Because I started lots of election threads? You have an incredibly loose definitiion of “irony”, Jodi.
Me too! That would be why it is so strange that Republicans are doing exactly that.
Now THIS is ironic, coming from a Republican supporter. I have no idea how you personally felt about Clinton, or what your opinion of the way the Republicans treated him was, but if you were behind them 100%, then how in heaven’s name did you manage to choke this sentence out?
As for “bi-partisianship”, well, no personal offense meant, but blow me. Minty Green had it exactly right. It would have been one thing if he’d taken office and acted in a manner remotely reflective not only of the incredibly stinky way he took office, including the fact that Gore unquestionably received a greater amount of support from all Americans, but of his own stupid, lying rhetoric. He didn’t even * try * to fake it.
Please, Jodi - you accused me of supporting the undermining of the institution of the Presidency itself, not the occupant or his policies. Any “facility” etc. in that argument is in your own mind, not arising from what I said (and which I urge you once again to read and digest before replying to it).
You also raised the issue of the election being an extremely close call, and therefore making “divining the people’s will” a tossup. On the Electoral College side, you’re right, but not on the popular-vote side that more directly reflects the “people’s will” you claim to be interested in, it wasn’t all that close.
If you want to be convincing, a little more honesty would be a great help.
I asked “And why can’t he “shove right-wing nonsense” down the voting public’s throat? Because they didn’t vote for the “nonsense,” or because they didn’t vote for HIM and it’s HIS nonsense?”
. . . to which MINTY replied: “Both.”
But this is my exact point. It is artificial and facile to say “attacks upon the validity of the election are not attacks upon the individual but upon his POLICIES.” That’s what I’m saying, and why I dismiss claims that concentration on the president’s legitimacy are about “policy” as opposed to about the president.
TRANQUILIS:
I agree entirely, and as today’s Exhibit A would offer the thread that takes exception to Bush reversing himself on policy – a legitimate beef – but sports the title “Is Bush Capable Of Telling The Truth?” No bias there! :rolleyes:
STOID:
No, it’s pretty much right out of the dictionary. You bitch and moan and piss and whine and cry and kvetch about the election until people want to toss their lunches, and then you complain if a Republican posts a pro-Bush election thread. THAT’S ironic.
For my response to this, I intend a minor hijack of your “sunshine and light” thread, so I will direct your attention there. I believe the hijack will appear on the second page. Unlike you, I am well-aware of the posting parameters for Great Debates, and I intend to abide by them.
ELVIS:
What? According to the certified election results (source: Federal Register), it was 50,996,582 for Gore and 50,456,062 for Bush – or a little more that 1/2 million votes out of 101.5 million votes cast. If my math is correct, that’s a margin of around one-half of one percent. You do the math on that and then get back to me on how you can construe it as “not all that close.”
Tread very carefully. I take accusations of dishonesty extremely seriously. You may well say that I have misundertood you or you have misunderstood me, and we will have no problem. But if you are going to accuse me of being dishonest, you had better be ready to back that up.
I’m just reminding myself of why I so rarely wade into these election threads, and it’s not the brilliancy of the arguments. It’s dealing with people who continue to feel so strongly about the issue that they cannot even DISCUSS it without recourse to over-blown rhetoric (“stuffing right-wing agenda down the unwilling public’s throat” – three of four separate references, I believe) or flat-out insult, either direct (“blow me”) or implied (“If you want to be convincing, a little more honesty would be a great help.”)
No wonder my basic reaction remains “get over it,” despite the manifest evidence that some people never will. I mean, there’s very little use it trying to rationally discuss the matter anyway.
There ain’t much left of that horse you’re beating, Jodi. Look, this whole thing started when you asked:
Several of us responded in close order that it served the “practical” purpose of undermining Bush’s policies. Not a one of us said anything about using the election results to kick Bush out of office or otherwise undermine his presidential powers. (Except for whoever it was back on page one who called on Bush to resign, which is, of course, ridiculous.)
Nowhere in Article II is the president granted the power to push any particular agenda. That’s a question of politics, not the powers and duties of the executive branch. He’s president, and there ain’t a damn thing anyone can do now to undermine his presidential powers. But if the voters (even under the archaic and undemocratic rules of the electoral college) intended that the election should have gone the other way, it weakens the political capital that the president needs to pursue those parts of his agenda the voters attempted to reject. Bush still gets to sign or veto the bills that come across his desk, but the things that make it there will (hopefully) be somewhat less to his liking, and more to mine.
I understand your point, Jodi, and have ever since you first made it. As I said before in attempting to drop this subject, I simply disagree. And this is ansolutely the last thing I have to say on the policy/president distinction.
That was EXACTLY what you did, and it’s not just my opinion and you damn well know it. Shoot, you were the recipient of two separate dedicated Pit threads about your inability to let the issue go – and you STILL can’t let it go. But feel free to tell me I’m wrong again; that’s ever so effective as a debating technique.
But if any of three hypotheticals do not apply then question asked is based on nothing and is therefore senseless and idiotic. Pretty simple. Sorry if you were confused about that.
Yes, please check the math and tell me which number is larger. “Not all that close” means there’s no plausible chance that this is statistical error. Bush LOST the popular vote. More people voted for Gore and his agenda and views than voted for Bush and his views. Simple fact. Deal with it. If you care to dispute that it’s a fact, or could be construed as meaning the opposite, go ahead - you’ll be the first I’ve ever seen to try that approach, though.
It has been pointed out multiple times how you have inferred a meaning exactly opposite to what has been said in my posts and others’. “Tread very carefully” before making accusations as scurrilous as the ones you’ve made already, based on exactly the opposite of what has been said. Your motivations are your own concern, but the effects of your statements on the ones they are directed toward are not.
Now, if you still have trouble seeing that a politician and his agenda are different things, well, it’s been discussed in detail here multiple times. I’m sorry that hasn’t penetrated, but at this point that’s nobody else’s fault.
I manifestly disagree with your analysis here, Jodi. Before I try to fire full salvo, I would ask you to elaborate on what exactly “legitimate politics” are.
In my opinion, meaningless concentration on the election has tremendous practical benefits. I see little reason to debate the president’s policies on their own terms, as it were, when it is both easier and more effective to mobilize one’s base with accusations of Bush’s illegitimacy in certain situations. Such accusations would not untrue either, regardless of whether Gore would have been placed in precisely the same position. Since there were serious and indisputable problems with the election, such claims would at worst be dubious inferences, certainly par for the course in “legitimate politics.”
Furthermore, it is my goal to undermine Bush’s tenure as president, and I am not shy about admitting it. Genteel policy discourse is a luxury among equals. Those in power have not shown a tremendous willingness to engage in such discourse since they now have the opportunity to pass their agenda. Disobedience and dubious inferences are just two of the tools disaffected individuals and organizations who are no longer in power can employ, and I’ll be damned if I am going to give them up in favor of high-minded “discourse” with those in power. I am firmly committed to the idea that most of Bush’s policies will in fact be deleterious to the United States: hence I am obligated to pursue whatever avenues of dissent are available to me.
I would also ask you to fill us in how such accusations undermine the office of the president itself. It makes a nice phrase, to be sure, but it smacks a little too much of ahistorical idealism.
Checking . . . Gore’s number is larger. But then I’ve already acknoweldged he won the popular vote – back when we were discussing the Electoral College.
Uhhhhh . . . in whose world does “not all that close” mean “no statistical error”? “Close” and “certain” do not mean the same thing. If you weigh 150 pounds and I weigh 149, are you going to tell me our weights are “not all that close” so long as they are not subject to statistical error? Two is a number that is close to one. This has nothing to do with statistics. It has to do with the generally accepted meaning of the word “close.” With 101 million votes cast and a difference of one half of one percentage point, the election cannot possibly be described as “not all that close.”
I have already SAID this. But MY point is that if 49% voted for one guy and 51% voted for another, NEITHER can claim a mandate. NEITHER can say “I represent the wishes of the American public” – because almost half (or just over half) of the American public voted the other way. The election was so close that claiming to be the “popular winner” means next to nothing. It got you an extra one-half of one percent. What possible legitimate claim can Gore make on that? He has no more of a mandate than Bush does.
Please point out where in this thread I have made ANY “scurrilous accusations” to or about you. I am stone-cold serious and I expect an answer.
Jesus. Allow me to try one more time:
A politician and his agenda are two different things.
A politician is elected. His agenda is not. We do not vote for “increased aid to Israel” or “tax cuts” except to the extent that the candidate pledges to seek those things – pledges that are not binding in any event. We vote for people. The POLITICIAN is elected. The AGENDA is not.
So long as you are attacking the legitimacy of the ELECTION, you are attacking the POLITICIAN and his right to hold office. You are not attacking the legitimacy of his agenda, except as a corrollary to attacking the politician himself – “Bush is not legitimate, therefore his agenda is not legitimate.” Note that you could just as easily make this argument – and more effectively IMO – by pointing not to the fact that the election process was questionable but by pointing to the fact that he lacks a mandate: In office legitimately or not, he does not have a clear public mandate to do [whatever you object to him doing].
My point is that you CANNOT say “the politician and the agenda are two different things [they are], and by attacking the ELECTION [as opposed to the mandate or lack thereof], we are attacking his agenda and not him.” As long as you are talking about the legitimacy of the ELECTION, you are automatically talking about the POLITICIAN, since it was he – and not his agenda – that was elected. Now, in the context of the election, you can talk about BOTH the politician AND, by extension, his agenda (“Bush is illegitimate and therefore his policies are as well”) OR you can talk ONLY about the politician (“Bush is illegitimate, period”), but you CANNOT talk JUST about the agenda. The agenda was not elected. What the heck is so hard about this?
And I expect you to trot out a “scurrilous accusation” or two or retract your accusation that I have been less than honest. As I have already stated, I take such things extremely seriously, and since you have now decided to compound an accusation of dishonesty with one of scurrilousness you had damn well better have some proof of both.
Jodi, I respect your dedication. But many others have tried what you’re doing, a couple months back… and all they got were headaches.
Just so you know what you’re getting into.
Little things mean a lot, Elvis. Big things turn out to be little when compared to bigger things.
Our galaxy is 100,000 light-years across. That’s big, right? A good-sized chunk of real-estate. None of us will ever, ever, EVER travel that distance in our lifetimes. But compare that to the distance to our closest galactic neigbor, the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2,000,000 light-years away. Suddenly, that 100,000 figure doesn’t seem so large.
Jim Carrey earns $20 million per movie. That’s a lot of money, right? You can live nicely off that amount of money. None of us will ever, ever, EVER have that amount of money in our lifetimes. But compare that amount to Bill Gates’ total worth, which is estimated near the $70 billion range (give or take, depending on how his stocks are doing). Suddenly $20 million doesn’t seem like a lot of money, does it?
Why do I bring this up? Because you seem obsessively hung up on the difference of 500,000 votes. 500,000 votes is a lot of ballots. None of us will ever, ever, EVER cast that amount of ballots in our lifetimes. But compare that amount to the total number of ballots cast in the entire election, which was over 100,000,000. Suddenly, 500,000 doesn’t seem like so many ballots, does it?
I hope you appreciate this little lesson in perspective. I trust that you will use it wisely for the rest of your days. If not, I’ll simply bookmark this post and C&P it whenever you lose your perspective on things.
do not find it “perfectly legitimate politics” to attack far-right policies not because they are defective or distasteful or not a good idea – as many of them are (or are not, as the case may be) – but rather because the election was a close one. That, to me, has diddly to do with questions of policy. It doesn’t even serve to illuminate why a particular policy should be attacked or discarded. Under this same rationale, NO policy of Bush’s – conservative or liberal, good idea or bad, far right or far left – can EVER be considered legitimate. I find the continued concentration on the election at the expense of actual, meaningful discourse on policy to be the antithesis of “perfectly legitimate politics;” it is, rather, an attempt to undermine the man’s ability to do his job by concentrating on something that is in the past and manifestly will not be changed. I fail to see why that is a good idea for ANYONE. I fail to see that it accomplishes (or even attempts to accomplish) anything other than undermining the president and, by extension, the office he holds.
MAEGLIN –
Sorry, MAEGLIN, but I am not willing to do so. The response you quoted was just that – a reponse – to someone else’s assertion that it is “perfectly legitimate politics” to continue to harp on the election (and, by extension, Bush’s legitimate right to be president) as opposed to what you’re REALLY concerned with, which is the job he will do or is doing as president. I was not attempting to define “perfectly legitmate politics” but rather to say that IMO this is not an example of it. This is only my opinion in any event.
In the abstract, I would agree. It is both distracting and obfuscating to continue to concentrate upon the election, which I have no doubt some consider to be good things. I am not required to agree.
How refreshingly honest. Certainly it might be “easier” and “more effective” to continue to hamstring the man’s ability to do his job rather than legitimately attack the specifics of the job he is trying to do, but I am not required to think that is a particularly honorable thing to do – which I don’t. (Note that this is not an attack on you personally, but rather my opinion of the position you appear to be advocating.)
I admit I am politically optimistic, and that I have an over-developed sense of honor which probably means I am ill-suited for politics, but I do not find the pushing of “dubious inferences” to be “legitimate politics.”
Ah. So down into the mud you go? That is your right, but with your permission I’ll stay up here on the bank.
And I’ll be damned if I will view such tactics with anything other than unvarnished contempt. Again, this is not an attack on your personally, but I can hardly let the regard I have for you as a debater allow me to view such a position as anything other than unworthy. I have a great regard for civilized discourse, and a firm belief that good governance is produced because of it, not in spite of it.
Again, I accept that is your right. You may be the Shining Path of politics and employ whatever guerrilla tactics you deem fit. But I am neither required to join you nor to have a high opinion of those tactics.
I have already done so, right after the passage you quoted. I said:
The continued carping about the election boils down to either Bush isn’t really the president (which he obviously is) or Bush shouldn’t be the president, and so we should not allow him to do his job. This to me is not in keeping with the ideal that we will submit to governance even if we don’t like the elected official, because that’s how the system works. This is not to say that people cannot loathe Bush’s agenda and work against it. But in my mind the intellectually honest thing to do is to loathe it directly, for its innate loathe-ability, rather than continue to focus on the election returns. You have been quite frank in stating that you continue to focus on the election because it is an “easier” and “more effective” way to undermine the agenda; I’m willing to agree that it probably is, and I can and do admire your honesty if not your tactics.
Although I confess to being a bit disappointed, this seems fair enough. I think I have a pretty good idea what you mean by “legitimate politics” at any rate.
Good only insofar as they are utile. Debating the moral worth accrued to the individual who pursues these actions is another issue entirely.
I take no personal offense. I might as well be honest: I am not trying to sway anyone to my side here nor do my remarks here have any real effect on Bush’s policy.
I don’t think this course is particularly honorable either. Hence I am trying to get out of professional activism and find a new job. Nevertheless, it is a job, and it has proven to be quite effective.
Leading the general public, or even our base of knee-jerk liberal supporters, to develop a real understanding of the issues has been a trying task. Meetings, educational forums, electoral reform campaigns, etc are only showing nominal benefit, IMHO. Yet I have already taken a call from one woman this morning who asked what my organization was doing to undermine the legitimacy of the president. There are thousands more like her, all angry and ready to vote.
It may not be pretty, but it’s what the people want. It’s what will get us votes. It’s what will get rid of individuals in power who are not interested in respecting our liberties. I don’t mean to sound elitist, but in my experience as an activist, it seems to me that more people are interested in ideological tidbits than in real policy. So should I bang my head against the wall and alienate my supporters with “irrelevant” facts or give them a meaningful ideology to cling to?
If I don’t bring in the votes and protect my freedoms, which I do feel are in danger, am I really behaving honorably?
I hate to reduce this to an ends/means discussion, yet I see no other choice.
Then if it’s not inherently legitimate, it’s certainly been legitimized by acclamation. Use it or lose it, as they say.
It’s easy for you to stay high and dry: you support the winner. Evidently you don’t have quite as many problems with the right wing agenda as the losers in this election do. I can’t picture you screaming bloody murder if Gore had won, but I seriously doubt you would have taken such a high-minded position. The mud would have at least covered your toes.
At any rate, I hardly consider this position to be “mud”, as it were. You may find it annoying or useless, but concentration on the election returns is hardly unmerited. The two major newspaper coalitions (NYT, WSJ, AP and the MH, USAT, K-R) have released preliminary findings which place Gore over 7,000 votes ahead of Bush. All we have to do is disseminate these findings. They speak for themselves, though differently to every individual.
I can sooner stomach your contempt than I can the Bush agenda and its implications.
I have a tremendous regard for civilized discourse. Hence I believe this is the first election thread I have even posted to. However, I have not experienced the miracle of such discourse leading to good governance.
It appeared that Bush’s lack of mandate might have resulted in some real communication between the winners and the losers of the last election. But Bush’s reversal on CO2 emissions and Dick Armey’s new tax cut plan are challenging my faith.
I have a high regard for you as a debater, too, Jodi, but when I recruited my core membership for the SDMB cell of the Self-Destructing Liberal Terrorist Front, your name wasn’t on the A-list.
You may hold whatever opinion you like of said tactics, but your opinion in and of itself does not make them wrong, bad, or useless, all of which you appeared to imply in your earlier posts.
I would not go so far as to agree with you here. Democracy depends on adhering to the rule of law which its people set for themselves. Automatic adherence to authority, IMHO, undermines some of the greatest tools of democracy: civil disobedience, mass assembly, and freedom of expression.
I will not advocate breaking the law over Bush’s questionable presidency, but I certainly will not accede as if nothing happened, or even throw all of my weight into forward-looking electoral reform.
Although I admit to being too young to make the following pronouncement with any real authority, I would nevertheless say that I detested Reagan considerably more than I dislike GW Bush. Yet I had no problem submitting to his lawful authority, as unpleasant as it certainly was. I am not merely opposing President Bush because I do not like the man or his agenda: I feel that he is the poisoned fruit from the poisonous tree, and should be opposed in kind.
These are not two mutually exclusive tactics. I like to think that I am doing both. Unfortunately, I have a much greater impact by spreading the “news” regarding the election returns.
Furthermore, I take slight issue with your idea of intellectual honesty. In order to be intellectually honest, I would have to be true to myself. If I loathe it both directly and indirectly, why should I artificially restrict my feelings to only one sphere? If you could demonstrate how undermining Bush via the questionable election is somehow wrong, then honor and morality would demand that I rein myself in. But so far you have only given me your opinion, strong that it is.
Thank you. I just can’t help but find that the ideological arguments and appeals to fairness that most of my comrades in arms are espousing are both politically and intellectually bankrupt. Needless to say, it makes my professional life in a progressive organization rather difficult. I mean no offense to any of my liberal friends on the boards, but I can’t be the only one who thinks these tirades are kinda stale, even if continued “carping” on the election certainly is not. If we are going to bitch and moan about the election, we might as well do so for the right reasons and with open eyes.
Jodi, I think you’re overlooking an important point. Yes, for any one single voter, we can’t know for sure what his intentions were. But we can be sure that ninty-plus percent of Gore-Buchanan double votes were intended for Gore. We know there’s no way Buchanan did substantially better in West Palm Beach then elsewhere. If what one is interested in is, who would have won if this West Palm Beach ballot problem had not ocurred, this is an important question.
Leaving West Palm Beach, statewide in FL, a lot of so-called “double votes” were not really any such thing. A lot of people voted for a candidate by punching a hole or whatever, then also wrote in the same candidate. In FL, the standard is the intent of the voter. Surely in these cases, the intent of the voter is crystal clear. These were, IMHO, valid votes that could not be found in a machine count, but which would have been found in a hand count.
Bush is President; that can’t be changed. But did Gore really lose? I consider it very important that we determine who really got the most votes. And I consider it very important that we solve the various problems we’ve discovered with our electoral system.
I am mystified by the mindset that believes that if the rules are followed, the results are automatically right. Sometimes, we have no choice but to follow the rules, even tho doing so does not produce the right result. Can’t we at least acknowleged that that’s the case? Instead of trying to claim that the result was not a miscarriage of justice.
Look, this whole thing started when you asked:
Certainly it might be “easier” and “more effective” to continue to hamstring the man’s ability to do his job rather than legitimately attack the specifics of the job he is trying to do, but I am not required to think that is a particularly honorable thing to do – which I don’t. (Note that this is not an attack on you personally, but rather my opinion of the position you appear to be advocating.)
However, I have not experienced the miracle of such discourse leading to good governance.