1. Thank you for posting this. I came across this today when I was googling Gary Johnson.

   Before I read this, I thought that Nader might have indeed cost Gore Florida, but even when I thought that, I maintained that Nader got a bum rap, because Gore could have done so many other things to make Nader irrelevant, including, among others (a) win more votes from Florida Democrats who voted for Bush, (b) winning his home state of Tennessee (which until 2000, it was almost unheard of for a candidate to lose his home state) or (c) win West Virginia, which until that time was reliably Democratic. His behavior in the debates didn’t help him, either. This article makes a compelling case that Nader increased the turnout on the far left of the political spectrum, which allowed Gore to be more centrist, and resulted in some of those energized voters making a last minute switch to Gore. One could conclude that absent Nader, Bush would have won more convincingly (he did lead in most polls up until the final weekend).

   In the last couple of weeks, the Clinton campaign, and her supports, have been engaged in a concerted campaign to discredit Gary Johnson. Though I have no interest in giving their campaign any advice that might be “helpful”, I am of the view that this effort won’t succeed, and might be counterproductive, in driving Johnson’s supporters to Trump.

   Apparently, some national media outlets are participating in this effort, as evidenced by this story I found on a Reddit page where Johnson’s supporters gather:

   https://twitter.com/teamgov2016/status/783676136911962113/photo/1

2. Is Mr. Hall a super mind reader of the past ???

   All NONSENSE — like speculating about the election results of the first election for some tribal chief in 100,000 B.C.

3. The Democrats have also been carrying out a campaign to smear Jill Stein through personal attacks as well as inserting Nader 2000. But one thing for sure ,they will never take responsibility for their own shortcomings and their disgusting candidate.

4. Rick Hasen, the author of the op-ed to which I was responding, wrote a blog post in reply to my letter, under the title, “Yes, Nader Said There Was Not a Dime’s Worth of Difference Between the Two Major Parties,” which is available here: http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87191.

   Since Ralph Nader never actually said that (as Hasen concedes at the end of his post), I wrote to him to request a correction. He declined to post a correction, or even to post my request for a correction, so I am posting it here, as an open letter. I hope Richard Winger doesn’t object. I would think Hasen would want to address this objection, if only out of respect for his own academic standards.

   An Open Letter to Rick Hasen

   Rick,

   I’m pleased that you blogged about my letter to the editor in response to your op-ed in USA Today. Please post this response as well.

   In your op-ed, you claim that Ralph Nader said there was “not a dime’s worth of difference” between George Bush and Al Gore. But as your own citation for that quote indicates, it comes not from Nader, but from George C. Wallace. My letter therefore points out that your statement is false. Nader did not say the words that you attribute to him.

   You nonetheless post your comments in response to my letter under the headline “Yes, Nader Said There Was Not a Dime’s Worth of Difference Between the Two Major Parties”. Once again, however, the source that you cite for this claim quotes not Nader but Wallace. Like your sources, you are putting someone else’s words in Nader’s mouth. That is an improper method of attribution.

   Now you suggest that your false attribution doesn’t matter, because “even if Nader didn’t say the exact words, ‘it was an implied message of his 2000 campaign’” (quoting James Fallows). You are entitled to your own opinion, of course, but not to your own facts. Nader did not say what you claim he said, and it does matter – not only because standards of scholarship are important in their own right, but because you are misrepresenting the basis of Nader’s critique.

   There is a crucial distinction between saying there are no meaningful differences between the two major parties, as Wallace did, and acknowledging that there are meaningful differences between them, while contending that they are too often in assent, as Nader did. As my letter states, the war in Iraq is a case in point: Republican George W. Bush may have led the charge, but the invasion could not have happened if not for congressional Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize it. That is why it is so perverse for Clinton’s supporters to blame that war on Nader. He was not a proximate cause of the war; Clinton was.

   We’ll respond to the substance of your op-ed separately. But for now, will you please correct your misattribution?

   Thank you,

   Oliver Hall

   P.S.: The line that you quoted from my letter contained a misprint by USA Today, which they have now corrected. The sentence should read, “But that line was popularized by George C. Wallace in 1968, not Nader, who only said the similarities between Democrats and Republicans tower over the differences.”

5. We have yet to see a letter refuting the belief that Ralph Nader is a jerk.

6. Some still blame George Wallace for spoiling the 1968 elections that helped Richard Nixon to win
   There has to be more for the reasons Nixon won over Hubert Humphrey .Maybe the assignation of Robert Kennedy had to do with it . Humphrey did run in no primary’s and caused the Democrats to split .I support voting your conscious .

7. Does anybody remember Fred Halstead who ran for President in 1960s on the Socialist workers party.

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