Gore not becoming President: whose fault?

[Jim Lane]

117. I try to pre-empt the "but Gore won!" response

I don't think I've said (at least not recently) that Nader was partly responsible for Bush winning. What I've said is that Nader was partly responsible for Bush becoming President.

Frankly, it seems sterile to me to say "Gore won" because it depends on a dodgy definition. I see no benefit in debating whether "won" means "became President" or "rightfully won". Instead, I state the undeniable fact -- Bush became President. That still leaves me perfectly free to criticize Harris and Nader and the butterfly ballot and SCOTUS and anyone else.

Why I blame Nader (among others): Nader had a right to decide to run and a right to decide not to run. He chose to exercise his undisputed right to run. It was foreseeable that that decision would help Bush and might even result in his election. What in fact happened was that Nader's decision was (in legal terms) a but-for cause of the Bush presidency, because if Nader had instead exercised his right to not run, Gore would have become President.

Nothing in the foregoing paragraph requires me to approve of Harris's purge or anything else. An event can have more than one cause. And I continue to maintain that plenty of DUers understand this principle when they're criticizing Gore about something, but suddenly abandon it when the issue is criticism of Nader. That's a double standard and is intellectually dishonest.