Tuesday, March 06, 2007
"The ongoing liberal fantasy ... "
I don't begrudge left-wingers for continuing to be disappointed that Al Gore wasn't elected President. However, I am getting tired of the ongoing liberal fantasy that Al Gore "won" Florida's electoral votes in 2000.
Writing in the March 5 New Yorker, David Remnick repeats the Gore-won-Florida canard thusly:
"[Al Gore was] the almost certain winner of any reasonable or consistent count in the state of Florida."
It is indeed time for liberals to accept the fact that Al Gore did not win the state of Florida in 2000. Not only did Gore come up short in each and every post-elelection recount conducted by the state of Florida, he lost "independent" recounts conducted by left-leaning newspapers, including the Miami Herald.
Remnick is also wrong to suggest that the U.S. Supreme Court acted extra-constitutionally when it brought an end to the 36-day election imbroglio. It's important to remember just what was transpiring when the 2000 recount was finally halted: the Gore campaign had convinced the Florida Supreme Court to order recounts in a handful of Gore-friendly counties; and each of the cherry-picked counties were using wildly divergent standards to count votes. The U.S. Supreme Court correctly ruled that the final Florida recount ran afoul of the Constitution's "equal protection" provisions.
That said, I wonder if Mr. Remnick remembers the Gore campaign's revolutionary notion that a voter's "intent" in presidential balloting could be divined based on his or her choices in other state and local races. I shudder to think how profound the "historical damage" would have been had such a precedent found its way into our electoral process.
Writing in the March 5 New Yorker, David Remnick repeats the Gore-won-Florida canard thusly:
"[Al Gore was] the almost certain winner of any reasonable or consistent count in the state of Florida."
It is indeed time for liberals to accept the fact that Al Gore did not win the state of Florida in 2000. Not only did Gore come up short in each and every post-elelection recount conducted by the state of Florida, he lost "independent" recounts conducted by left-leaning newspapers, including the Miami Herald.
Remnick is also wrong to suggest that the U.S. Supreme Court acted extra-constitutionally when it brought an end to the 36-day election imbroglio. It's important to remember just what was transpiring when the 2000 recount was finally halted: the Gore campaign had convinced the Florida Supreme Court to order recounts in a handful of Gore-friendly counties; and each of the cherry-picked counties were using wildly divergent standards to count votes. The U.S. Supreme Court correctly ruled that the final Florida recount ran afoul of the Constitution's "equal protection" provisions.
That said, I wonder if Mr. Remnick remembers the Gore campaign's revolutionary notion that a voter's "intent" in presidential balloting could be divined based on his or her choices in other state and local races. I shudder to think how profound the "historical damage" would have been had such a precedent found its way into our electoral process.
# posted by Joltin' Django @ Tuesday, March 06, 2007 
