia and wikimedia.org (Libertarian Nominee for President and Former Governor Gary Johnson), zimbio.com (Green Party Nominee for President, Dr. Jill Stein, M.D.), abcnews.com (Democratic Nominee for President and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton #2), washingtonpost.com (Yogi Berra), CNN and turner.com (Ralph Nader), NBC News and lesliesholly.files.wordpress.com (Tim Russert), freedomcongress.org (Former President Bill Clinton and Former Vice President Al Gore), Steve Harvey and squarespace.com (Steve Harvey), Mashable and mshcdn.com (President Barack Obama), therespectabilityreport.org (Democratic Nominee for President and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton #3) and boston.com (Former Vice President Al Gore with Democratic Nominee for President and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton)
Copyright 2016 Gary B. Duglin and TheControversy.net. All Rights Reserved.
With all due respect, Gary, I don’t think you fully understand what voting is all about. Voting is about casting a ballot for the person who best embodies the values you hold. It is not about electing the person who has the best chance to win. Nor is it about voting for one candidate simply to oppose the other candidate.
ReplyDeleteIndependent candidates do NOT reduce either party’s candidate’s odds of winning the presidency. Given that there are more independent voters in America – people who have not sworn affiliation with any political party – it is up to the candidates of all parties to convince them to vote for them. It is ludicrous to say that Al Gore would have won if Ralph Nader voters had stayed home. Al Gore would have won Florida if his message had resonated with 539 more people in the state. Given that the state of Florida has a population of over 19 million people and only 6 million voted, Al Gore failed to convince enough people that his ideals were valued.
Finally, I think it’s time we put the notion that an independent candidate can’t win the presidency to rest once and for all. If this election cycle has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that even the most unlikely and unlikeable person can make a serious run for President. Our society has been beholden to two political parties for far too long. America’s values are not as monochromatic as they used to be. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican party’s candidate shares my values, yet it is my privilege and obligation as a citizen to vote. Asking me to vote for one candidate simply to prevent the other candidate from attaining the office is disrespectful to me and the Founding Fathers.
This will be a two-part response as it is too long to fit in one reply. The purpose of The Controversy is two-fold. One - to invite readers to express their own thoughts...and two - when it concerns a political race - for me to do whatever I can to support my candidate in the hope that others will follow my lead. Now, to your comments. I fully understand what voting is all about. I am not the only one - and certainly not the first person - who has stated that a 3rd party candidate or an Independent candidate cannot win the Presidency. Now is that to say that it couldn't happen years or decades from now, should our political system change? Perhaps. But not likely anytime soon. Such a party system in the United States has been in operation since almost the beginning. And Democrats and Republicans have been the choice for more than a century and a half. I don't believe it's going to change in the not-too-distant future. I do qualify that statement by saying that in order for the Republican Party to even remain in existence, it will have to somehow return to a party of respect and not a party of Donald Trump. Otherwise, the Republican Party will be done and over. Your comments about Al Gore are clearly untrue. Facts are facts. First of all, Mr. Gore won the popular vote nationwide. Unfortunately, in our system of government, we live by a system of the Electoral College. Despite that though, facts are facts...and if Ralph Nader - a third party candidate who had no chance whatsoever of winning the election - had not run...or if 538 more Floridians had voted for Mr. Gore instead of Mr. Bush, Al Gore would have been President. That is a fact...and I, obviously, am not the first person to state that fact. Every single vote in "The Sunshine State" should have been recounted. And I believe - as do many other Americans - that if that had happened...Al Gore would have won Florida and would have been elected the 43rd President. This year's election has nothing to do with your statement that "I think it's time we put the notion that an Independent candidate can't win the Presidency to rest once and for all." No Independent candidate in 2016 is anywhere close to being elected. Not even a third party candidate. As for your comment that "If this election cycle has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that even the most unlikely and unlikeable person can make a serious run for President," that is only in part true. But let us remember - although he was "likeable"...nobody ever thought that Jimmy Carter could ever be elected President. And he was. And even though he was Franklin Roosevelt's Vice President - and "likeable"...and he took us through the end of World War II and through part of the Korean War...few people thought that a haberdasher from Missouri could be elected President. But Harry Truman was. Donald Trump is a monster that was created by the media - yes, I wrote that many, many months ago in one of my columns - and by the Republican Party - and I wrote that too many times in the past. The 16 candidates who challenged Trump did not have the guts - quite frankly, the balls...to stand up to Trump and his bullying and his offensive behavior. Trump has made a mockery of our election system and the world, as a whole, is recognizing that. I am an ultra progressive liberal Democrat and I believe others should hold more of the same thinking that I do. (END OF PART 1) GBD
Delete(PART TWO of my response to the reader above) - In conclusion...I will respond to your closing statement. As I noted at the beginning of my comments herewith...The Controversy is my forum to hopefully persuade, convince, change the minds of others so that they will vote for my chosen candidate. That is not to be - as you say - "disrespectful" to you...and it certainly is not disrespectful to our "Founding Fathers." It really irks me that everybody wants to always quote our Founding Fathers by thinking that they knew best with everything. They did...in the late 1700s. But not necessarily for today. As I have written in the past...if those "Founding Fathers" had a crystal ball and knew then what we know today, our Constitution would have been written with some differences. Personally, I think that the likes of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and others are probably spinning in their graves with disappointment over the way Americans today want to always quote them...when their thinking of 2 centuries ago...cannot always be equated to our lives today. GBD
DeleteJust remember if America had taken this advice in 1992 we never would have had Bill Clinton as President, just think how much better the world may have been?
ReplyDeletePresident Bill Clinton will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidents of the United States. Despite his "impeachment" - which I have written about time and time again as being a witch-hunt that should never have happened - Mr. Clinton kept America safe for 8 years and he left our economy in excellent condition after bringing it out of despair. Polls have been taking time and time again that if it was Constitutionally allowed, Bill Clinton would win the Presidency again in a landslide. Other polls have named Bill Clinton "President of the World." And with both President Hillary Clinton (which I believe she will be very soon) and President Bill Clinton - both living in The White House - and quite frankly, sleeping together - both "pillow talk" and "Oval Office talk" ...will be valuable. I have stated many times in the past that if Hillary Clinton was Hillary Smith or Jones or whatever...I still think she would be an outstanding President. But since she is Hillary Clinton...wow...we get two Presidents for the price of one. America couldn't be any luckier. GBD
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