Former Vice President Al Gore took a swipe at Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday, referencing the conservative jurist's recent skepticism in a global warming case and role in the 2000 presidential election.The quip is sort of funny (though a good joke actually makes people laugh, not "cheer" or clap), but the joke is strained. (It doesn't fit together. Getting involved in the presidential election isn't something that you do because you think you have scientific expertise. But, in any case, Scalia's position in Bush v. Gore worked to extract judges from the election, as it pushed back the Florida Supreme Court, which thought it had the expertise to run things.)
"In the arguments, Justice Scalia said, 'I'm not a scientist, I don't want to deal with global warming.' I just wish he felt that way about presidential elections," Gore joked on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
Responding to the audience's cheer, he quipped: "I think 51 percent of the audience clapped for it."
৩০ নভেম্বর, ২০০৬
Al Gore jokes, then quips about the Supreme Court.
On "The Tonight Show":
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মন্তব্যগুলি পোস্ট করুন (Atom)
পোস্টগুলি
৫৫টি মন্তব্য:
The way the joke doesn't "fit together" just makes Al sound petty. I thought people were ready to move on. That joke is sooo 2000.
And who is he to pick on Scalia like that? Isn't Al a law school drop-out?
Yeah! Picking on Scalia. It's so uncalled for.
Really, how is Al supposed to ever get over that? I cut him some slack on this, but I think the Supreme Court got it right. (I always did. And I voted for Gore and rooted for him throughout the court proceedings.)
The Court in Bush v. Gore "EXTRACTED" judges from the election? You must be joking. The Court exracted the VOTERS from the election by stopping the recount.
It wouldn't have been funnier if he'd said only 48 percent clapped. It would have been dumber because that wouldn't convey the idea that Scalia et al stole the election from him. That was the idea he was trying to convey, right?
Ann Althouse said...
"I think the Supreme Court got it right. (I always did. And I voted for Gore and rooted for him throughout the court proceedings.)"
Got it right in terms of the result, or the reasoning in Kennedy's per curiam? Rehnquist's concurrence is persuasive, but the equal protection argument doesn't really gel.
The joke may have been lame, but at least he didn't botch it.
"...I just wish he felt that way about presidential elections," Gore joked on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
While funny for a partisan audience, one can surmise he shouldn't have been surprised this ended at the Supreme Court, as that is generally the last possible stop.
Or maybe that's one reason why he didn't finish law school...
I didn't find the joke too 2000. I thought it was smirkworthy.
pretty good for a politician. Better than "What's with all the glum faces," don't you think?
It's not a bad joke, I think. Definitely an improvement for Al Gore.
I can still recall Al Gore as the Senator from Tennessee. He was a great, moderate Democrat. NRA gave him 100% one year.
How things change.
Trey
Well, keep in mind that in the summer of 2002, nine months before the Iraq war began, Al Gore loudly, boldly and almost alone spoke out against it. He said then that it was a mistake to shift the focus to Iraq, and that we should continue to make getting bin Laden our number one focus. Of course this was at a time when taking that position put Gore in opposition to about 3/4 of the public, and a large majority of politicians as well.
One thing I like about Gore. He's not a moral coward, or afraid to say what he thinks.
The quip is sort of funny--
Like you'd fucking know.
Jesus, what a blithering fucking idiot you are...
Cedarford:
You are talking pre-911, and if you want to measure by that yardstick, then keep in mind that on August 18, 1998, the day that Bill Clinton launched missiles that only missed bin Laden by virtue of a meeting ending ahead of schedule, it was Republicans who were livid, because it took a headline away from the all-important Monica scandal! Heck, Indiana Senator Dan Coats even insisted that Bill Clinton resign for launching the missiles.
As for your 'aspirin factory,' intelligence reports indicated that they were making precursors to chemical weapons (of course Sudan then, as now, was ruled by a hostile fundamentalist leaning government.) But hey, the CIA is never wrong about this kind of stuff, right?
As for 'regime change,' the problem is (and Gore was right on the mark here) there are many ways to achieve it, and going in and doing it yourself is probably the stupidest of them all. In 1991, Shiites in the south and officers in the Iraqi army were ready to rise up and replace Saddam, and Bush I pulled the plug on them (apparently thinking the tender mercies of Saddam were better). Personally, I don't even think that leaning hard on a regime is the best way to change it (we've had harsh sanctions on North Korea and Cuba for a collective century without changing either regime.) I actually favor trade. With the goods follows ideas, and with the ideas, a push from inside. Hence the fall of the Soviet Union.
As far as Gore losing Tennessee and the rest of the south, he knew that being anti-gun would lose him a lot of votes. I don't even agree with him there (coming from a place where people value their guns almost as much as their kids). But given the obviously demonstrated political power of the NRA over the previous decade, you can hardly claim on one hand that Gore was trying to win an election and on the other that he took the position disregarding the position of people. He knew it would cost him votes, and he took it anyway. (I mean yeah, it might be a good position in the northeast, but he was going to win the northeast anyway.)
Although there are worse things than having judges decide your case:
Having a jury decide it.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/30/jurors.gone.wild.ap/index.html
Jury engages in high heel races, food fights, football and frisbee while sequestered during a murder case.
U-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-e-a-b-l-e.
he quipped: "I think 51 percent of the audience clapped for it."
That's a pretty good joke, in my opinion. Although, as noted, he didn't get 51% of the vote.
We should use first-past-the-post approval voting. Then we wouldn't have to deal with all this whining, or at least not as much of it.
Eli: You're shocked by sequestered jurors enjoying themselves while they were back at the hotel???? They were supposed to sit around glumly because it was a murder trial? You do realize they aren't even allowed to discuss the case. That is one of the least important news stories I've ever read.
It's hard to bear a moralizing scold like Al Gore, even when he squeezes out a quip in front of a fawning crowd (only supporters clap instead of laugh, so it doesn't meet the threshhold of "funny").
The joke makes no sense unless one already agrees with Gore before he tells it. Actually funny guys learned that it's far more successful (i.e. funnier) to make fun of yourself. But Gore's Capital-S Serious now that he's become Captain Planet, an it looks like self-mockery is his kryptonite.
Now Dole was funny, and I didn't even like him much. Carter? Another Puritan nanny. Clinton? Could be funny. Nixon? Ugh. Ford? Dunno. Johnson? Ribald. Kennedy? Funny, so I read. Mo Udall was funny: "For those of you who don't understand Reaganomics, it's based on the principle that the rich and the poor will get the same amount of ice. In Reaganomics, however, the poor get all of theirs in winter." As for Bush? Hard to tell, but he's not a humorist.
Where's have all the political wags gone?
Long time passing.
Gore at least approaches having a sense of humor.
dave is getting close to harassment
The Jerk said...
"[The Supreme Court got Bush v. Gore right] [b]y inventing an unprecendented and incoherent equal protection theory?"
No, they got it right because they reached the right result. If you're saying that the equal protection argument is spinach, then sure, I'd agree with that. As a general matter, the complete irrelevance of the equal protection clause to elections is confirmed by the subsequent passage of the fifteenth amemdment hot on its heals, and several amendments dealing with voting since that time. But the Article II problem that was the basis of the case until Justices O'Connor and Kennedy decided that wasn't glamorous enough, and which you will find in the Chief Justice's concurrence, decides the case, in my view.
I don't know that we're ever going to know what really went on, but I suspect -- knowing what I do about the Justices, their jurisprudence, and the glimpse that the liberal clerks gave Vanity Fair a couple of years ago -- that what really happened is the following. The Chief, Scalia and Thomas wanted Bush to win, but (regardless of that desire) had a legitimate Article II concern. O'Connor and Kennedy wanted Bush to win too, but thought the Article II argument was just too esoteric; they thought the public would never swallow it. The equal protection rationale was sufficiently grand and portentous for Kennedy, and had the ring of fairness and reasonableness that O'Connor liked, so after Rehnquist circulated an opinion deciding the case on Article II grounds, those two Justices refused to sign on (a position that Kennedy had already telegraphed at oral argument), and circulated the equal protection argument. Well, now Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas are caught in a trap: they don't like the equal protection rationale, but if they stick to their guns, the court will divide 4-3-2 against them, with Justice Stevens writing the majority opinion for the wrong outcome. With the stakes so high, in every way (regardless of which way it came out, the only thing worse than deciding that case by a 5-4 vote would have been to decide it by plurality), I think they basically held their noses and signed on to the Kennedy opinion (I suspect that Rehnquist, being a pragmatic sort of fellow, was willing to sign on much more happily than were Scalia and Thomas) out of a sheer brute-force rule of necessity. If that logic is right, then the only vote left for Kennedy's position is Kennedy himself, and possibly Breyer and Souter - but surely neither Breyer nor Souter, pragmatic though they are, would be willing to sign on to an opinion that amounts to a post facto validation of Bush v. Gore.
So the case was correctly-decided, IMO, although in difficult circumstances, a badly flawed rationale prevailed. And as others have pointed out, even if the court had stayed out of it, the recount would have called the election for Bush anyway. This carping about a "stolen election" is a silly canard wheeled out by people who either don't grasp how Presidential elections work (witness the bleating about the totally irrelevant popular vote), or who do understand and don't like it (witness bleating by Sandy Levinson and other heretics).
Eli Blake said...
"[I]n the summer of 2002, nine months before the Iraq war began, Al Gore loudly, boldly and almost alone spoke out against it. He said then that it was a mistake to shift the focus to Iraq, and that we should continue to make getting bin Laden our number one focus. Of course this was at a time when taking that position put Gore in opposition to about 3/4 of the public, and a large majority of politicians as well."
He was wrong then and he's wrong now. We were absolutely right to go to Iraq, and I'm getting pretty sick of this ludicrous trope that just because the Bush Administration fouled up the aftermath -- a point that practically everyone who supported the war and who isn't on their payroll readily concedes -- the decision to go in the first place was flawed. It was not. That needs to be said clearly and repeatedly. It was the right decision. We should have gone, we should have liberated them, and yes, we should have done it better, but that doesn't mean that the skeptics were right. They - including Gore - were wrong, and as every child learns, two wrongs (Gore's opposition to going, Bush's fucking it up) don't make a right.
48.38%, according to this helpful table.
Mackan said: "I can't bear people who accuse others of 'squeezing out quips.' "
Man, Mackan, what hellish world do you suffer in where the unbearable accusations of quip-squeezing fly profusely and akimbo?
I feel for you; I really do. A support group is clearly needed.
Hi, I'm Mackan and I can't bear people who accuse others of 'squeezing out quips.'
Hi, Mackan!
It might help.
"For those of you who don't understand Reaganomics, it's based on the principle that the rich and the poor will get the same amount of ice. In Reaganomics, however, the poor get all of theirs in winter."
hilarious.
on to the point -- its clear ann does not grasp the joke. but she thinks the decision was correctly decided, heh. "equal protection" haha. every county in the country uses "different" voting standards, but in this one election, this one recount, "different" standards would violate the constitution. right. genius theory.
Mackan, re: "but I'm hoping one day I'll be able to find a pattern."
Ah, I see. I was wrong.
Way, way off in fact.
You're merely suffering from Post-Cliché Stress Disorder.
I used to fear bad writing, but after embracing my inner child, I take to overused metaphors like a duck to water. But live and learn.
Come on. Gore was trying to cheat his way into the White House. On the one hand, his attorneys were pushing a selective recount of three heavily Democratic counties out of all those in Florida, using Democratic election judges to throw votes his way on the the apparent intent of voters, as subjectively determined by these hyper-partisan election officials. On the other hand, they were trying to disenfranchise as many overseas military voters as they could through protesting absentee ballot formalities often outside the control of the servicemen voting (and illegal under Federal law).
When Gore originally conceeded, I thought that showed a lot of character. That shortly evaporated when he tried to litigate into the White House.
And then think of the precedents that would have been set if the Supreme Court had not acted. You most likely would have had two slates of electors, one certified by the Secretary of State and Governor, and one by the FL. Supreme Court. Plus the precedent that a state supreme court can rewrite statutes after the fact to get the president they want. Plus that it is totally legitimate for different voting standards be applied in different counties in a single state.
Mackan,
If you think that's an essay, by my standards, then you're new around here.
The Jerk,
If you think that's the concurrence's argument, you need to re-read the concurrence.
Poor Al. He obviously thought this joke out in advance, and it's still pretty awkward. Further evidence that NO senator needs to run for president. They are all just a bunch of stiff dorks.
I am not sure if I agree that the Florida Supreme Court thought that it could run things, as much as it seemed to be trying to find a way for their candidate to win. Or, maybe I am not taking your point right, and maybe we are saying the same thing.
Nevertheless, I agree (I think) that it was important for the U.S. Supreme Ct. to push back hard against the Florida Supreme Ct. in this instance. Not for political reasons, but rather for precedential reasons. The danger I see that they thwarted was that of state courts starting to throw close elections by massaging election statutes.
Also, it would have given a green light to the type of gamesmanship being employed by the Gore lawyers - selective, arguably highly biased, recounts of favorable voting populations, while trying to disenfranchise unfavorable voting populations.
The danger there wasn't with the 2000 election, but rather any close, esp. presidential, elections in the future. Litigating election results would very possibly have become the norm, and not the exception.
And that would have threatened the orderly transition of power that we have become accustomed to over the last 2+ centuries.
How the hell a law professor can say that a ruling that stopped the counting of votes to throw an election to one candidate over another removes the bench from electoral matters is amazing.
Or is Ann referring to the fact that the ruling in the interference from the Supreme Court said this is not to used for precedent. i.e., only we get toi interfere in these elections!
(This in the case that the Bushistas took to court, see who is listed first in the case name).
My recollection is that several recounts by news organizations upheld President Bush's victory.
The opposite is true. If the entire state had had a vote recount then Gore would have won. But the vote recount was stopped by the Supreme Court, as well as the Repubclian Capitol Hill staffers who mobbed the Clerk's office.
Remember, counting votes is sick and wrong! What an outrage!
Alpha: How a law professor can say it is demonstrated in articles written by law professors, including my own. For me the key is that the state court was overreaching and taking control over the outcome of a national election. The Supreme Court was right to prevent that arrogation of power.
For anyone that doesn't think this is a political court, imagine roles reversed, and Scalia et al issuing an emergency order on Dec 9th to stop counting votes (when Gore was up 154 votes) on the ground it would do "irreparable harm" to Gore. Then subsequently hand the election to Gore, on equal protection grounds.
The precedents they cited were as flabby and weak as Scalia's embarrassing comment that if the recount went on that it would:
"threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [Bush]...by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election." (my emphasis)
If there is a judicial hell, I can think of 5 that already have reservations.
AL said: "The opposite is true. If the entire state had had a vote recount then Gore would have won."
Maybe so, but Gore's lawyers didn't ask for a statewide recount, only for a recount in the counties that favored him.
The opposite is true. If the entire state had had a vote recount then Gore would have won. But the vote recount was stopped by the Supreme Court
It is my understanding that a full statewide recount of all ballots was never requested by Gore or ordered by the FSC. The recount project found that if the Gore requested recount would have completed, Bush would have won by 225 votes. If the FSC recount of all statewide undervotes was completed, Bush would have won by 430 votes.
2000 Presidential Election
Thus if the USSC had not stopped the recount the same result would have occurred.
Garage: "The precedents they cited were as flabby and weak as Scalia's embarrassing comment that if the recount went on that it would: 'threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [Bush]...by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election.' (my emphasis)"
The reference there is to why the recount was stopped pending the Court's decision, not why the recount was ultimately not permitted. I agree with you that that point is weak, as I wrote in my main article about the case.
Maybe so, but Gore's lawyers didn't ask for a statewide recount, only for a recount in the counties that favored him.
Yes, that's true. The phrase "too smart by half" comes to mind. My Election Fiasco 2000 memories are a little vague on these details, but I thought the FL Supreme Court was ordering a statewide recount?
My Election Fiasco 2000 memories are a little vague on these details, but I thought the FL Supreme Court was ordering a statewide recount?
According to the Wikipedia entry, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of all under-votes (which Bush would have won), not all votes,(which Gore would have won).
It seems to me it's all fairly irrelevant in terms of who should have won the election. We already know that under all the rules, including the supremacy of the Supreme Court, Bush won the election.
Nope. As I recall, under one recount scenario, Bush would have the votes, but under most others Gore would have. No time to look in depth.
Mickey Kaus kind of agrees, I think.
Also not considered here are the votes lost to voter suppression in minority wards, disproportionately Democratic (and eligible) voters removed from voter rolls by a GOP data firm, and other electioneering hijinks. The NAACP filed a suit, which was, unfortunately, settled out of court.
And, I still say the clause in the opinion that
"this may not be used as precedent" seemed very unusual if not... unprecedented!
Bottom line, the election was stolen. Oh, and Gore's jokes were good for a chuckle. At least it wasn't conservative humor!
Or in other words, I accept the power of the Supreme Court to get things wrong.
In the end, I agree with you that they stole the election.
You're not making any sense. You can't acknowledge that the rules were followed and then say the election was stolen. Stealing, by definition, means taking something you DON'T have a legal right to. If the court awards me $1000 of your money in a lawsuit and I then collect it, I'm not guilty of robbing you. Neither is the court.
The fact that Gore would have won if a recount he didn't request had happened and rulings the Supreme Court had every right to make hadn't been made doesn't mean the election was "stolen", except in the radical libertarian sense that tax money is "stolen" despite its being taken through entirely legal means by appropriately tasked government authorities.
Not to rehash the whole thing for the umpteenth time, but the issue was Gore & Co. wanted to have teh voted certified on the statatory date (Dec 9th I think) for the entire state, EXCEPT the three counties he won and where he was demanding a recount.
The Florida Supreme Court was going to allow this crock of crap to happen, basically locking the Bush vote down and allowing Gore to recount until he mined enogh votes to win.
The USSC said that was unfair (gee- ya think?) and that forced the florida SC to follow the law as drafted.
My point is that the Florida law was written fairly, and the USSC required it be intrepreted as written.
What Gore wanted, and the Florida SC agreed to, was to certify the vote on the day required by statute, as the Florida Secretary of State was stating she was required to do (remember the big 'shall/will' battle?)EXCEPT in the three biggest Democratic counties, where the counts could go on until all ballots (hanging chads, dimpled chads, under vote ballots- anything that may be an extra vote for Gore) were counted.
Meanwhile, the votes in the other counties would be certified, and once Gore had discovered enough votes to win, the Florida SC, not the Florida Secretary of State, as required by Florida law, would certify the vote in those three counties.
If Gore had asked for a recount in the counties he had lost, or the state as a whole, and ask for the state to be certified completely after all recounts had been completed, that's one thing.
But the way it was initially phrased, and rejected, was crooked and partisan.
Wow, Mackan, I have to admit I am completely amazed by your comment.
Not only do you (and only you) KNOW what BOTH Bush and GORE really thought during the election, but you KNOW that they KNEW what ALL the voters of Florida REALLY thought during the election.
That's a heck of a lot of KNOWING going on.
Yes, Gore had a legal right to simply ask for a recount in a few counties. However, he wouldn't have been violating the law to ask for a state-wide recount (as someone strangely suggested earlier in the thread) instead. Therefore his decision was a calculated one that ultimately may have harmed him in later litigation. Not because it was illegal to do, but because it may have opened the door to the "equal protections" argument.
I doubt Gore would have had any problem with a state-wide recount, incidentally, except that it would have been costlier, more time consuming, and unnecessary.
Gore obviously had a problem with a state-wide recount or he would have asked for one. Claiming otherwise is silly. He just spent two years of his life (and hundreds of millions of dollars) in pursuit of a long-held dream. Time and money were inconsequential at that point.
As to "unnecessary", well, I suppose if he feared a recount of the results in other Florida counties, then it would make sense why he didn't ask for those counties to be recounted. Results that would cause him to lose the election would clearly be "unnecessary" to his efforts to win that election.
Among the mistakes that night is a crucial one that I don't recall being discussed as yet. Florida was "called" for a specific candidate by the news networks before the state's polling places had closed.
So, for all those claiming to "know" what "really" should have happened ... since you are deciding that you "know" which of the two (or more) candidates a voter really wanted on overvotes and which candidate a voter who didn't mark any candidate would have voted for had they marked one (and, for that matter, that their not marking a candidate was not a deliberate choice), don't forget the votes of those who didn't show up to the polls because they had been told by the news media that their candidate had already won. If we are now counting "woulda", "shoulda", "coulda"'s votes rather than the ones actually cast, then we "shoulda" count those votes as well.
Soon we will be having discussions that start "Well since Great-Aunt Martha didn't really want to die before the election and since I (and only I) know how she wanted to vote .....".
Oh, wait. The dead do vote in elections already, don't they?
Again my friend Mackan you are either missing or ignoring the point.
Gore & Co. wanted the counting of their selected counties (all heavily, by 80% margin if I remember correctly) recounted AFTER the rest of the state’s votes had been certified.
This is about fair; this isn’t about ‘counting every vote’; this isn’t about disenfranchisement. This is plain and simple fraud. They wanted to know exactly how many votes they would need to win the state, and they knew they could “find” that many votes in Dade and Broward Counties.
This was all playing out against a statutory deadline to certify the vote, a statute that was written to comply with Federal guidelines. Once that statute was violated Bush & Co. had standing to sue in Federal court.
I can’t understand why this is so hard for some folks to understand. It seems clear and simple to me.
Can't we give these arguments a well-earned rest? The election results were so far within the margin of error that the Heisenberg principle applies. Some arbitrary decision was going to have to be made to determine the winner. Of the institutions available to make this decision, the US Supreme Court was the one the nation was most likely to accept.
Mackan,
I've seen the ballot.
Just because you are sure that you "know" that people "meant" to vote for Gore instead of Buchanan or the other guy (as you referred to him) doesn't make it the truth. When you impose YOUR belief as to what the voter "really meant" - instead of how they actually voted - YOU are stealing their vote.
So when you say that Gore would have won under an "accurate" voting system, you are saying that he would have won had he got to set the rules uncontested as to how votes were counted.
I haven't said that he (Gore)didn't have a right to pursue his legal options. In fact I said the opposite.
My point is that Bush ALSO had a right to choose the legal avenues he chose - not simply the ones you wanted to let him use.
As to what Gore and Bush knew, I think it was pretty clear due to voter demographics that ballots with minor errors in them were more heavily Democratic,...
That's pretty insulting ... and I'm not even a Democrat.
Gore made a choice to pick only certain counties to recount.
This ...
Gore wanted to complete the recount of the votes in the counties where he was legally entitled to a recount.
... is pure fiction.
He was legally entitled to recounts in all Florida counties.
He took a calculated risk in not having a state-wide recount. The fact that he has thus far been unable to take responsibility for having made that decision tells me what kind of President he would have made.
Time and money were inconsequential at that point.
i dont know what world you live in, but the gore campaign was out of money at that point. it didn't have a choice. it couldn't afford a full statewide recount. every county that would be recounted would have needed gore campaign lawyers and other staff to be on hand, full time.
He took a calculated risk in not having a state-wide recount. The fact that he has thus far been unable to take responsibility for having made that decision tells me what kind of President he would have made.
out.of.money.
So, you are saying that Gore believed that he could not raise enough donations or recruit enough volunteers in all of the US who would be willing to go to Florida to monitor a state-wide recount despite the election being as close as it was?
Then I think decribing his decision as a calculated one would be accurate in that case.
"Bush's effort to stop the vote count had much more to do with his desire to win than his desire to protect our democracy."
Gore's desire to continue had exactly the same basis.
Mackan my friend, you still have not addressed the point. Did the fact that Gore wanted the vote certified in all of the counties in Florida EXCEPT the three he wanted to have a recount done in, not constitute an issue under the equal protection clause?
Let’s play ‘Paper; Rock; Scissors’. You go first. Once I know what you have (and your choice has been certified, so you can’t change it) I’ll pick my response.
In the three counties that went 90% to Gore, Gore wanted to recount after certifying that Bush was ahead by less than 300 votes. Are you saying, in counties where 300,000 or more votes were cast, the recount wouldn’t have found 300 dimpled, hanging or indented chads in the Gore column?
Do you see that the votes in the rest of the state of Florida would not have the same rights as in the Gore recount? If I am one of a hundred voters (for arguments sake numbers) in Broward County, and my ballot for some reason is kicked out by the reader, based on Gore’s standard my ballot will become scrutinized until my intent is divined.
If I am one of a hundred voters in the rest of the state of Florida under the same conditions, once my ballot is rejected by the reader I’m done; there will be no reexamination.
It was done on the basis of statistics, not money. The statistical chances of the percentage of the vote changing in a statewide recount was slim; statistically the chances were that if all ballots were examined the same way the total number of votes would increase, but that each candidate would keep the same percentage of total vote.
If, however, just the counties where the majority of votes were for Gore, the same statistical chance would favor Gore. Even if both picked up 10%, 10% of 300,000 is more than 10% of 10,000.
If any one of the Republican Senators who lost by narrow margins a month ago had requested a recount in only the precincts they had won by large margins the Democratic lawyers would have descended on that state in enough force to take Baghdad.
"got it right"..ohhhh that is rich.
It would take a total moron to look at that decision and the consequences of that decision, taking into account all we know now and the ascendency of Mr. Bush to that exalted position as the Millard Fillmore of the 21st Century (perhaps the GOP's countersink to Jimmy Carter??), the Kathleen Harris brilliance in managing the election and the recount up to the point of the decisions, Tom DeLay flying his staff to Florida to storm the recount center..and on and on...
Ohhh if this Court had made its decision and contemplated the consequences of it.
And the 51%...that is really funny. I believe that most audiences would be in the 68-32 ratio now....pretty soon all you will have to do is mention the name Bush and 90% will break out in laughter. I think Cheney is there now.
"Bush's effort to stop the vote count had much more to do with his desire to win than his desire to protect our democracy."
tjl:
Gore's desire to continue had exactly the same basis.
You are absolutly correct, of course. Both men were motivated by the same desire to win and used the method they best thought would accomplish their goals.
Yes, all the subsequent recounts by various groups did show that Bush won the election, but, had Gore ORIGINALLY asked for a state-wide recount he may have excluded the equal protection argument that ultimately was used. Then we would be having a different discussion.
Mackan ...
My problem is with the Supreme Court that sided with him
Of course .... because they sided with him and not Gore. :-D
(When you impose YOUR belief as to what the voter "really meant" - instead of how they actually voted - YOU are stealing their vote.)
Crimeny, did I say I wanted the Buchanan votes to count for Gore? I don't remember saying that. I'm simply saying you're nuts if you look at that situation and can't see it made a several thousand vote difference. And again, I'm saying that if you're going to talk about what Bush or Gore should have done, one thing to recognize is that not only was Gore ahead in national vote, but he'd have been ahead in Florida too if not for that glitch. You can say I don't know that, but I say that's a pretty lame way of denying an obvious truth.
You said:
Over 5,000 voters in the butterfly county voted for Gore and Buchanan, with another 2,700 voting for Gore and the guy below him (if you've seen the ballot, you know exactly how easy this would have been to do). That says nothing of the people who simply picked Buchanan or the other guy, meaning to pick Gore.
If you are not saying that some of those votes should have been counted for Gore REGARDLESS of what the ballot actually said, I have no idea what your point is.
The Democratic member of the local election board arguably designed the ballot poorly but that was the ballot in place on the morning of election day. To go back and say that some one voted just for Buchanan but that you "know" he/she really meant to vote for Gore????
I personally disliked both candidates intensely. If I left that particular race blank or if I voted for a 3rd party candidate, THAT IS WHAT I MEANT TO DO. Anyone who claims differently is simply making an attempt to steal my vote.
As to demographics and insulting Democrats, you know, I don't have any problem that the Democratic party embraces the underprivileged and consequently gets more of their votes.
You know I had forgotten all about the Clinton Administrations "fire sale" on American citizenship that occurred just prior to the election. Thanks for the reminder.
Yes, that's true that those who had their citizenship requests rushed through just prior to the election were reminded which political party made that possible.
I don't have a problem with people who immigrated, or didn't make it through school, or whatever problem voting they might have. Apparently you don't have any problem with a ballot that prevents those people's votes from being counted. I guess I'd rather be in a party with the former group than the latter...
Actually, I simply don't agree with your contention that just because a person is a member of minority group or because they have immigrated to this country they are incapable of filling out a voting card correctly.
And, unlike Gore, I most assuredly thought that the military personnel deployed in defense of their country should NOT be denied the right to cast their ballot for the candidate of their choice.
I am curious, howevever. Since both Cuban and Southeast Asian immigrants to this country generally vote heavily Republican, which minority group is it that you believe are incapable of filling out a voting card correctly?
Russ,
Since Mackan has apparently entered a "la-la land" where Vietnamese boat people and Cuban refugees are oil company executives in his mind, let me respond to what you ACTUALLY said.
Yes, Gore deliberately chose three counties with a high-rate of Democrats rather than a state-wide recount because it gave him a chance to "find" the votes that he needed. With a state-wide recount, he risked additional Bush votes being found as well and the overall ratio of votes (with Bush winning the state) being the same.
As the recounts demonstrated, even in the counties he picked, he didn't get the additional votes he thought that he would (although he did get a few) and the unofficial post election recounts all confirmed that Bush would still have won.
Clearly, Gore didn't want to risk ALL votes being recounted. Why else did he deliberately go to court to disenfranchise men and women serving their country overseas? Anyone who cared about ALL votes being counted wouldn't have done that.
Military members tend to be Republican voters. The area of the state where the polls were still open when the news media called the election for Bush early was also largely Republican. We certainly didn't see Gore demand that those people get extended hours after the media called the election for him, did we?
Now, there was nothing illegal about his actions, but they do discredit those who claim that "counting ALL the votes" was important to him. He wanted to become the president pure and simple.
And there's nothing wrong with that. However, IF the economy was a strong as has been claimed a that point (and not the "house of cards" that it later proved to be) AND he ran a halfway coherent campaign, he SHOULD have won the election and it shouldn't have been close.
The guy didn't even take his home state of Tennessee for pete's sake.
Mackan,
Twice you've mentioned that the nationwide popular vote went to Gore as if that has any relevance to the election. I lived in Texas at the time and voted 3rd party since I knew Texas would go heavily to Bush and I wasn't fond of either candidate. However, if the election was to be decided on a nationwide popular vote I am certain that I would have voted for either Bush or Gore since everyone knew it would be a close election nationwide.
Bush may very well have won a nationwide popular vote if that was the system in place. We will never know.
Only because I don't know when to quit I am going to try one more time.
Yes, you are correct; the Florida system did allow for a partial state recount. But that recount was to be done PRIOR TO CERTICATION OF THE VOTE, not AFTER the balance of the state had been certified.
All recounts were to be completed prior to the certification date, which was I think December 9th. Gore wanted to count after that date, and wanted the balance of the counties vote certified first.
Do you want to play Monopoly? Here are the rules, but I get to move three times to your one. Fair?
How about some Texas Hold'em? Except all of your cards need to be kept face up. Fair?
How about some Gin? Except once you call Gin I get to keep drawing cards until my score beats yours. Fair?
Yet you see nothing wrong with Gore certifying the vote in all but three counties, and then continuing to count those three heavily Democratic counties?
You are either a complete partisan or a disingenuous hack.
Mackan,
Thanks for confirming what I have suspected for awhile.
You have no clue what happened in Florida in 2000.
Florida law DID determine which votes should have counted and which ones didn't. It was the Florida Supreme Court who changed the rules, not the US Supreme Court. The ALL DEMOCRATIC Florida Supreme Court...
As to your objection to the US Supreme Court .... check the Constitution of the US. It's the way the system was set up regardless of whether you disagree with them or not.
I'm not sure why you assume all votes by US military serving overseas are inherently illegal solely because Gore opposed counting them all. I am hoping that it reflects your ignorance of the situation as opposed to a bias. Florida (AND Florida law) supports a number of military bases and the men and women deployed from them. Unfortunately Gore cannot say the same.
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