Or not: James Pinkerton (the author of this article) is presenting arguments both for and against the notion that this election will repeat 1988. On the whole, I’m going to say ‘Not’; you can link up any two events or concepts if you try hard enough, and human eyes are often quite good at seeing patterns even when there actually aren’t any.
Besides, Nader’s mere existence (difference #5, according to Pinkerton) ought to have been enough to make the entire article moot. I didn’t really expect him – Nader, that is – to acquire the Reform Party nomination, and I’d love to know what the Hell he’s trying to accomplish, besides of course burning down the Democratic Party in its current form and urinating on the ashes. Not to mention that I’m having difficulty imagining the mental gyrations that party needed to go through in order to shift from Pat Buchanan to Ralph Nader in four short years.
Still, like OTB I’d agree that the article’s worth reading.
Moe
Matt Yglesias has a good skewering of this whole historical analogy as analysis.
I’m just amazed that people like Pinkerton get paid to write crap like this.
“I’m having difficulty imagining the mental gyrations that party needed to go through in order to shift from Pat Buchanan to Ralph Nader in four short years.”
Easy. Their unstated party platform is ‘screw you’, a sentiment embodied equally well by both statesmen.