I've been working on my
proof that Nader's run is antidemocratic, and I seem to have run into a snag.
I'm operating under the following definition of Democratic Intent.
The Democratic Intent of the voters can be defined as the candidate that the population prefers overall, among a group of candidates. In a group of two candidates, the majority preference is the Democratic Intent.
The flaw is as follows:
By the time of the election, pretty much every Nader voter will have heard the thing about how a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. It will have been explained to them in excruciating detail over and over again how it all works and how Nader can't win, and how it makes Bush's re-election more likely, etc. The noise of this is going to be so big that I think it's safe to assume that just about every Nader voter will have heard this.
The point is that these Nader voters are going to vote for him anyway. There's a point at which a vote is an emotional decision and you stop listening to reason. They're going to know that Nader won't win, and they're going to know that it'll make Bush's re-election more likely, and they're not going to care. They'll vote for him anyway, even if they say they prefer Kerry to Bush.
What does this mean? It means that they are going in with foreknowledge. It basically means that in a Nader/Kerry/Bush race, they prefer Bush to Kerry, in an objective sense. Even though if in a straight Bush/Kerry race, they'd prefer Kerry to Bush. Nader's presence and all the dynamics it introduces would infuriate them enough that they would prefer Bush to Kerry if Nader was running.
So, in that sense, if their votes throw the election to Bush, Democratic Intent would be served.
I won't argue that these particular voters are behaving irrationally. It's not rational for a person to have a preference of A over B, but then prefer B over A if C is introduced.
But the point is that we're human, and that irrationality doesn't make us any less deserving of a vote. Just because it's logically unreasonable doesn't mean it's emotionally unreasonable.
Assuming all the Nader voters know what they're doing, this means that even if the Nader vote throws the election to Bush, the result would technically be Democratic.
Which means to me that in order to argue that Nader shouldn't run, it would require a belief that there are some circumstances where Democracy should be opposed, such as when it leads to irrational behavior... and I don't want to go there.
Help?