At least some supporters of Al Gore have been arguing that if some people had not cast their votes for Ralph Nader, they would have cast them for Gore and that a decisive Gore victory would then have been in the offing. But there is something going on in such analyses that misses the point. After all, if adequate numbers of those who voted for George W. Bush had voted for Gore, that, too, could have opened the door for a monster win by the Democratic candidate.
The truth of the matter is that strong candidates lure votes that would have gone elsewhere, whether to a major-party candidate or a third-party candidate. When Harry Truman ran against Tom Dewey in 1948, he also faced a socialist on his left and a Southern segregationist on his right, and still won. To engage in the kind of what-if discourse of some Gore enthusiasts is essentially to say that if he had received more votes he would then have received more votes. By the same reasoning, you could argue that George Bush would have received fewer votes if Pat Buchanan had received more.
Yes, third-party candidates can make a difference in presidential elections. Bill Clinton may never have been president if it had not been for third-party candidate Ross Perot, and Woodrow Wilson may never have been president if it had not been for Theodore Roosevelt running on the Bull Moose ticket. But in both cases, it was the weaknesses of the winner's major party opposition that made the third-party inroads possible. The pollsters' take on Nader is that many of his supporters would not have voted at all if he had not been on the ballot. Some would have voted for Bush and more for Gore, but watching out for your flanks is part of what successful candidates have to do.
All that being said, it is hard to believe that Nader's positions on issues will have much enduring effect on American politics. He continuously blasted corporations in simplistic, conspiratorial terms, apparently forgetting that corporations in fact have many stakeholders, not just managers and board members, but all their employees, their customers and even society at large. Corporate managers are no more guaranteed to be angels than activists of Nader's ilk, but they are no less likely to be decent human beings serving the public good, either. Take away corporations and America's standard of living goes kaput, as half a minute of informed thought should instruct anyone.
People liked Nader because of the consumer hero he used to be decades ago, because there is still something genuine about him, because they can imagine his somehow representing their own ideological leanings whether he really does or not, because a vote for him was a way of making a statement about their political values and because the major party candidates left them uninspired.
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