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So I take it you don’t consider non-voters as responsible as Nader voters for the outcome of the election then? I agree that Nader voters should have realized that they were wasting their time but I just don’t see why this matters as they had no more impact on the outcome of the election than non-voters. If Gore and Bush each had, for the sake of simplicity, 10 votes and someone then decided to vote for Nader, both of the other candidates vote totals remain unchanged (Bush’s vote total didn’t increase and Gore’s didn’t decrease– both still have 10 votes each). The Nader voter therefore had no more effect on the outcome of the election than the non-voter– it’s as if they hadn’t voted at all. I don’t see why it matters whether this failure to affect the outcome of the election came about through voting for a candidate who never had a chance or through sitting at home watching TV instead– it’s the same effect. It really doesn’t make sense to me at all.

The view that failure to prevent (or failure to make an attempt to prevent) an outcome makes one ethically responsible for that outcome is a pet peeve of mine. This is essentially what Mark seems to be arguing here, although couched in the language of causality, and, frankly, I don’t care much for political “discussion.” It rarely rises to a level that I would deign to call discussion. I would much rather argue the finer points of Aristotelian logic than involve myself in that depressing parody of rational thought known as political “discourse.”

Mark A. York: “Not irrelevant but factual. It’s a safe bet at least 600 or so would have voted for for Gore in Florida alone.”

If we’re going to continue this debate, I need to know if you hold non-voters responsible in the same way as Nader voters and if you don’t I need to know what you believe lessens their responsibility for the outcome of the election. If you do hold them equally culpable then we’ll just have to agree to disagree about the concept of moral obligation because questions about ethical principles are inherently irresolvable and don’t yield to logic.

It’s entirely irrelevant what they might have otherwise done. You are saying Nader voters are the direct cause of Bush’s victory because they failed to support Gore. This is no different than the non-voter who also failed to vote for Gore and no different from me failing to take action against the shoplifter. When I failed to take a certain action (trying to stop the shoplifter– analogous to trying to stop Bush by voting for Gore) and instead took a different action (I kept on walking– analogous to voting for Nader) I was obviously not the direct cause of the shoplifting. In short, there is a difference between failing to stop an outcome and causing an outcome. If someone drops a ball from a tower and I fail to snatch it from the air, did I cause it to hit the ground? No, gravity (and the person dropping the ball) caused that.

All someone who voted for Nader “did” was to fail to take the action most likely to prevent Bush’s victory and did something else instead– they stood by and watched the ball hit the ground. The direct cause of Bush’s victory were the people who voted for Bush– the Nader voters, by not supporting his opponent Gore, just didn’t get in Bush’s way. This does not equate to causing Bush’s victory. You may believe that everyone has some sort of moral obligation to vote the candidate you have annointed. Personally I reject that notion but even if you are somehow right, it still only amounts to culpability and not to causality.

Nader’s votes can’t “give the election” to Bush. Nader’s votes are Nader’s not Bush’s. Your characterization is as absurd as saying the non-votes of all those sat out the election “gave the election to Bush” because they also failed to increase Gore’s vote total. Another analogy: I saw a guy smash his way past the security guards at Best Buy with a VCR in hand. By your reasoning, my failure to rush after him and try to stop him (I was close by) caused the thievery. It’s nonsensical.

Interesting how what was “not a dime’s worth of difference” in 2000 has mushroomed into some hundred’s of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives spent in Iraq. But whatever…

It’s entirely irrelevant what they might have otherwise done. You are saying Nader voters are the direct cause of Bush’s victory because they failed to support Gore. This is no different than the non-voter who also failed to vote for Gore and no different from me failing to take action against the shoplifter. When I failed to take a certain action (trying to stop the shoplifter– analogous to trying to stop Bush by voting for Gore) and instead took a different action (I kept on walking– analogous to voting for Nader) I was obviously not the direct cause of the shoplifting. In short, there is a difference between failing to stop an outcome and causing an outcome. If someone drops a ball from a tower and I fail to snatch it from the air, did I cause it to hit the ground? No, gravity (and the person dropping the ball) caused that.

All someone who voted for Nader “did” was to fail to take the action most likely to prevent Bush’s victory and did something else instead– they stood by and watched the ball hit the ground. The direct cause of Bush’s victory were the people who voted for Bush– the Nader voters, by not supporting his opponent Gore, just didn’t get in Bush’s way. This does not equate to causing Bush’s victory. You may believe that everyone has some sort of moral obligation to vote the candidate you have annointed. Personally I reject that notion but even if you are somehow right, it still only amounts to culpability and not to causality.