Spin-proof snapshots of America                           

"Get Over" the 2000 election

say conservatives, over and over again.

Do they really know what they're saying?

You can't find a conservative outlet without this theme, or at least Dr. Spade cannot.

From The National Review to Anton Scalia to countless talk show hosts, they love to paint the Democrats as whiners, over a little thing like a fraudulent president.

There are many, many problems with this, but Dr. Spade will summarize:

        Al Gore won the election.

        Not should-have won, or just won the popular vote, but had more votes in Florida, the key state.

        This is according to the painstaking recount by 8 newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal.

        Of course, the headlines emphasized that the Supreme Court did not change the outcome, since they stopped the recount only in counties that did not end up favoring Gore. But they effectively stopped the statewide recount, too.

We have a different president because we can't count.

Fuzzy math.

Surely it must be more complicated than that, you say, and it is. There's a reason we stopped a careful counting.

That Katherine Harris did not step aside -- an election commissioner who was co-chairman of the campaign of one of the candidates? -- is nearly as embarrassing as the fact that conservatives launched her to Congress afterward.

Yes, the Al Gore posters waved outside the Supreme Court were just as misplaced as the George Bush ones (this about DEMOCRACY, not about your candidate, you morons -- we need to count the votes. All votes, for both candidates).

But Dr. Spade can find no examples of Democrats being flown to Florida to create riots with the purpose of halting vote counts.

He did find this amusing video, with faces from Capitol Hill

Election Results

Should be

• Complete

• Fair

• and Verifiable

Sounds fair, yes?

• 80% of all election results in America are tallied on systems designed by Diebold and ES&S, both founded by Republican Bob Urosevich.

Diebold's current CEO, Wally O'Dell, announced that he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President."

• Only a small fraction of them keep paper records for verification.

• The software running them is proprietary ("secret"), and one of the few things the public knows about it is that it has been hacked during security tests, some of which were overseen by the Department of Defense. Such a hack leaves no trace.

• There is no independent verification of our computerized election results -- indeed, under our current system, none is even possible.

• In Ohio 2004, Warren County officials closed the vote count to impartial observers, citing an F.B.I. warning of a terrorist threat. The F.B.I. denies issuing any such warning.

• In Miami County, Ohio, 2004, voter turnout was reported as an outstandingly unlikely 98.55 percent of all eligible voters.

• Ohio's secretary of state, responsible for supervising the election, was co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Does this sound familiar? There's a whole host of voting improprieties detailed in Independent observer Andrew Gumbel's book Steal this Vote.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist (go here for that). I believe John Kerry lost in 2004. I just can't believe a company would fake votes for a presidential candidate:  the treason is too shocking, and I have too much faith in the system.

But perhaps some old-fashioned suspicion of the government (that OLD conservative value), and its ties to private industry, would serve us well.

Ralph Nader

No discussion of the 2000 election would be complete without Ralph Nader, and no discussion about Ralph would change the fact that if he'd been hit by a bus in 1999, we'd have a different administration...

...under a president who wrote about global warming long before you'd heard of it and possibly before you were born, for crying out loud, Naderites.

Here's an excerpt Dan Savage's column

Why am I voting for Ralph Nader? It's the issues, man! Nader stands for several things that neither Bush nor Gore stand for: A real commitment to campaign finance reform. Ending the drug war. Ending the death penalty. Ending the rule of corporations in our culture. With Nader in this race, we don't have to choose between the lesser of two evils!   -   Nader Fan In NYC 

Ralph Nader is not "in this race," and no celebrity endorsement or kick-ass position on drug legalization is going put him in. While it may not be much fun having to choose between the lesser of two evils, that's the choice adult voters face this year. Ralph Nader is a vanity candidate running a vanity campaign for a Potemkin party, the Greens. And while Al Gore may not be perfect, he's better than Bush. 

If Nader voters manage to put Bush in the White House next year, some of your fellow citizens (women, queers, the poor) are going to pay a high price for your refusal to grow up and make the real choice you face--which, again, is a choice between Bush and Gore. You may have to grit your teeth when you vote for Gore, but that's a small price to pay to keep the environment, the poor, and the English language  from the harm George W. Bush will surely do all three. 

Yes, yes, I know: Ralph is better on the issues. So is my mom. Actually, on some issues, my mom is better than Ralph. But my mom isn't a serious candidate for president, and neither is he. 

 It's my hope that if Nader gets a significant number of votes, Gore and the Democrats might shape up and move to the left.                --- White Boy With Clean And Luxurious Hair 

How sad that such luxurious hair is wasted on so empty a head.

Let's pretend it's the day after the election, and the votes are in. Bush got 49%, Gore got 46%, and Nader hit the 5% jackpot (not gonna happen). Do you really believe the Democrats are going to smack their foreheads and say, "Oh, my God, let's move to the left and snap up that 5%!"

Don't be an idiot. The Dems will look at the numbers and say, "Let's move to the right and try to peel some of that 49% off Bush." If Gore loses the election by less than the percentage Ralph picks up, we'll all be watching the Dems tack right, not left. 

[Dr. Spade comments: Nostradamus has nothing on Savage. Nader failed to get 5% of the vote, and the Dems moved to the center (John Kerry really did court John McCain as a running mate). Nader showed not the least remorse for his impact.]

 The point of voting for Nader is that if he gets at least 5% of the vote, the Green Party will receive federal funding that will put it on more equal footing with the  Democrats and Republicans. Ralph, bless his heart, doesn't have a chance of getting elected, but I'm not voting for Ralph. I'm casting my vote in hopes of creating a viable third party.   - A Half-White, Half-Latino Boy Without Dreadlocks & A Texan Who Loses Whether Bush Stays Or Goes 

If Ralph Nader hits 5% of the vote (which isn't gonna happen), the Greens will indeed get federal matching funds the next time out. Nader supporters would have us believe that these funds will somehow magically transform the Greens into a viable third party.

But if federal matching funds have that power, how come the Reform Party, which got millions in federal dollars in the last two presidential elections, isn't a viable third party? That money didn't keep the Reform Party from imploding, nor did it prevent them from nominating Pat Buchanan.

As for federal matching funds putting a third party "on equal footing" with the Ds and Rs, tell me, did that money get Pat Buchanan in the debates this year? Did it stop Gov. Jesse Ventura, their only real success story, from dropping out of the Reform Party and going independent? 

This is a close race, and no one on either the left or the right has the luxury of tossing away their vote on a vanity candidate.

Hey, lefties, why do you think Buchanan isn't getting any traction on the right? Because hard-right wackos can tell the difference between Bush and Gore, and they would rather see Bush in the White House. Gee, if the right-wing wackos think there's a difference between Bush and Gore, how come the left-wing wackos don't? Could it be that the left-wing wackos are wrong?

Putting Bush in the White House not only won't create a viable third party, but it will have devastating consequences for women, gays and lesbians, the environment, the Supreme Court, and the poor. Hey, that's everyone and everything Nader voters claim to give a shit about!