Fuck Al Gore, and his patronizing dismissal of Ron Paul's candidacy. The man who actually won the 2000 presidential election deserves a fair share of the blame for the predicament we find ourselves in today. Why? Well because Gore's craven surrender to the forces behind George W Bush dealt a mortal wound to our democracy. Prior to that infamous moment, most Americans were "silly" enough to believe that the candidate who got the most votes actually won the election.
At the point in time when he conceded the election to Bush, Gore still had plenty of options remaining to him. Instead, he meekly stood by and allowed the Supreme Court to install Bush as president. Gore had the legitimacy bestowed upon him by a half-million vote lead in the popular count. But, for reasons still unexplained, he unaccountably let the Republicans gain the moral high ground in the disputed election. Anyone remember the signs that the very well-organized GOP ground troops displayed?
"SORE-LOSERMAN" they read, and that was the perception that took hold in the public mind. Bush supporters even went so far as to protest outside of Gore's official residence as vice president chanting "Get out of Cheney's house!" over and over. Actually, I did find that rather amusing at the time.
But, where were all of Gore's ground troops while this was going on? Nowhere to be found for the simple reason that Gore never granted permission for them to rally to his cause. The Bush people hired family retainer/attack dog James Baker to lead the fight. Gore countered with a man whose demeanor positively screamed "kick my ass all over the state of Florida", Warren Christopher.
Personally, I believe that Gore was in on the fix. He was never supposed to win that election.
But, he did.
Any voter who believes that the candidate who gets the most votes wins the Presidency is very "silly" and is in desperate need of a basic class in civics.
ReplyDeleteSurely you are aware of the Electoral College and the provisions set-forth in the 12th amendment. Constitutionally it does not matter whether one wins the popular vote by 500,000, 1,000,000, or more. The popular count is simply irrelevant.
I am aware that those on the left care little for the “silly” US Constitution, and firmly believe that it should be ignored, or even shredded when it stands in the way of “progress”. Unfortunately for liberals, our founding fathers had the wisdom to draft a document often stands right in front of the lefts perception of “progress” and shouts, “halt”.
Now if ol’ Al had asked for a state-wide recount, he would have gotten it, his fear of such a recount adding to Bush’s margin of victory led him to demand a recount of cherry-picked districts that would be more favorable to his political leanings. He wanted only those districts where hanging chads and other forms of fraud would play into his favor.
The courts did not allow this, and were correct.
I will say that President AL would have been an entertaining resident of the White House. Since we now have learned so much about the man, like the fact that according to various massage therapists he learned an awful lot from his former boss. You have to agree, to picture that puffy old man answering a hotel room door, and saying to his prospective victim, “Hi, you can call me Al” wearing just an open bathrobe has to even make you chuckle.
We will never know what the real popular election numbers were as there were many states where recounts will never be done, like California, where there were over 2,000,000 absentee ballots missing. There was no need for a recount as the missing ballots could not change the outcome of the election there. But we can assume that, as in most states, the absentee ballots might well have been weighted towards the Republican.
Again, it is a moot point, because the popular vote only matters to those who do not understand how we elect our President.