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election 2000
Al Gore Was Such a Good Sport to Give In Gracefully – Really?
When a Republican operative tells Democrats to continue being good losers, don't buy it.
Dec 20, 2023
The Washington Post, conveyor of the conventional wisdom, has just printed a telling testament to how Beltway culture functions. It is an op-ed by Stuart Stevens, a former Republican political consultant who has purportedly seen the light and has now denounced the GOP. In the wake of Donald Trump’s campaign, we’ve seen a fair number of people like Stevens warn us about their former party (as if we needed a reminder), and they’ve gone on to form organizations like the Lincoln Project, of which Stevens is senior advisor.
An unusually large number of these converts are political consultants—and they make up the bulk of the Lincoln Project’s leadership. For those of us who have worked in government and tried to stay honest, political consultants represent the lowest form of animal life in the Beltway ecosystem; we regarded them with about as much affection as we reserve for the invasive Burmese Python. For a consultant like Stevens to have moral qualms about the behavior of politicians is as remarkable as a drug dealer cutting public service announcements about preventing substance abuse.
Stevens tells us that we should look with fond respect on Al Gore, the presidential candidate who so gracefully conceded the 2000 election despite having more popular votes and despite the fact that Florida, where the election was decided, was legitimately in play even as the Supreme Court issued its diktat that George W. Bush had won the election.
It is by no means clear that Gore lost that election. It is by no means certain that the U.S. Supreme Court, a court now widely seen as illegitimate and out of control, was acting in a nonpartisan manner even then.
Gore, says Stevens, did the decent thing by conceding the election gracefully, so unlike the crude vulgarians around Donald Trump in 2020. Gore represented the spirit of civic democracy, now under threat by MAGA. That’s easy to say for Stevens, who profited from his relationship with the Bush administration.
But might we suppose that the maintenance of a healthy democracy should require a little more controversy, a little more getting one’s hands dirty, even a little more rancor, especially if one’s cause is just? It is by no means clear that Gore lost that election. It is by no means certain that the U.S. Supreme Court, a court now widely seen as illegitimate and out of control, was acting in a nonpartisan manner even then. It is definitely not assured that George W. Bush’s brother Jeb, who happened to be governor of the state in contention, was averse to putting his thumb on the scale.
Stevens doesn’t mention any of that, or the fact that the then-chief justice, William Rehnquist, had a daughter seeking a prospective Bush administration job (she got it). And Clarence Thomas, whose wife, Ginni, author of so much recent mischief, was then employed by the Heritage Foundation to vet job seekers in the hoped-for Bush presidency.
Perhaps the Gore campaign should have been a bit more elbows-out, demanding recusal of Rehnquist and Thomas as a condition of accepting the jurisdiction of a court to decide an election rather than the normal method of a supervised recount. What might then have happened lurches, of course, into counterfactual territory, but there is no such thing as historical determinism: the flow of events is contingent on real people making actual decisions.
What would have been more important for the future well-being of the United States: Al Gore setting an example of gentlemanly civic behavior, as Stevens insists, or the Gore campaign doing whatever it took, within the bounds of honesty and legality, to transform his popular mandate into an electoral-college mandate?
It is quite possible that future historians will judge 9/11 and its extended fallout as an inflection point for the United States as significant as the Civil War, even though its consequences are less obvious. September 11, 2001 set in motion a chain of events that has still not played out, with each event a seismic shock destabilizing the country.
Any honest examination of 9/11 must begin with the fact that the Bush administration was hardly less than willfully negligent in failing to protect the country, with the August 6, 2001 president’s daily brief titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” being Exhibit A for the prosecution. Bush’s response to the briefers was “you’ve covered your ass,” after which he played golf and cut brush at his summer ranch for almost a month.
It is hardly wild speculation to think that Gore, an Armed Services Committee member in the Senate before becoming vice president for eight years, might have reacted differently and put the appropriate agencies on alert, just as the Clinton administration had done when it foiled the so-called millennial bomb plot. Gore’s qualifications were certainly deeper than Bush’s, whose only previous acquaintance with national security was going AWOL from an air national guard unit.
As it was, 9/11 with its xenophobic revenge fantasies, hubris turned to grief on the stony soil of the Middle East, financial roulette where the billionaires always win, and color-coded threat warnings made a large swath of the American people functionally mentally ill.
No 9/11 means no Global War on Terror, a two-decade exercise in grandiose futility that thoroughly ruined two countries, gave rise to ISIS, and cost an estimated $8 trillion. And no Bush tax cuts, which instantly transformed a budget surplus into the large and intractable deficits that Republicans incessantly complain about (at least when they don’t control the White House).
Further idle speculation, but would Gore have let the foxes run the chicken coup as Bush did with respect to financial regulation? The whole spectacle of liar mortgage loans, synthetic CDOs, and massive credit default swaps resulted in perhaps the most predictable financial collapse in history, resulting in three years of lost growth that can never be recouped, more deficits, blighted lives, and increased public cynicism.
Without all of that, there may have been no public clamor for a dictator, and consequently no violent attempt to overthrow the Constitution. As it was, 9/11 with its xenophobic revenge fantasies, hubris turned to grief on the stony soil of the Middle East, financial roulette where the billionaires always win, and color-coded threat warnings made a large swath of the American people functionally mentally ill. Some even gush with enthusiasm at the prospect of dictatorial rule. Trump may go, but they will latch onto some other charlatan as a substitute Jesus-figure to worship. The rest of us will likely have to deal with all of this for the rest of our lives.
Beltway culture, which has been gradually “wired” to be Republican since the 1980s, apparently thinks all the disasters of the last two decades have been worth it, because it preserved the political parties in their scripted roles: Republicans as the rule-breaking but lovable Cool Kids, and Democrats as the gentlemanly losers.
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Ginni Thomas Pressed Arizona Lawmakers to Reverse Biden's 2020 Win: Report
"Clarence Thomas' continued service on the Supreme Court is a scandalous and appalling breach of judicial ethics," said one observer. "He is implementing the exact same theories that his wife used to try to steal the 2020 election for Trump."
May 20, 2022
Democracy defenders expressed anger and consternation Friday after The Washington Postrevealed that Ginni Thomas--the right-wing activist and wife of Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas--pushed Arizona state lawmakers to invoke a dubious legal theory advocated by her husband in order to help then-President Donald Trump reverse his 2020 presidential election loss.
"The conflict of interest between Ginni and Clarence Thomas has never been greater."
"Ginni Thomas' involvement in the seditious conspiracy to overturn the will of the American people poses a conflict of interest that Congress can no longer ignore," said Sean Eldrige, founder and president of the pro-democracy advocacy group Stand Up America.
"Justice Thomas violated his oath to 'faithfully and impartially' administer justice by failing to recuse himself in cases related to the 2020 presidential election," he added. "No one should be above the law--not even Supreme Court justices. "It's time to demand accountability from the highest court in the land. Congress should act immediately to pass a code of ethics for the Supreme Court."
Emails obtained by the Post show that Ginni Thomas emailed Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R-25) and state Rep. Shawnna Bolick (R-20)--who advocates empowering legislators to void the will of voters--urging them to disregard President Joe Biden's victory and replace the state's electors with a "clean slate."
\u201cNew evidence that Ginni Thomas's participation in efforts to overturn the 2020 election was even greater than we knew; in this case pressure on AZ legislators to overturn that state's vote. Makes it even more outrageous that Justice Thomas did not recuse.\nhttps://t.co/iKyBsJq5HT\u201d— Noah Bookbinder (@Noah Bookbinder) 1653064662
Echoing the "Big Lie" that Democrats rigged the 2020 contest, Thomas--who also sent numerous emails to Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, urging him to push to overturn the election--implored the lawmakers to "do your constitutional duty" by using their "power to fight back against fraud."
A later audit of Arizona's election that Trump supporters said would prove it was "stolen" concluded there was no fraud--and that Biden actually won the state by more votes than the official count.
Thomas told the Arizona lawmakers that the power to choose electors was "yours and yours alone," an apparent reference to "independent state legislature theory" (ISLT). The Brennan Center for Justice describes ISLT as a "baseless" concept "making the rounds in conservative legal circles" that posits congressional elections can only be regulated by a state's lawmakers, not its judiciary--or even its constitution.
"While Clarence was applying the 'independent state legislature doctrine' from the bench, Ginni was using the exact same theory to try to overturn the 2020 election," wroteSlate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern. "Just breathtaking corruption."
"The conflict of interest between Ginni and Clarence Thomas has never been greater," he added.
Thomas has embraced ISLT in cases of vital importance to the future of U.S. democracy, includingtwo in which a majority of justices affirmed the right of courts to intervene when state legislatures engage in partisan rigging of congressional district maps.
In one of the cases, Moore v. North Carolina, Thomas joined right-wing Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch in a dissent arguing that the state's Supreme Court may have violated the Constitution by overruling state lawmakers.
Progressive politicians and advocates have been calling for Thomas' resignation or impeachment over his failure to recuse himself from cases involving the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol by supporters of Trump's "Big Lie."
Thomas was the lone dissenter in January as the justices rejected Trump's bid to block the release of presidential records to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
More recently, Thomas' response to widespread public anger over the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicating the likely voiding of reproductive rights via reversal of Roe v. Wade has also raised eyebrows.
Opining that Americans "are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don't like," Thomas asserted that the nation's highest court "can't be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want."
This isn't the first time the Thomases have been accused of an election-related conflict of interest.
As the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Bush v. Gore, a case that would decide the results of the inconclusive 2000 presidential election, Ginni Thomas admitted to soliciting resumes from prospective officials in what would be the George W. Bush administration after her husband and four other justices--three of them also accused of conflicts of interest--ruled in the Republican nominee's favor.
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Slamming GOP Attempts at Election-Meddling, Gillum Rescinds Concession Speech as Florida Heads for Recount
"We don't just get the opportunity to stop counting votes because we don't like the direction in which the vote tally is heading."
Nov 09, 2018
As his gubernatorial race headed for a recount, Florida Democrat Andrew Gillum withdrew his concession speech from last Tuesday, noting that while his fate in the election may not change after the votes are recounted, the integrity of the country's democratic process will be severely undermined if Republicans succeed in ending the process of counting every vote cast by Floridians.
"I am replacing my earlier concession with an unapologetic and uncompromised call to count every vote," Gillum said in a news conference Saturday afternoon. "We don't just get the opportunity to stop counting votes because we don't like the direction in which the vote tally is heading. That is not democratic and that is certainly not the American way."
\u201cAndrew Gillum: "Let me say clearly: I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised, and unapologetic call that we count every single vote." (via ABC)\u201d— Kyle Griffin (@Kyle Griffin) 1541882443
Secretary of State Ken Detzner officially called for recounts of Florida's gubernatorial and Senate races after a noon deadline passed for all 67 of the state's counties' unofficial vote tallies, with both races deemed too close to call.
As of the noon deadline, Republican Rick Scott--currently the Florida governor--led Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by only .15 percent, with about 12,500 more votes in the race fior Nelson's seat. In the gubernatorial election, Republican Ron DeSantis led Gillum by .41 percent of the vote.
"The outcome of this election will have consequences beyond who wins and who loses. How we handle this election and this process will have reverberations for democracy for an entire generation of voters." --Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew GillumBoth margins of victory triggered an automatic machine recount, to be completed by this coming Thursday. Should either race still have less than a .25 margin after the first recount, a manual recount will be completed.
The recounts followScott's claim that "unethical liberals" were trying to "steal" the election. Scott as well as President Donald Trump called the continued tallying into question, with the governor telling sheriffs to "watch for any violations during the recount process."
Republicans' accusations of fraud by Broward County election officials come despite the fact that the state sent objective observers to supervise the vote-counting on election night. The supervisors have stated that no fraud or covering up of votes took place.
Gillum called the GOP's allegations a form of voter intimidation, liable to keep new voters from taking part in the democratic process in future elections.
"The outcome of this election will have consequences beyond who wins and who loses," the Tallahassee mayor said. "How we handle this election and this process will have reverberations for democracy for an entire generation of voters."
"Voter suppression," he added, "can show up in that first time voter, the one who entered this process so enthusiastic and so excited about the opportunity to go out there and participate in the democratic process, to let their voices be heard--only to hear their president, their governor, their United States senator throw out unsubstantiated claims of fraud and calls and choruses to stop the counting of the votes."
At The Intercept on Saturday, Jon Schwartz urged Gillum and other Democrats locked in close, still-undetermined election races to fight Republican efforts to undercut the counting of votes -- unlike presidential candidate Al Gore, who did not not ask for a statewide manual recount after a re-tallying of votes was halted in December 2000, stating his hope that his concession could help the country find "new common ground."
Citing the National Opinion Research Center's recount of Florida's votes in November 2001, Schwartz wrote, "First, we know that Al Gore won Florida in 2000. If a full, fair statewide recount had taken place, he would have become president. Second, Gore lost largely because, unlike Bush, he refused to fight with all the tools available to him."
Republican operative Roger Stone told the Daily Beast Friday, "many of my friends" are in Florida demonstrating against the vote counts, recalling the Trump associate's organizing of the "Brooks Brothers riots" in 2000 in which Republicans violently protested the state's recount.
"Already the GOP is gearing up for the same kind of direct, physical intimidation of vote counts in support of their legal strategy," wrote Schwartz. "Staffers at the Broward County election headquarters have requested police protection from Republican activists who've shown up at their offices addled by Trumpian conspiracy theories about vote fraud."
"Every house of faith, every synagogue, every church, needs to be out in the streets with serious, non-violent action, on a message of 'don't let them steal your vote' ... that we must have the right and freedom to vote," union organizer and author Jane McAlevey told The Intercept.
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