"I am always happy to point out that this president’s political allies helped him steal the 2004 election, and it’s a double pleasure to be able to say that Mickey is right about something, here, too, particularly when it’s just a couple of days after his sneering at journalists generally. Paul Krugman does not sneer at journalists; he does their job for them, in between doing his other job, as a professor of economics at Princeton. And per usual, he’s dead right here, which is obviously not as big a deal as Mickey being right, since it’s nothing unusual. Anyway, here is the graph of his that has right wing bloggers’ panties in a bundle.
"In his recent book "Steal This Vote" - a very judicious work, despite its title - Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I've seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: "Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election.
…
"Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. This was true despite a host of efforts by state and local officials to suppress likely Gore votes, most notably Ms. Harris's "felon purge," which disenfranchised large numbers of valid voters. But few Americans have heard these facts. Perhaps journalists have felt that it would be divisive to cast doubt on the Bush administration's legitimacy.
"Really, it’s not controversial at all, unless facts have no meaning. The only counting method through which Gore would have lost was the one his profoundly incompetent legal team happened to choose to argue, not that it mattered. The media seized upon this coincidence to try to protect Bush’s legitimacy. But the fact his, Gore won Florida by any sensible standard."
It's always amazed me that the American people, institutions, & political parties just rolled over on the 2000 election. That may be too strong, but how could "the world's greatest country/democracy" become so warped, so fooled, so tragic? Yes, it's money, Rove, backward thinking jurists, et.al. Actually, the American people, the voters, in 2000 got it right; but the ReThugs just couldn't allow it. & we have suffered since. It's not just the Iraq war - the environment, living wages, human/civil rights, the list goes on & on. & at a personal level it's just as bad - how/if will we be able to retire? What of the coming GrandChild, the kid & her husband, what sort of life will they have? Will they be able to afford a home? I hope against hope (yes, I stole that) that the ReThugs will be buried permanently, that the American electorate will quit voting against their own self interest, their own lives, their own children.
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