Even if that were true, so what? The Supreme Court still installed him. Only people who don’t give a fuck about democracy aren’t outraged about them stepping into the process.
Whew! At least I’m not Republican. You guys are the ones who’ll have the shitstain of the Bush administration stinking up your historical record.
A wise man once said to me, “Polls tell you what you think based on what a telemarketer got your neighbour to admit to when called unsolicited at dinnertime.”
Guess that makes all major party political candidates (I’m guessing in other democracies besides the U.S., as well) pretty dumb for paying for their own internal polling?
Hey, if it makes you feel good to believe that i’m specifically following you around, then go ahead and believe it. The fact is that i participate in a lot of political threads on this message board, and when the OP of a thread makes ill-informed comments and snide, irrelevant asides, i’m going to respond. If it seems that i’m following you, maybe it’s because so many of your political comments fall into precisely that category.
Sure that’s what he said. And, rather than address the substance of that comment as it related to your OP, you chose to use it as nothing but an opportunity to allege probable future liberal hypocrisy. You didn’t even have the intellectual integrity to concede that Fear Itself had pointed out a problem with your interpretation of the national aggregate polling results.
You’re perfectly within your rights to believe that. I disagree with you, but have no problem with you holding that opinion.
But that wasn’t the argument you made. What you said was that the popular vote versus electoral college issue was the main thing that liberals griped about in the 2000 election, and i responded that, in fact, it wasn’t. The main things that libverals griped about was the goings-on in Florida, as your own comment here seems to bear out. And then you used your own incorrect statement to conclude that if Kerry won this election in the electoral college but not the popular vote, then any liberal who was happy about it would be a hypocrite. That is nothing but pointless speculation building on erroneous assessment.
Maybe, but it was a question based on a false assumption. Liberals were not mostly concerned about the electoral college system in 2000; they were angry over what happened in Florida.
I guess i’ll have to take your word for that, but if you really wanted to discuss the issue in a non-inflammatory way, then why not respond to Fear Itself’s post with an actual statement about the relative significance of national versus regional poll results (which is what his post addressed) rather than constructing a tale of possible future liberal hypocrisy? Fear Itself made a pertinent comment about the specific issue that you started this thread about, but you couldn’t even respond to him with an argument of any substance.
Nice try. Actually, if you go back to that thread, you’ll see that you referred to Kerry as an “extreme liberal.” If he’s an “extreme liberal,” what do you call people like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Russell Feingold, Paul Wellstone (RIP), Barbara Boxer, and other members of the Democratic party who are obviously quite a bit more liberal than Kerry? I’m guessing maybe “Loonie Left.” Just another one of your moderate, reasoned political epithets.
Fair enough. Then why not actually attempt to discuss them when someone like Fear Itself makes a pertinent comment that directly addresses the issue that your OP wants to discuss?
You keep insisting that you’re a moderate as if you are the sole arbiter of that term. The label you choose to give yourself does not seem always to coincide with your political position. “Moderate” does not necessarily equal “Not quite as conservative as George W. Bush.” Hell, Bush spent the whole of the last election cycle calling himself a “compassionate conservative.” Am i supposed to believe that just because he tells me it’s true?
If Kerry’s so bad, why vote for him at all? Vote for a third party or independent candidate, if any of them take your fancy. There’s going to be a Libertarian candidate on the ballot. It’s strikes me that you’d probably have more areas of agreement with him than with Kerry. It’s not like Maryland is one of those battleground states that’s going to decide the next Presidential election. If you’re so worried about having to violate your principles and vote for someone for whom you feel “disgust,” then why do it?
I agree that Kerry is running a bad campaign. And i don’t have any special love for Kerry myself, although probably for different reasons than you. But the fact that we might hold similar opinions on that issue doesn’t mean that i’m going to stand silently when you ignore the argument in a substantial post (Fear Itself’s) that offered a direct analysis of the very topic that you raised in the OP. And i’m even less likely to stay silent when you ignore it for no other apparent purpose than to take a potshot at alleged possible future liberal hypocrisy.
BTW, weirddave, just to clear up any confusion, i don’t actually have “a doctorate from a fine University.” I have a Masters from that university and am in the process of getting a PhD.
Would you have said the same thing had the Supreme Court installed Gore?
Partisan Supreme Court, eh? Oh, and had the recounts been allowed to continue statewide, as per the decision based upon the 14th Amendment that the Supreme Court made, there would not have been a President in place to swear in on January 20, in which case it would seem that the Speaker of the House would have become President for the interim, and as it turns out we might have had President Hastert for a while. Of course, if it went to the House and Senate who do you think would have won?
I honestly can’t think of a scenario where Gore won. Therefore, it seems a bit disingenuous to blame the Supreme Court.
How about if all supposed (but not actual) felons Jeb shoved off the roles got to vote? Did ya think about that one, or was it just a lack of imagination on your part?
And of course they all would have gone Democrat, thus giving the election to Gore, right? Big assumption on your part. My contention is based upon how things were, not how you think they should have been.
Precisely, Airman. I’ve been saying that for four years. If Bush hadn’t gone to the Supreme Court, two slates of electors from Florida would have presented themselves to the Congress and the election would have been tossed into the Congress and Bush would have won by legitimate, Constitutional means. So why the fuck did they have to drag the Supreme Court into it? And why the fuck didn’t the Supreme Court say “There’s an established method for dealing with this sort of thing. Sort it out yourselves.”
Yes.
The Florida vote was won by legitimate, Constitutional means. They were required by law to have a certified result in Florida by such and such a time (the exact date slips my mind). The Supreme Court determined that the recounts were happening in violation of the 14th Amendment, and they had the recount halted because they knew (as did the Florida people) that a complete and fair recount was impossible by the drop dead date.
The Supreme Court did not violate the Constitution. They made a decision in one case that affected one state that affected a national election. It doesn’t become unconstitutional because you didn’t like the results.
Also, the only way the Congress gets to vote is if nobody gets the required number of electoral votes, and for that to happen the entire state vote of Florida would have had to have been declared invalid and tossed aside. So the choices were either declare a winner in Florida or disenfranchise an entire state.
I think it went down the way it had to go down, and I was happy with the results. In retrospect, it probably would have been better if Gore had won, but if you go back and search on my early stuff on this I was a staunch Bush supporter. My mistake.
I would like to know one thing. Here is my OP, in it’s entirity:
And here is my reply to Fear Itself, again in it’s entirity:
Please tell me what part of either of those posts is “ill-informed comments” or “snide, irrelevant asides”, because I don’t see either. You seem to be responding from a biased position, making you jump all over me when i just ask a question. Tell me why, or point out the snide comments i made to Fear Itself that i missed.
Hey, if it’s good enough for Vincent Bugliosi (“None Dare Call It Treason”), it’s good enough for me.
(Warning, clicking on that cite link may cause right-wingers to develop a truth-related rash)
Well, the ill-informed comment was your statement that liberals “cried foul” because of the electoral college system and the fact that Bush won the EC vote but not the popular vote. The fact is that the vast majority of liberals opposed the 2000 election results (rightly or wrongly) for quite different reasons, including Supreme Court interference and the irregularities in Florida’s voting system.
Your “snide, irrelevant aside” was using this erroneous assumption to project possible future liberal hypocrisy rather than actually addressing the issue that Fear Itself raised, the main point of which was to point out that national aggregate poll figures do not provide a reasonable way of assessing likely election chances.
You still can’t seem to address the actual issues that relate to your own OP. If you were really serious about discussing the relevance of those poll results, as you claim and as your OP suggests, then why not do just that? Why not either tell Fear Itself that you agree with him, or say why you don’t and present a rational argument as to why? Instead, you prefer to speculate about possible liberal hypocrisy that hasn’t even occurred yet, and to make comments like your earlier one that “all the Democrats will be sitting around with their limp dicks in their hands.” That doesn’t even make you sound rational, let alone a moderate.
I’m sorry, but I’m too amused by statements like that to take them seriously. It was an excellent display of anger, but it remains an opinion nonetheless. One that I did not share then and as a matter of principle do not now.
A better analogy would be the parent telling the child he can’t go swimming until an hour after a meal, because he’ll get cramps. The parent is lying but says it because they heard it from their parents and pass it along as gospel. And the sad thing is, the parent believes it but doesn’t realize it’s not true.
Sorry if this doesn’t rise to the level of “indignant verbosity” but I was fresh out. Market day is Monday night.
False. The “safe harbor” date of 12/12 meant only that electors certified by that date could not be challenged in the Congress - that was a deadline only to the Bush team, for obvious reasons. Electoral slates can be and have been challenged even in Congress.
Also false. They recognized that there were “problems”, but not which way they went. As it happened, the attempts of the Florida Supreme Court to impose a statewide recount that would have complied with equal protection was what were stopped.
False. There was no “drop dead date” that soon, and they stopped the count themselves. Is there any reason to believe that a good-faith, statewide hand count couldn’t have been completed in a matter of days? Of course not.
Except for the 14th Amendment, as noted, using words that said they were upholding it. If the ruling’s constitutionality were the base of their reasoning, or at least wasn’t violated, then why the clause admitting that it wasn’t? “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances” is a phrase that will lead the obituaries of each of The Five.
Also false. States don’t get disenfranchised when Congress decides elections, as has happened twice before. The voting method is changed, though, sure, with each elected House delegation essentially becoming an elector.
But at least you care.
Let’s see, thousands of minorities stripped of their right to vote. An election that could have been tipped by a few hundred votes. An election where minorities voted EXTREMELY disproportianately for Gore.
Boy howdy, you’re right, that could have NEVER made a difference. :rolleyes:
Why don’t you just skip the bullshit and move to some nice dictatorship in the Sahel? They’re more in line with your politics, and you’ll always get to jibber on about how the guys with the guns and the voing boxes have shown out another glorious victory for the ruling party.
Amen. And he doesn’t even really have to get dirty. Bush should be a sitting duck for any Dem who has the balls to go after him. Just think how much mileage Kerry could get out of the Iraq situation if he just divorced himself from having to defend his vote on the war reslution. Just say “I made a mistake” and then just skewer Bush all day long. Iraq…Deficit…Iraq…Deficit. One-two punch – knock out in the 5th round.