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I too voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 but for different reasons. I too regretted it. If you are waiting for the ideal candidate that 100% aligns with your beliefs you're going to be waiting a long time.
I wasn't paying attention back then so much-- what was Nader offering as a green that gore wasn't? Didn't gore make environmental policies part of his campaign? He just didn't go far enough or something?
For the record it was before Gore's Inconvenient Truth book and not much was being said about global warming. The reason I voted for Nader was a last minute decision out of frustration. My wife and I both registered Democrats went to our polling place where we had voted in every election only to find out we were no longer on the registered voters list. We were eventually given provisional ballots and because I was frustrated voted for Nader. I mistakenly thought the federal government ran the elections. Later after the shenanigans in Florida I found out the states ran their own for the most part. The economy was so good at the time I didn't think there was a chance Bush would ever get elected
In many ways, the Clinton Administration is when Democrats started giving up the Overton Window to Republicans. The trend of "self-regulating industries" went into full swing with things like the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Not Reagan or the first Bush. Clinton.
FISA, the court that rubber stamps warrents for wire tapping, became a rubber stamping operation under Clinton. I'd have to dig it up, but there's actually an ancient freerepublic.org thread where they hope Bush undoes this. Instead, Bush ignored it completely while freerepublic.org cheered him on.
This is all to say that when Nader said both sides are the same, there were a lot of people on the left who agreed.
Bush then takes less then a year to show how utterly wrong that was, and it didn't even start with 9/11.
Tale as old as time.
Democrat makes moves to the center.
Leftists become disillusioned
Say both parties are the same
Republican gets elected
Leftists learn that what they though was "right wing" was only the tip of the iceberg
when put in power, actual Republicans do things far worse things than Leftists even imagined were possible