Should Bush Concede?

[John Doughboy]

Of course we all know he won't, and I don't think Gore would either (though I think he'd be more likely to). But the popular vote is in Gore's favor, obviously he's the person the majority of the people want. So, do you think that Bush should concede, based on what could be viewed as a moral obligation to the people?

Keep in mind that my question isn't whether or not he will, but whether or not he should.

[Tretiak]

Gore won the popular vote only as it relates to the Electoral College and not relative to an actual popular vote. The candidtaes did not campaign based on popular vote and the people did not vote with that in mind. There fore popular vote arguments are meaningless, especially when it is this close.

[Amok]

What exactly would conceding do? Conceding is simply a courtisey that carries no legal weight.

Unless I'm mistaken, Bush can't just say "Oh, I don't want the job, give it to Gore", because it doesn't work that way. Assuming that Bush wins the popular vote in Florida, and the legal challenges fail, he will have won the election under our current laws. Now, if for some reason he decided he didn't want the job because he lost the popular election, he could refuse to take office, I suppose, but that would not give the job to Gore, but rather to Cheney.

If people want to reform the system so that the popular vote winner will always become the president, fine, go ahead and do so. But that's not the way the laws currently are, and no concession is going to change that.

[Drew Blade]

The popular vote is a long way from all counted yet--and doesn't matter as far as the EC vote goes. But if the ultimate EC vote goes against Bush, I expect he will concede.

[John Corrado]

Bush should concede if Al Gore and his staff show a full willingness to push lawsuits and PR battles well beyond the November 17th return deadline (that is, the point when *all* Florida ballots will have been received and counted).

If by Early December there are still lawsuits crying for an overturn of the Florida election, with every denied lawsuit being followed by a new lawsuit, and should Bill Daley and others still be coming out at daily press conferences claiming that "the will of the people is being subverted", then Bush should concede. He should hold a press conference stating that he *does* feel he was the legal winner, but that he is not willing to break the system in order to hold his victory, and that he is asking his brother Jeb to tell the Florida electors to vote for Gore. And end to the long national nightmare and all that.

Basically, Bush takes one for the party, and Al Gore looks like a smeghead (not that he doesn't already).

[Dumbguy]

I'm hoping that both sides carry on the legal shenanigans for another four years, and neither guy gets to be president. Then we all win.

[John Doughboy]

I can see now from the responses that this was a pretty dumb question. Oops.

[cmkeller]

Bush concede?

Concede what?

Until there's any proof that Gore got more electoral votes than he did, it wouldn't be a concession...it would be an abdication.

Now, maybe there are some Gore supporters who think he should abdicate and claim it will be "good for the country," but let's not call it a concession when so far, all the evidence says he's the winner.

[SouthernStyle]

One hates to vehemently disagree with one of the mods, but John, I have to ask if you're serious.

Are you really advocating that a legally elected representative decline to take office and allow the losing candidate to occupy the office just to promote peace and harmony?

I hope that you're being facetious. Please so that you are.

[John Corrado]

Originally posted by SouthernStyle
One hates to vehemently disagree with one of the mods, but John, I have to ask if you're serious.

No one should fear disagreeing with me just because I'm a mod. If you do worry that you'll see vengeance taken upon you because of my position, feel free to merely send a summary of my positions to David B. He's guaranteed to disagree with anything I say, and as a fellow mod, my powers over life and death are useless upon him.

Are you really advocating that a legally elected representative decline to take office and allow the losing candidate to occupy the office just to promote peace and harmony?

I hope that you're being facetious. Please so that you are.


I'm not really being facetious. However, I think that if- and this is a really big if- Al Gore and/or partisan Democrats are willing to tear apart the system rather than admit defeat, then it falls to the party's advantage to simply let them have it. They won't get much done (through the Republican Congress, after all), and I expect that their whininess and snippiness will be held against them come '02 and '04.

Besides, the alternative in that scenario is to join in and pull apart the system just as much. Is that really what we want?

[Zumba The Cat]

Originally posted by John Doughboy
... But the popular vote is in Gore's favor, obviously he's the person the majority of the people want[b]should.

I agree that the popular vote doesn't and shouldn't matter.

But, it should be noted that the popular vote isn't complete yet and Gore is not obviously anything.

Gore's margin of victory in the popular vote is less then 1%. A total recount of votes might change the margin completely. You saw what happened to the margin in FL when they recounted. If we ran the election on popular vote we would have FL times 50 right now.

The only thing that is obvious is that there is no clear majority.

[David B]

John said:
If you do worry that you'll see vengeance taken upon you because of my position, feel free to merely send a summary of my positions to David B. He's guaranteed to disagree with anything I sayI disagree.

[Typo Negative]

Conceding is for wussies. Fight to the bitter end, I say!!!

Really, would it hurt anyone to wait until all votes are counted before declaring a winner?

[Mahaloth]

I thought I'd calculate the most recent popular vote count so we'd have some common ground to work with.

As of November 10 at 3:48p.m.(ET):

Al Gore: 49,158,499.

George W. Bush: 48,953,441

The difference is 200,058. This is slightly under 4/10 of one percent(.0037 if you must know). I add that this only counts the votes that went to these two candidates. Nader got 2,695,482 and Buchanan 437,843.

Essentially, we don't know who won the popular vote because we'd have to recount, several times probably, ever single precint in the United States to come up with the number.

[SouthernStyle]

John,

If the entire mess were being played in a low key fashion I might agree with you. But seeing as how we have a dozen "major" sources continuously spouting their rhetoric and espousing their views ON TOP of the statements of the candidates, I think that the country would be much better served if the legal winner did NOT bow to the tactics of the losing candidate.

The prescedent of the media siding with the losing candidate to bully him/her out of accepting the office would reduce our political system to that of other so-called banana republics.


Anyone that follows world politics should have fresh in their mind the circumstances regarding the Serbian elections. Milosevic lost the election and was using every tactic available to invalidate the election. The U.S. was considering military intervention to remove Milosevic.

During the current administration's tenure, the U.S. did send its military might to Haiti to install the person we supported under the claim that he was the rightful ruler due to his winning the election.

So I'll ask again, given that the U.S. is willing to send its military around the world to enforce elections in other countries do you really think that the U.S. should allow Mr. Gore to become president despite the fact that he is NOT duly elected?

You're scaring me John....

[David B]

Mahaloth: Yeah, but Bush says we shouldn't do recounts like that, so I guess we have to give it to Gore (presuming the absentee ballots don't switch it the other way).

[Stoid]

Originally posted by cmkeller

.it would be an abdication.





Now THERE is an attractive idea!

[Arnold Winkelried]

OK, after reading yet another comment that the Democrats «are willing to tear apart the system rather than admit defeat,» I feel compelled to throw in some historical perspective.

From the commentary piece
"It's a Myth That Nixon Acquiesced in 1960", by David Greenberg, Los Angeles Times, Friday 10 November 2000 (I won't provide a link since LA Times links disappear after a few days), I learned the following:

After the extremely close 1960 election, on 11 November, three days after the election, Thruston B. Morton, Kentucky senator and Replublican Party national chairman, launched bids for recounts or investigations in not just Illinois and Texas (where there had been allegations of state ballot fixing) but also Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Robert H. Finch and Leonard W. Hall (close friends of Richard Nixon) sent agents to conduct "field checks" in eight of those 11 battleground states.

In some states (such as New Jersey or Illinois) the GOP obtained recounts without changing the final vote, in other states (Texas) the bid for recounds was rejected by a judge.

(The author of the article goes on to conclude that in his opinion Richard Nixon was behind these efforts but did not advocate them openly).

If the present-day situation were reversed, there is no doubt in my mind that the Republican party would be disputing votes just as acrimoniously, and I would not blame them, because after all the time, money and efforts spent on a political campaign it would be foolish not to want to ensure that the vote counts are correct.

[John Corrado]

Originally posted by Arnold Winkelried
OK, after reading yet another comment that the Democrats «are willing to tear apart the system rather than admit defeat,» I feel compelled to throw in some historical perspective.

Arnold, if your comment was in regards to mine (and given the wording, it looks like it was), I'd point out that my actual sentence was "However, I think that if- and this is a really big if- Al Gore and/or partisan Democrats are willing to tear apart the system rather than admit defeat".

I make no accusations towards the Democrats at this point.

Originally posted by SouthernStyle
If the entire mess were being played in a low key fashion I might agree with you. But seeing as how we have a dozen "major" sources continuously spouting their rhetoric and espousing their views ON TOP of the statements of the candidates, I think that the country would be much better served if the legal winner did NOT bow to the tactics of the losing candidate.

But I also think the country would be much better served if the legal winner did not also take the tactics of the losing candidate. And I think the country would be far better served in the long run if the legal winner chooses the high road and asquiesces rather than take the low road to (deserved) victory. Because that would just fuel the "both the parties and the entire system is tainted" feeling that exists, whereas the former course would likely result in a "reform the system so that a shmuck like (the victor) can't do that again".

[SouthernStyle]

So far the apparent winner IS taking the high road. I'm hearing very little out of the Republican camp that is anything other than what I'd expect from a winning candidate and his anticipated transition.

[Arnold Winkelried]

Originally posted by John Corrado
Arnold, if your comment was in regards to mine (and given the wording, it looks like it was), I'd point out that my actual sentence was "However, I think that if- and this is a really big if- Al Gore and/or partisan Democrats are willing to tear apart the system rather than admit defeat".

I saw the "if" and should have included it in my quote. The point I was trying to make is that acrimoniously disputing the results of a presidential election has precedence in the history of this country, and will not necessarily tear apart the system. From what I've read in the threads on the SDMB, most people are unaware (or only very vaguely cognizant) of the bitter fighting over votes in 1960. Elections in the USA were not forever "tainted" by that dispute.

[Lemur866]

David:

I don't think anyone, even the most rabid of Bush partisans is saying that we shouldn't have a recount. Of course we should have a recount, Florida's law requires it. IF the recount shows Gore ahead, then Gore will get Florida's electoral votes.

What people are worried about are the non-recount remedies. Jesse Jackson says that the recount is useless since there wasn't a first count. (I heard him say it on the radio, so this isn't an exact quote. I'm sure it's written down somewhere). What happens when/if the Gore camp says that even though the recount shows Bush ahead, there are other issues that invalidate the vote?

Sure, we can have an investigation...but for how long?

[wring]

Originally posted by SouthernStyle
So far the apparent winner IS taking the high road. I'm hearing very little out of the Republican camp that is anything other than what I'd expect from a winning candidate and his anticipated transition.



actually at this point, and at the point that Mr. Bush is making these transition team decisions, he's behind in both popular and electoral votes. The counts in both Oregon and Florida have yet to be certified, and Florida will NOT be until next Friday at the earliest. Given that the entire state of Florida may hinge on the overseas ballots that are still in the mail, it's premature of EITHER camp to declare and act victorious.

While I may believe that the overseas votes will probably put him over the top, the fact is, we have no way of knowing at this point how many there are and how those folks voted. Yes, there's a lot of military folks and many generally believe that they'd vote Bush, but there's also a great number in Israel, and we simply don't know at this point.

[Spiritus Mundi]

To date, the total actions of teh Gore campaign with respect to the Florida vote has been to ask for a hand recount in 4 counties. Given teh significant disparities in the machine counts for those counties, this seems entirely reasonable and prudent. I have little respect for the position that it is unimportant for there to be a reliable accounting of valid ballots in a closely contested election.

Now, there has been an escalation of rhetoric from both sides in the campaign which I find disturbing. The Gore campaign was foolsih to state that it might lend support to any suits in state or federal courts. The Bush campaign has been presumptive and arrogant to act as if he is the winner of an election that is still in doubt.

I have little sympathy for either campaign.

I do, however, have a passionate belief that it is at least mildly important in a democratic election for the votes to be counted accurately and reliably.

Frankly, I am amzed that there is not more shared outrage against the flaws in the process. The citizens of this country have every right to expect their valid ballots to be properly counted.

[Sterra]

damn human error, we should get rid of it

[Squink]

The fatal error rate on the Palm Beach County ballots was over 4% (19,120/461,988) that's a lot higher than we find acceptable in Nebraska ! They need to fix this so that the guy who won can get on with things, and the guy who lost can go slinking back to Texas.

[jshore]

Originally posted by SouthernStyle
So far the apparent winner IS taking the high road. I'm hearing very little out of the Republican camp that is anything other than what I'd expect from a winning candidate and his anticipated transition.



Wow, you really do live in a parallel universe from us! Give me a break. As a Gore partisan, I am willing to agree with Spiritus that some of the rhetoric on the Gore side has been too inflammatory (and even some of the numbers flying out of there have been somewhat deceiving). However, your claim that the Republicans are taking the high road is, frankly, BS. There are plenty of distortions, half-truths, and rhetoric coming out of the Bush camp. If that's the high road, I hate to see what the low road looks like!

[jshore]

Originally posted by Zumba The Cat

Gore's margin of victory in the popular vote is less then 1%. A total recount of votes might change the margin completely. You saw what happened to the margin in FL when they recounted. If we ran the election on popular vote we would have FL times 50 right now.


I have to disagree a bit on the technicalities here...For one thing, while the current margin in popular votes stands at 0.4%, the margin in Florida before the recount was only 0.03%. So, assuming the popular vote doesn't tighten up a lot, that's a pretty big difference.

Also, one can argue that if there are unbiased errors being produced at a small scale, their net effect would tend to go like sqrt(N), which means that a 0.0075% difference in 100 million nationwide votes would probably shift under recount with the same probability as the 0.03% difference in the 6 million Florida votes. In other words, a vote on a larger scale can probably be trusted down to a somewhat smaller percentage. (Trusted in the sense of not changing under a recount...Not trusted in the sense of meaning anything in terms of a mandate.)

[wastelands]

This whole issue comes down to Gore beleiving his destiny is to become President. The popular vote is just a number. THere is no "National" vote, it's a vote within 50 different states. The Federalist Papers called for an EC and later called for in the Constitution. I understand that a man who uses "No controlling legal authority" as a defense to breaking one of many laws might want the backbone of our great nation to bend to his will, this is expected of Gore. Florida (along with all other 49 states) state that any ballot with more than 1 Pres vote is discarded. I don't care how confusing a ballot might seem after it was approved, that is the law. Do you know of anyone that thinks they can vote twice? (Not including those receiving 2 ballots in WI)

As far as who can work with an almost bilateral Congress? Think to yourself who is less polarizing? Bush has proven that he can get Texas Dems to support at least some of his legislation. When is the last time you heard Gore say anything non-vitriolic about the GOP?

And last, we are not in a Constitutional crisis. Our country's law is specific. If a President is not elected by the EC, the Speaker is sworn in. Unless Rich Daly is exhumed to pay of the Electors. Gore, you have till 1/20/01 to find the witch doctor.

To qoute "Boss" Daly (Dem) "Vote early, vote often, even if you're already dead"

[pantom]

Boy, wastelands, you really oughtta read a little. Gore has suffered no end of abuse in many of the threads around here for having had a less than perfect voting record on the environment when he was a senator, among many other complaints about him, all pointing to the fact that his voting record in the Senate was far less partisan than your average Democrat's.
As to Bush's character: anyone who can defend a death penalty that puts to death one person every two weeks on average, and seriously claim that no innocent man has died, has no character in my book. I consider it a moral travesty of the highest order that he should be seriously considered for our highest national office.

[jshore]

Wastelands, you might also try looking at the text of Al Gore's statements on Wednesday. I think he said it as clearly and explicitly as it can be said (I'm paraphrasing here): The Constitution says the President is determined by the electoral college, not the total popular vote, and the basis of our whole democracy is our Constitution.

Who then are you arguing against here? If you want to see a discussion of why the popular vote is getting any mention, see my comments in the "Popular Vote is Irrelevant" thread. As I said there, some of the rhetoric from the Gore camp may have been not as nuisanced on the popular vote thing as it should be...But, I think Al Gore's own statement on the matter is clear and unambiguous.


As far as who can work with an almost bilateral Congress? Think to yourself who is less polarizing? Bush has proven that he can get Texas Dems to support at least some of his legislation. When is the last time you heard Gore say anything non-vitriolic about the GOP?

As others have pointed out, there are countless times in which Al Gore has broken ranks with the Democrats on major policy issues, including the war with Iraq to name just one.

As for the fact that George can get along with Dems in Texas, I think Cokie Roberts or someone like that on NPR said it best: Some of the so-called "Democrats" in Texas are, for all intents and purposes, Republicans...at least by Washington standards. So, getting along with them is very different than getting along with Democrats in the U.S. Congress. Gore, by contrast, has shown that he can work with Republicans in Congress and the executive branch in Washington, and in fact, some of us think he is willing to go along with them a bit too much!