I personally attribute it to Greenspan tightening up on the Red-Hot tech ride, causing it to crash worse than anyone suspected it would.
But then I’m not a democrat mad Al Gore didn’t win.
**
Zenster,
I would like to gently suggest that you delve further into our history before you make wild assertions. Gadarene might recommend that you begin with A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government by Garry Wills.
The public’s belief that politicians are corrupt is older than our nation.
Hi! I’m a Weenie
What’s your sign?
Any chance of getting some of those old Soviet “Hero of the Party” medals for the gang of five republican stalwarts on the supreme court ? Their abuse of court powers in order to abort the normal electoral process and give America the moral leadership it needs must not go unaknowledged !
If you can find them in time, saturday would be a wonderful day to present them on behalf of the new regimes grateful subjects.
Let’s see: the people voted for the president. This vote is inconclusive, so procedures that have been previously voted on are followed. The implementation of these processes is controlled by people who were voted into office. Tell me again how Democracy is dead? Because in a “perfect world” the other guy would have won? Well guess what, it was voted to not have what you consider a “perfect world”. It was voted to have the president decided by electoral vote rather than popular vote. It was voted that the Florida government would be in charge of administrating the election of their delegates, and this government was voted into office. It was voted that the USSC would have final jurisdiction, and every Justice was voted to be an acceptable choice. It’s rather hypocritical to oppose what has been voted and then whine about democracy being dead.
[nitpick]42nd. The first one wasn’t exactly peacful[/nitpick]
Nor was the sixteenth…eventually. 
Yeah, but let’s include David R. Atchinson, who filled in for a day when Zachary Taylor refused to get innaugurated on a Sunday. That was certainly peaceful, even if inconsequential. Hell, power very peacefully transferred to Bush (the elder) for a few minutes while Reagan was under anesthesia.
Actually, now that I think about it, the first was peaceful as well. Power transferred quite sedately from government under the Articles of Confederation to government under the Constitution. And there were a few transitions that were unremarkable in their level of violence before then as well.
Oh, and if you think this was the death of democracy, what do you call the backroom dealing of the 1824 election? There also seems to be a bit of misunderstanding of what death means. I’ll give you a clue, death is, by ddefinition, permanent. To say that democracy is dead is to say that never again will the will of the people peacefully decide an election. Since the response so far has been to prevent a similar situation from eer occurring, I’d say that that proposition already has a strike against it.
Not really. I’ve been declared dead 3 times so far – electrocuted, drown in the creek behind Grandpa’s house, and a very nasty motorcycle accident. Twice by emergency technicians, once by a doctor. Unless you suspect I’m posting from beyond the grave (which would be cool) please rotate your axioms. I’ve got 4 friends who have been declared dead… apparently, we tend to congregate. Check my rant; I said this was the afternoon of the living dead, (admittedly a stolen line) and that Democracy would rise again.
Sorry, Scylla. What I wanted to say was:
Does that make it more clear for you? I was quoting Sua & St. 0. This is allegedly Great Debates; and all you wimps can come up with is
- It didn’t happen, and
- You’re an immature whiner, grow up, get over it.
It did happen. The chances of me growing up are equal to the odds you can get from Vegas for the Cubs and the Vikings winning the Super Bowl and the World Series respectively in the same year.
And, I won’t get over it. My protest is not about Gore or Bush, Coke or Pepsi. Kennedy stole the election from Nixon, and Daley was a Dem, wasn’t he?
It’s about the systemic flouting of these “voted for” laws. Which you deny happened.
The wheel of justice spins slow, but it grinds fine. In three years or so we’ll see if you’re right.
I pissed off most of the people that organized this protest (lawyers, professional politicians, party hangers on, old hippies) with my first draft. You humorless d*cks would have actually fit right in with The Committee.
And Svinlesha, any bumper sticker you want.
Groovy! I think I’ll take:
“My parents just retired to Florida and all I got was this lousy president.”
That’s the best one.
I find the cynicism to be an even larger nail in the coffin of our Representative Republic than and hiccups in our legilative/election process.
Processes can be ammended. Mistakes can be corrected, hopefully in such a way as to render their reoccurance impossible, or at least exceedingly unlikely.
But when cynicism and hoplessness replace faith in the process, or lead to a surrender to inaction and partisanship, then the motivation for the legislature to ammend the process disappears. If the people don’t care, why bother, right?
And of the people really don’t care, they’re not going to pay attention when our legislature runs amok with outlandish spending on pork-projects, the curtailment of civil liberties through administrative/regulatory schemes, the economic disenfranchisement of large sections of the populace, and the suborning of liberty to corporate interests, both domestically and abroad.
Voting for a candidate and then ignoring your government for another 2 to 4 years in the expectation that your elected representatives are now in charge of “fixing it” (whatever “it” may be) is foolish; an aware, active and concerned populace is the only sure hedge against tyranny through legislation, either through the legislature, the administration or the judiciary.
In that regard, I laud your enthusiasm and activism, but find it’s tone and direction sorely misplaced.
Your jaded cynicism and rancorous speeches may replace productive dialogue, and scuttle any attempt to investigate the alleged wrongs of the Florida elections.
Ironically, it may have been the Democrat’s success in “getting out the vote” that led to the Florida fiasco in the first place. The rolls of registered voters swelled beyond the various county’s election commission’s ability to cope on such short notice after years of voter indifference or outright apathy.
Add to that the inexperience of first-time voters coupled with outdated voting mechanisms and inadequate ballot formats, and the resulting chaos in Florida seems almost inevitable in retrospect.
But instead of retiring to partisan sniping and cynical posturing, wouldn’t your energies be more productively channeled into looking towards the future with the mindset of “Never Again!”, and working within the system to enact productive reform?
Yes, we should all be polite as the republicans corrupt the system “just one more time”.
ExTank, nobody likes my tone. The organizers of the protest didn’t like my tone. I’m glad to see we can find some common ground. (You’re solidly in the majority on this one)
If you think that rant was cynical and partisan, you should have seen the 3 pages The Committee vetoed There was a lot more lawyer bashing, Gore & Bush bashing, railing against the corporate state…
Slightly saner minds prevailed. Actually, my handlers did a fine and thankless job and deserve kudos. It was a fractious and fragile coallition.
I thought “Wake up. Kick butt.” was a call for activism. (I also liked the play on the word “wake”.)
Yeah, I’m cynical. That’s pretty much what happens to idealists who don’t commit suicide.
**
They can if they follow instructions and cast it correctly.
DrPinky - You absolutely MUST get together with elucidator and have some white zinfandels. You can congratulate one another on having all the answers for us little people whose differing opinions are just the result of not being as enlightened as you. Maybe you could also have a contest to see which one is the most impressed with himself.
“Irreparable damage”? The corpse of this perception has long since decayed into dust, along with the perception that Democrats have any issues that they care about more than their own personal fortunes (witness the rubber-stamping that’s about to occur of all Bush’s Cabinet appointments).
I think the bumper sticker of the hour is “Don’t blame me - I dimpled for Gore”.
Well, hell, so long as the “following instructions test” is applied equally to both sides, that’s fine with me.
But (as has already been demonstrated, and published in the national press) who got the machines that were easy to vote on, and who got the machines that were more complicated and prone to various forms of error, was statistically dependent on race and class.
If you set different hurdles for voters more likely to vote for one party, than you do for the other - if you set different hurdles for voters of one race than for another - seems like you’re tilting the board, so to speak. That’s the huge equal-protection issue that the Supreme Court ignored, while it took a much smaller issue to heart.
This happened. Nobody’s disputing it. Any questions?
“DrPinky - You absolutely MUST get together with elucidator and have some white zinfandels. You can congratulate one another on having all the answers for us little people whose differing opinions are just the result of not being as enlightened as you. Maybe you could also have a contest to see which one is the most impressed with himself.”
That was funny.
Read Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers. The “advise and consent” of the Senate on Cabinet appointments is intended only to allow the Senate to block people who were incompetent, corrupt, or criminals. It is not supposed to be a point where the Senate vetoes people they disagree with.
With the Ashcroft and Norton nominations, there is a legitimate competency issue as to whether they are capable of enforcing laws they virulently disagree with, but that’s about it.
Sua
RTFirefly:
Those press reports also noted that the disparity to which you refer is the result of the county governments not having or wanting to spend the money to upgrade voting machinery. In most cases, those decisions were being made by a majority of Democrats.
Anyone who wants to cry racism, blame Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris or any other Republican exclusively; or characterize this as an attempt to disenfranchise particular segments of society; is quite misguided.
This election pointed out some of the problems that are out there. They should have been addressed before the election; they couldn’t fairly be addressed as the election unfolded; and they seem to be addressing them now.
If that’s not good enough for you, I don’t know what to tell you.
“Don’t blame me I voted for Nader”
C’mon. This is the Straight Dope.
Kennedy received enough electoral votes to beat Nixon even if Illinois had gone the other way. Daley could have tripled the illegal votes he supplied (or done nothing illegal at all) and the 1960 election would have resulted in a Kennedy win.
Yup. Didn’t Gore contest the election first? Didn’t he file suit to have the recounts go forward? Didn’t he file suit to have recounts in only Democratic strongholds in Florida?
Or did I miss the part where Gore sat back peacefully, even budda like, and Bush filed a lawsuit to stop recounts that were mandated by State Law. Did I miss the part where Gore tried to keep his lawyers from going in front of the supreme court? Did I miss the part where Gore honestly believed that the entire state of florida should be recounted instead of just places he thought he should have won?
I’ll tell you this again. Get over it! Gore lost. You can’t do anything about it now. It’s over. You wanna whine till the next election? Feel Free.
My advice, though, would be to work to support your side, to make sure there is actual progress in government rather than 2 more years of Partisan BS in congress.
I’m done with these arguements. There’s no debate here.