Donald Trump is being pilloried for refusing to say that he will accept the results of the election on November 8.
However, this is not new behavior for the GOP. While it’s almost forgotten now, the George W. Bush campaign was planning to challenge the results of the 2000 vote if he lost the electoral vote, but won the popular vote. His campaign hoped to spark a national movement to pressure members of the Electoral College in states where the popular vote went for Al Gore to ignore that and instead vote in line with the national popular vote — thus making Bush president.
In the end, the reverse happened. Bush won the Electoral College vote while losing the popular vote.
But in the weeks before the November 7, 2000, election, it seemed more likely that Gore would get a majority of electoral votes, while Bush, lifted by a wide margin in his home state of Texas, would have the most votes by actual people. This possibility was widely discussed, including in the Boston Globe and Christian Science Monitor and in an Associated Press polling analysis.
Gore was even preemptively criticized for winning under these circumstances. It “would be an outrage” said Rep. Ray LaHood, R.-Ill. NBC’s Chris Matthews said that “knowing him as we do, [Gore] may have no problem taking the presidential oath after losing the popular vote to George W. Bush.” (Matthews lost interest in this issue when the opposite occurred. He later said that he himself had voted for Bush in 2000.)
On November 1, Michael Kramer, formerly Time’s political columnist, wrote about the Bush campaign’s plans in the New York Daily News, where he was managing editor:
So what if Gore wins such crucial battleground states as Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania and thus captures the magic 270 electoral votes while Bush wins the overall nationwide popular vote?
“The one thing we don’t do is roll over,” says a Bush aide. “We fight.”
How? The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course.
In league with the campaign – which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College’s essential unfairness – a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged. “We’d have ads, too,” says a Bush aide, “and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted.”
Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, the clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. “You think ‘Democrats for Democracy’ would be a catchy term for them?” asks a Bush adviser.
The universe of people who would be targeted by this insurrection is small – the 538 currently anonymous folks called electors, people chosen by the campaigns and their state party organizations as a reward for their service over the years.
On November 3, the Boston Herald reported that if Bush won the popular vote, his campaign “would likely challenge the legitimacy of a Gore win, casting it as an affront to the people’s will and branding the Electoral College as an antiquated relic.”
Then on November 5, two days before the election, the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote that the possibility of a split popular and electoral vote decision “has strategists in the Bush and Gore camps mapping out preliminary game plans for a national protest, should either wind up victorious in the eyes of the voters only to be vanquished before the Electoral College.”
The Daily News article had also quoted an anonymous Gore campaign official as claiming that if Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College that “we’d be doing the same thing Bush is apparently getting ready for. … They’re just further along in their contingency thinking than we are.”
However, this was clearly wrong, since Gore did not do “the same thing.” The day after the election, he stated that “Despite the fact that Joe Lieberman and I won the popular vote, under our Constitution it is the winner of the Electoral College who will be the next president. Our Constitution is the whole foundation of our freedom and it must be followed faithfully.”
Likewise, when the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, making Bush the winner of the Electoral College even though Gore had won the popular vote, Gore conceded in a notably generous speech.
In a book published in 2001, CNN commentator Jeff Greenfield described something quite similar to the original Daily News report. “At least two conservative commentators,” wrote Greenfield, “were specifically briefed by the Bush campaign shortly before taking to the airwaves about the line of attack to be taken in the event that Bush wound up losing the electoral count despite a popular vote lead.”
Greenfield also quoted Kenneth Duberstein, one-time chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, as saying that the illegitimacy of a Gore presidency based only on an Electoral College victory “was part of the talking points” for GOP surrogates.
For what it’s worth, Karl Rove later denied that the Bush campaign had done anything like this.
Of course, it is true that the Electoral College is unfair and an antiquated relic. But the time to change it is not the day after an election. Candidates make decisions about where to campaign and place resources based on the Electoral College rules. It would be disastrous to allow one party to play Calvinball with the U.S. presidential election and change the rules at the end of the game just because they lost. That the Bush campaign was seriously considering doing so in 2000 demonstrates how forcefully and how long the GOP has rejected democratic norms.
The good news is that in Trump the GOP has nominated such a disastrous candidate that he can make whatever contingency plans he wants, and it won’t matter.
Bushco2 was never much good at plotting anything, let alone an election. What he was very good at was opportunism and grabbing the main chance. Sometimes that actually was a winning gambit.
With a little help from his friends, and his political enemies, George Bush and Company stole the 2000 election.
The Great War on Terror made it unnecessary for him to steal anything else in 2004 but the truth. Something else at which he excelled.
And if Hillary should lose, are the Russian hackers to blame?
Listen carefully to Hillary’s intonation when she denounces Trump for suggesting the election is rigged. She is having trouble with her sincerity pose.
Odd that Trump is saying this, however, when it appeared all along that he is trying to lose. Or is the latest bloviating from him just another move to cover up the essential strategy?
What is truly sad is that such speculation is not baseless.
It wasn’t long ago when it would have been a poor plot for a movie.
Even for a dummy the cognitive dissonance generated by accusations that Claiming that Putin is ‘hacking’ Trump into power has to jar with the stupidity of telling the nation, that, should the numbers indicate, you would gladly accept that result to the election. Trump comes off looking the vision of sanity when compared to the ludicrous Position Hilary has stamped out for herself.
Something is about Clinton screams, ‘BOLSHOI!!!!
sincerity? why that’s hilarity(:) if her lips are moving the WikiLeaks gift to humanity pretty much establishes what we knew all along. she is lying! bush was greedy little rich kid who stole his office the good old fashioned way. on daddy’s reputation (shitty as it was). and using “little brother and his slut attorney gen” to steal florida in 2000.
now we have another scumbag who stole the primary elections and is lying and corrupting her way to the white house with the full support of corporate media.
This is a silly article. Of course Trump is concerned Democrats will rig the election. They rigged it against Bernie Sanders, so there’s valid precedent.
And the Clinton Campaign is laying the groundwork for a rigging claim if Trump wins. All of this talk about Russia hacking the election and Russia trying to get Trump elected is designed to give Clinton an opening for rigging claims.
More drivel from schwarz.
Everyone needs to remember that the Clintons are Arkansas Drug Dealers.
Take another hit off that crack pipe, Schwarz.
Lovely piece of journalism! This is more likely to be found at the intercept than what RM has written about the going down of Trump. Not because one of the two options is as bad as Trump is, should you go and praise the other as the one that should be at the oval office. It’s not the journalist job to support the lesser of two evils, but to show both are not up to the task unfortunately one of them will take over
The intercept is just another branch of CNN. Barack Obama said in his rally during the 2008 campaign that voters should watch out for rigging, Hillary Clinton even said she believed the election was rigged in Florida against John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore contested the election result against George bush before that. So why aren’t you mentioning that? This website is going down the toilet very quickly.
And in 2004 too in Ohio. On the other hand, as a third party voter, the Democratic Party has been primarily responsible for suing to keep candidates off ballots for a couple decades now and there are enough flags as to subterfuge as well in 2016. So they are both reprehensible. There is no legitimate election. Just a limited choice.
“the Electoral College rules” allow the Electors to vote as they wish. The strategy this article outlines has nothing to do with “changing” the Electoral College rules.
So, not like fat Al Gordo in 2000 then.
The real question is, if the rotting piece of flesh, Clinton wins, will she live long enough to be sworn in.
We are seeing a real live Dorian Gray moment, the rotting filth within is transposing onto the body.
The bitch is in a either long-term hospital or the ground within a year
Wow.
Rotting Piece of Flesh?
This is close to threatening the life of a presidential candidate.
Are you 12 or off your meds? Maybe the FBI should have a talk with you regardless.
No it is not anywhere close to threatening the life of anyone. You hysterical old broads are the worst–you don’t have any legitimate reasons why anyone should vote for Crooked Hillary so you’re always inventing insults in order to garner sympathy or to shame people into voting for her (or not voting for someone else).
Nah. somebody actually festooned the trees in the quad at some upper west coast college with dangling effigies of Obama back in 2008.
Lynching, even in fun, is more of a threat to any black president. And in case you never noticed, Obama still is.
Nice article, except for this:
“Of course, it is true that the Electoral College is unfair and an antiquated relic.”
Of course, it is not. This is a widely held, but baseless, belief. Districted first past the post voting systems, similar to the Electoral College, help maximize the probability that a single person’s vote will turn an election. The point of democracy is to maximize that power, not to ensure down to the last decimal place, that every vote is exactly equal. The popular vote is a road to tyranny. Physicist Alan Natapoff did the math to show that the Electoral College, whether by design or by chance, is more or less optimal in this sense. See the excellent article “Math vs. Tyranny” from 1996 in Discover magazine:
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/math-against-tyranny
““Well, I tell you what, it helps in Ohio, that we got Democrats in charge of the machines … Whenever people are in power, they have this tendency to try to tilt things in their direction. That’s why we’ve got to have, I believe, a voting rights division in the Justice Department that is nonpartisan, and that is serious about investigating cases of voter fraud.”
– President Obama
Eric “New Black Panther” Holder could run it.
You mean the ones who called Obama a puppet?
The fact that we have not been able to simply use the Popular Vote has tainted our system, from the ground up. We need to do away with this limiting “Electoral College” elite BS and get down to simplifying how we elect people. This cycle we had electoral votes already aligned, not just before the primaries, but literally years before even the thought of a Sanders Campaign was considered. Even the Senator Leahy from Vermont, admitted he made his offer to Clinton to support her years back. And what about AL a$$hole Franken from MN, who let us all down, doing the same thing? And these are supposed to be among the rather sane members of the Congress. WHY is a commitment like that even considered, given that we are supposed to be a Republic with a Democratic bent? It should NEVER even be considered to make a vow of a vote for one candidate, before the primary votes are completed, counted, done. At least not by an electoral college voter. Never. It simply should be one of the criteria to wait and know whom the FINAL candidate is. If the Electoral College voters cannot see the ethical, logical way of doing this, then we need to do away with the EC, period. And that is very clear. They cannot see that a logical, ethical method is the only way to go, so get rid of it. Remove this elitist power from the path. It is doing no good for this country. Having it gone would cause a whole new focus on Voters doing their job and voting.
Republicans are concerned about the will of the people and the popular vote? Then why is it impossible for Dems to take the house when they win the popular vote?
Hillaryous.The shrub and his criminal family are all in for the Hell Bitch.
The English saying goes: “life is a b!tch” and while attempting to “solve” the so-called “problem of evil” and at the same time give some elbow room to free will as part of his theodicy, Leibniz conjectured that “we live in the best of all possible worlds”. Il Duce reminded us the other day that to be pessimists’ greatest fear.
Trump’s kind of openly racist, misogynist and plutocratic over the top crazy @ss b#llsh!t about which even Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter are “ashamed” I find more verbal, benign and less damaging in the long run that Hellary’s sold out politics, type of corruption and secretive and clannish style. Also, Hellary has this kind of pangrisgoistic mindset (I remember her once after a devastating hurricane in Central America publicly wondering “why people in Latin America didn’t speak English”, yeah “why”!?! …) that will find logical and “natural” selling out the minor influence “We the people” have in politics to TPP types of closed business “legal” aberrations.
Trump, with all his histrionic cr@p, seems to be less corrupt, dangerous, more domestic a la “let’s make ‘America’ great ‘again'”. Also MSM and “big business as usual” hate him for not playing along their inside game. They would hate for certain aspects of politics transpiring into public consciousness in any way. They freaked out and imposed “‘legal’ sanctions” on Brazil for deciding they wanted the people to decide on TPP kings of b#llsh!t. Hellary has been an advocate of secrecy, wars and corrupt abusive business practices and models. In short more of the same. Her only creative push would be to make it official and open “Yes, corruption is fine and dandy and this is why it is good for you …”. She publicly and visibly joyfully laughed when she watched real time as a crowd assassinated Gaddafi even pushing a gun up his @ss, but she didn’t seem to be that happy when a crowd overpowered that U.S. outpost in Benghazi and did the same thing to U.S. government officials. She was saying (I am not kidding you!) that Muslim people were upset about some stupid B-movie which they had found religiously offensive, not about the on-going genocide of their people by USG and their allies.
Gringos seem not only to already be in collision course with China and Russia (and that is not going to be funny at least not in the gringo traditional sense of fun (no popcorn …) for those who may survive), but it seems the world at large is tired of gringo “God-blessed” “freedom-loving” b#llsh!t. Even NATO countries such as France and Germany (both politicians and people) have started to see gringo economic sanctions against Russia as senseless and hurting to themselves, not their own worries.
Orwell very cogently explained to us that history ceased to exist already:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwell-s-letter-on-why-he-wrote-1984.html
If you would like to have a better, healthier sense of what happens to a people when they find too hurtful getting their minds out of their @ss by themselves, I would suggest:
* The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (by reporter William L. Shirer)
* The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians 1st Edition by Peter Heather
Even though Nazi Germany’s “rise” and ways were very different than Rome’s there are clear connections between those two historic incidents (it is not just verbally, politically that Nazis called themselves The Third Reich)
In a sense the U.S. shares a bit with both. Like the Romans they simply can’t be without being imperialistic (or without “God blessing” as gringos would put it), without messing with “‘un’-‘American’ Barbarians” but those “vias” they built into remote places to exercises their self-evidently God given right to mess with the rest of it all, were the same roads those “Barbarians” took to come and destroy them badly. The role of “‘un’-‘American’ Barbarians” is being played exemplarily by the Chinese. I don’t think gringos will ever be ready to take a taste of their own medicine and they seem to also believe that they are über-Physical.
One of those things gringos say and seem to believe to the extent they need to is that “they hear God telling them things (such as ‘to save democracy’ in the Star Wars mental universe in which they live)” another one was that “they won the cold war” … the new war becoming warmer and warmer by the day is what they seem to be “responsible” about. Chinese war ships are ramming into theirs and Russian ones are chasing theirs away as Russian planes are dangerously scrambling gringo aircraft carriers. I think the stage is set for Hellary to repeat in her own ways the great Ronald Reagan’s phrase: “Hello, this is ‘America’!” . . .
Let me clarify I don’t vote. I don’t believe in politics at all. To me it would be like actually believing in voo-doo (I can understand why some people do those things, but it doesn’t mean I do believe in it or I will do such things). I would not even vote for Jill Stein even though I do trust and like her because she is helping perpetuate an essentially wrong institution. “We the people” should a way to “democratically” (in the plain sense of the word) decide via our tax returns what issues are important to us and how we would like to spend our monies. That would end politics as we know it and would keep it in a tight leash. There are easy technical ways to do that. Why is it people technically trust off-site betting, but don’t trust elections? In a sense, it is actually us abusing politicians. What do they effing know about the outcomes of events they have no control over?!? Do we really believe they are our social parents? How could you expect for politicians not to lie, since this is the most defining skill of their profession?
To me politics itself is some preposterously b#llsh!ting game kind of when kings and queens used to say to us that they were the direct descendant from God and the Catholic Church were entertaining us by letting us know that we were all sinners and letting us monetarily pay off our sins “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs” . . . (you see, it even rhymes)
RCL
I would not be honest if I don’t mention that just Hellary’s (and her family in quite literal ways) being in bed with Zionism/the Israeli government is more than enough to choose Trump if I were to ponder about options.
Trump’s b#llsh!ting offenses against Muslim (Mexicans, women, philologists, old plastic long plays, anaerobic sentient beings in alpha Centaur, …) are:
1) open
2) very verbally explicit
3) unenforceable legally and logistically
4) eventual
5) meant for a domestic audience
Hellary’s Zionistic ties have been and are on-going, totally compromised, sold out, kept under a veil of secrecy and very, very real.
Israel (“the region’s only democracy” as they abysmally and God-ones-choosingly call themselves) will not be pleased at all if the funding of their state terrorism using our tax payers monies would be reduced by a few billion $s. Just that makes me happy.
Why is it that people care so much about what Trump is saying and not about what Hellary has ever done, still does and is promising to continue doing?
I doubt Trump’s verbal b#llsh!t can be related in any way to the death of one single Muslim even though MSM tries hard to do that:
// __ Queens imam and his assistant shot to death by gunman in attack local Muslims blame on Donald Trump: ‘His drama has created Islamophobia’
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/drive-by-shooter-queens-gravely-injures-men-article-1.2749901
while Hellary’s policies have been very influential if not determining in the ongoing genocide of Muslim people, Zionism, refugee crisis, corrupt policies debasing the means of poor people …
Because Hellary is a better politicians (better at lying and manipulating that is) she is alright? Really?!?
RCL
What this article SHOULD be highlighting to readers is the failure and deep injustice of the Electoral College System itself.
Each reader should look to how its own state INSTRUCTS its EC Electors to vote.
Change the state law, and change the electoral process.
Have YOUR state EC electors SUPPORT the winner of the national popular vote, and we will have a popular vote for President and vicePresident.
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Let’s get ‘er done, folks.
Let’s uncode this.
Plug in any ruler, in any age, in any identifiable political entity, in any culture on earth. Maybe even in any galaxy.
The issue isn’t the electoral college, the number of votes, the statements of this or that political figure or their representatives, or anything else we normally attribute to legitimacy or illegitimacy.
From the Code of Hammurabi:
From Julius Caesar:
From Shakespeare:
From Engels:
Since every political entity needs “legitimacy” to function, those claiming that legitimacy must establish or appeal to those empirical tidbits which grant that legitimacy. One way (but not the only way) to gain legitimacy is by denying the legitimacy of the opposition.
This is why, for instance, post-war US so vehemently defined “communism” as the evil to which “democracy” (or “freedom”, etc.) became the antidote. This is why Republicans wave the flag of “Islamic Jihadism” (or whatever) — not because ISIS is actually going to replace democracy with the caliphate, but because it defines “legitimacy”.
This explains the whole of the Trump campaign — (“it’s all rigged”) — and much of the Clinton campaign — (he’s “unfit”)
I loved the Al Smith dinner recently. Plutocrats joined with politicians and the Catholic Church to raise money for children. Nothing could provide a better metaphor for our current political system. Wealth buys government and justifies it with religion. They “raised” six million dollars for poor children.
(Wow!! A whole six million dollars!! What generosity!!)
Isn’t charity the domain of the very, very wealthy Catholic Church?
Isn’t the general welfare of the polity (including poor kids) the domain of government?
Instead these grand (and grandly hypocritical) institutions meet with the blessing of the elites to question one another’s political legitimacy. The Church magnanimously mediates. The media dutifully reports.
And the needs of those kids go as forgotten as a charity’s Thanksgiving feast a week later.
Legitimacy isn’t bestowed by spectacle or clever legal stratagems or soaring rhetoric or even popular vote.
Legitimacy is simply what the rulers and rule-makers claim before they’re overthrown.
Bush didn’t win FLA, SCOTUS did-
Bush didn’t win ohio 2004, disenfranchisement did-
Clinton didn’t win 2016 primary, the DNC did via disenfranchisement-
Same railroad similar engineering where pied pipers flourish and debates are the corporate ectoplasm
No one person can make this stuff up-
What is even more significant relating to the essence of this article is the fact that the Bush Administration considered suspending the next Presidential Election after he took office for his first term.
The elitists really running things figured it would be too much of a stretch to pull this off. So they just continued to buy off politicians and judges throughout all three branches of our state and federal governments in order to make all elections a mere democratic façade, which ultimately places sycophants in office serving a tarnished two side corporate coin.
Then those toadies take office and blabber about American values and principles, but pass laws and make under the table deals to sell out the citizenry ultimately placing us at best in a state of indentured servitude not seen since before the American Revolution.
Many of us when we were young that studied people like Washington and Lincoln perhaps dreamed of one day serving politically. Now so many of us find these politicians as the most disgusting and deplorable of beings, whishing only the end of the Lord’s Prayer is answered in that He does “deliver us from evil”… Amen.
With all of the stuff coming out at Wikileaks, this is the best The Intercept can do? There are a lot of things going on in the world. War in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Turkey. The Philippines just exited the Anglo-Alliance and joined the China-Eurasia axis. Russian warships are heading to Syria to crush rebels in Aleppo before the US elections and so on and so forth. This is a hypothetical situation about something that might happen in the future. There’s lot’s of News to discuss and report about going on right now.
BTW. Does anybody think it is weird that we can’t comment on Mackey’s column. Is this a new policy now?
To Silver1ock:
You know I enjoy you posts. I certainly agree with the fact that the issues you posted need to be front and center in coverage so many more can be brought into the light relating to these revulsions.
This article does serve to bring forth consideration of present political corruption, and even potentially how it could become worse.
The two great boulders blocking the pathways to solving a host of problems before us are that of the corruption of campaign financing and corporate personhood, so any article, speech, or video that touches on, or could lead one to consider aspects of those two issues and the political corruption they feed is a treasure.
Well, there is someone with real integrity and the courage of his convictions, Julian Assange. Other reporters from CNN to the NewYork Times to Washington Post to MSNBC seem like morally deformed intellectual dwarfs.
Large parts of the Corporate Media re supporting the persecution of Truth Tellers like Assange. If twenty thousand Americans chanting Do Your Job!! and Tell the Truth! doesn’t get you to pull your head out of your ass, what would?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FBWwp1sUXA
The only remaining part of the initially hopeful invigorating spirit of theIntercept for now is us.
RCL
Ricardo, I do enjoy you posts and insights as I do our kind of Sherwood Forest band of bloggers with Glenn and his staff being a fine group of Robin Hoods. It is not realistic to expect every other article placed on the Intercept to be Pulitzer Prize worthy.
The elites screw us big time when they can get away with it, but their success is that they relentlessly screw us a little bit at a time, one bill at a time, one compromise at a time.
So we have to make the masses aware one speech, one article, one video, and one conversation at a time of the propaganda and oppression of which we are subjected.
Indeed, it is. I think the editors will realize that we came for Greenwald, Scahill and others…and we won’t stay for Mackey. (He can go back to the NYT. The pay is better, and there’s more groupthink.)
Nice. Hellary is concerned that Russians are attempting to influence elections in the US, but without evidence, just conjecture. The question is then, should Donald Trump be concerned about politcal interference in US politics? Let’s see….
1. the US is invading countries, deposing leaders and killing citizens
2. many nations including the Philippines have a history of US political intervention and brutality and murder of their leaders and imposition of dictators hence Duterte told the US to GTFO.
3. the US operating as proxy for money grubbing billionaires attacked the economy of Argentina and is interfering in the political outcomes of Brasil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Turkey, Greece and Egypt
4. Hellary Clinton has perpetrated the invasion of Libya, Syria, and Honduras and complains that the release of her deeds has to be Russia trying to influence her defeat. Given the murderous rampage of US foreign policy, the coup in the Honduras had to be at least blessed by the Clinton state department if not promoted using corporate requests and existing criminal enterprises who now replace the evil doings of the CIA. Maybe the former head of the Honduras was a drug kingpin. If that is the case, then the US is doing the same thing Duterte is doing.
And yet Hellary’s claim to fame is “Russia did it, shouldn’t, but the US can”. In either case it appears that Hellary is running a criminal consortium consisting of criminal ceo’s, wallstreet criminals, rogue cia operatives, war criminals droning civilians with nsa assist and the f…b…i… are now her brown-shirts.
YES. Donald should be very concerned.
Perhaps Hellary’s brain doesnt work or has a major malfunction because it also appears that her RUSSIA DID IT theme is plagiarised from Season 3 Episode 10 of The Blacklist.
Not just Bush, not just Trump, Mr. Schwarz; you must include Obama – the repulsive, hypocritical, bigmouth murderer himself:
Obama Warned of Rigged Elections Back in 2008
Well now we know who runs The Intercept’s twitter page. What an incredible spin, considering the Dems actually did reject the 2000 result.
The base may have, but the establishment? They backed Bush.
To add to the article, here is a nice column from a Neocon Republican in 2000 attacking Gore- and making some ironic predictions…
https://nypost.com/2000/12/10/so-let-gore-have-it/
As the guy below says, the rank and file knew the election had been stolen. The fact, as he notes, that the party regulars didn’t challenge the obvious fraudulent result in 2000 shows the degree to which the uniparty of corporate democrats and GOP already existed in 2000. What they are afraid of now is that Trump isn’t part of the corporate structure and will spark resistance to the inverted fascism of the uniparty regime.
Can you be serious?
Have you already forgotten Gore’s very premature concession, which in all likelihood sealed his fate — not that he would have had much luck in the Supreme Court in any event, but the hasty concession and its withdrawal were unprecedented.
How widely known was it that he won the popular vote by over half a million?
And do you recall his ultimate concession speech? Let me refresh your recollection:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/algore2000concessionspeech.html
Uh, I hate to rain on everybody’s doomsday-parade, but the US is actually doing well. Over the last 50 years, income per person, infant survival, and life expectancy all increased, including one that increased by 135%
(http://www.yourlifeinnumbers.org/)
On the same note, the rich are paying there fair share of taxes, more than actually. (http://federalbudgetinpictures.com/do-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/)
And not only that, many of the Americans living in poverty aren’t even poor. (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty)
People’s lives have improved, but many of said improvements are declining. (Look at US industry thanks to “free trade” policies. Life expectancy for white people is declining.)
The rich have had their taxes cut massively since 1980, and the debt has skyrocketed. If only to pay our debt we need more taxes. Corporations pay even less than the rich, and unlike the rich, they do not vote or breathe. (We could also do things like cut corporate welfare, which one of your sources says costs us over $100 billion.)
As for poverty, the simplest and most accurate measure is that of income. While the life of some on poverty has improved, the brute fact of poverty is still here.
“we came, we saw, he died. (ha ha ha ha)
Hellary is insane.
dont listen to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0U0wGAlpgM
By 2020, the National Popular Vote bill could guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
Every vote, everywhere, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes.
No more handful of ‘battleground’ states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support among voters) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable states that have just been ‘spectators’ and ignored after the conventions.
The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes—270 of 538.
All of the presidential electors from the enacting states will be supporters of the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC)—thereby guaranteeing that candidate with an Electoral College majority.
The bill was approved this year by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
The bill has passed 34 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states with 261 electoral votes.
The bill has been enacted by 11 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.
NationalPopularVote
R. Hayes in 1876 – that’s what the electoral college is for. See wikipedia’s fine article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1876
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state’s electoral votes.
Now 48 states have winner-take-all state laws for awarding electoral votes.
2 award one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and two electoral votes statewide.
Neither method is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.
The electors are and will be dedicated party activist supporters of the winning party’s candidate who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
There have been 22,991 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 17 have been cast in a deviant way, for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector’s own political party (one clear faithless elector, 15 grand-standing votes, and one accidental vote). 1796 remains the only instance when the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome.
States have enacted and can enact laws that guarantee the votes of their presidential electors
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country.
Laws regarding faithless electors can only punish them after the fact, not control their vote. So your plan fails.
American democracy/voting is a contact sport. And it seems that all this back and forth about questioning the legitimacy of election results is one part of the contact in the sport. I did hear after Bush the Younger won, liberals howling about illegitimate results and openly declared Bush was not their president.
The issue really is about one side starting up a meme hoping the mass media keeps up on it. In this case, the Clinton campaign started up scares about the electoral system with the Russian hysteria. Very clear the Hillary supporters were saying that if she lost, the Russians stole the election. And now Trump jumps in. And the pundits follow what has turned out to be just normal hard and fast campaign tackles and blocks and really taking up the Clinton campaign charges of Trump undermining the election.
This whole thing is just a bone one campaign threw that is being chased by the pundits.
Spot on!
Now the media seems to have completely forgotten that Hillary campaign was accusing the Russians of rigging the machines!
As you put it, this whole thing its a thug of war between liars. However, I also see it as part of the democracy fantasy that the American political system is.
Bush’s brother ran Florida, and Bush’s dad appointed some of the Supreme Court members who made his son president. The 2000 election stank to high heaven, but we were too worn down from eight years of Clinton corruption-scandals to put up much of a fight.
Just like at the end of the Bush years we were ready for anybody but Bush. Obama seemed seemed like an alternative. He offered Hope and Change. I’m not joking. That was actually a campaign slogan. Really, I’m not kidding. Hope and Change. Look it up.
can’t believe you dragged calvin and hobbes into this nonsense. ew.
by the way, every example and comparison you give can be seen the other way and provide a perfectly good reason for his refusal. switch “bush v gore” to “clinton v trump” inverting of your analogy of “trump v clinton” and it’s not unrealistic to expect a brexit-like surprise victory for trump that is then challenged (and incessantly whined about judging from this and most other waste-of-time articles online) by clintonians. they have yet to find a complaint they don’t enjoy ramming into the ground and losing is the great white whale of hillarytard grievances.
but hey, i guess it’s better to plan for an imaginary scenario than the very real post-election situation. this is SO much more important than war with syria and iran. i lie awake at night in a cold sweat worrying about a petulant billionaire who happens to be a 24/7 target of most media and politicians. gutting social security? not so much. i mean, who wants to do MATH and shit when we can project delusions of grandeur onto someone who already has a surplus of them. small hands = huge danger!
keep drinking the kool-aid. keep in mind it’s spiked and you’re bound to wake up naked with a TPP-sized anus.
It is quite surprising that democracy has lasted this long in the US. I suspect it will end when an incumbent president declares his successor unfit and refuses to relinquish power. Perhaps if Mr. Trump wins, President Obama would refuse to leave office. However, that scenario is unlikely so the voters will have to live with democracy for another four years.
Voila.
George W Bush’s advisors, like all the the paranoid right, projected their intentions by blaming their opponents for what they themselves were about to do. (Karl Rove was explicit in describing this tack.)
They feel there’s a great conspiracy against them, so to combat it, they adopt the conspiratorial practices of their imagined enemy. But in fact, there is no left-wing conspiracy, unless voting is a conspiracy. It’s only in the fevered brows of the wingnut right (opps…I’m being redundant).
Sadly, this has been part of the American political scene for two hundred years. It’s just that now, the very wealthy (looking at you, Rupert, Sheldon…) have learned to exploit it over the rubes to their advantage. SAD.
Trump will look at the results and if Hillary scores a decisive win Trump will concede and congratulate her. If it’s in a gray area things may get dicey. He will simply wait until the dust settles.
On a positive note, the Russians have asked to send observers.
The intercept is so Pro Clinton. How did you come to the conclusion that Hillary will win this election?
The real tracking polls show them neck and neck and Hillary can’t even fill a classroom during her campaign speeches, yet Trump fills stadiums.
Do you know something(maybe planned rigging) that we don’t?
I don’t know, Skylark.
“The real tracking polls show them neck and neck…
Can you please provide links to these real polls? Thank you.
http://www.investors.com/politics/ibd-tipp-presidential-election-poll/
Trump +1.
The IBD/TIPP poll — a collaboration between Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence (TIPP) — has been the most accurate poll in recent presidential elections.
The latest results for the IBD/TIPP Presidential Election Tracking Poll will be released each morning by 6 a.m. (ET).
The MSM hysteria points to one thing only,they are deathly afraid that Trump will win,and are doing everything possible in lying and obfuscating that truth.
Jill Stein gets 1% and Johnson 7%?
Stein takes HB votes,while Johnson takes Trump votes.
See the logic of false polling?
Harpers 2005
the rig is the operating environment
Yah, it was curious to me that right after the 2000 election, the democrats were focused on bad ballots, vote counting fraud, voter suppression of black people, etc. as reasons for the loss in Florida. I remember stats people looking at various elections results and electronic machine tallies and noting statistical anomalies which favored the gop when in fact they should have been evenly distributed. And soon afterward, these shenanigans didn’t matter–the loss was due to Nader.
The only reason for the lack of interest in election reform that I can think of is that the various favored ways of cheating the systems by the democrats and republicans might be swept away under a general reform. Heck, look at the ways the democratic party establishment cheated Sanders. Would the party establishment give up the power to control the vote?
Yes, given how Clinton benefited from the closings of various polling places in caucuses, just like Bush did after the poll closings in SC in 2000.
Observation: “refusing to say” is not the same as “planning to challenge”.
It is proven that Hillary’s campaign manipulated the primary vote, so why should Trump commit?
3rd World USA
totally rigged
no wonder Duterte told Obama and the US to fuck off
Duterte has seen what the Imperialist United States has done to so many other countries, stripping them of their assets. Invading them with its so called free trade agreements. He knows the United States will abuse his people, and try to transform the economy to a digital economy which will only favour the powerful US corporations. He knows the United States just wants to exploit cheap labour, and to dominate and control the Global economy. Duterte is right to kick the US out.
the US is the only country i know of that goes around the world killing people and leaders and union persons
even in America the virus of wallstreet, nsa, cia have totally decimated the country with their thieving spying bs
iran, dprk, venezuela, and now russia, china and india have told the US to fuck off, stay away, leave us alone, go to hell
and the eu now hates US for causing the refugee disaster
tell you what – if sfb Hellary is elected, and the dab runs her nfz and downs a russian jet, and ww3 begins, the rest of the planet will wipe the US off the map and the world will give a collective good riddance
Trump and Stein would never precipitate that scenario. Hellary – the queen of genocide – does not respect boundaries or borders – what a disastrous crook she is.
Trump 2016 going to clean out the SWAMP FOR THE PEOPLE ONE NATION UNDER YES GOD
Its not a swamp its a sewer, and although Trump is better than Clinton, he is not the disinfectant that is really needed. The United States needs a new political system, and corporate money needs to be eradicated from the system. America needs a Government and a President that will serve its people, and not just the agenda of the elite, and their powerful corporations and financial institutions. It needs a President that will bring jobs back to America, and one that will reduce inequality, and not continue to widen it. A President that will stop the war profiteering, and that will work to create a fairer America for everyone. One that will restore the United States to its former glory, and one that will restore the freedoms its people once enjoyed.I don’t see this in Trump or Clinton.
When was that out of curiosity, at least in your opinion? I’d say it was decent between ’45 and ’70 but that’s generally considered a historically anomalous period over the totality of America’s existence. And even the ’45-’64 range was glorious only primarily for white menfolk in America, not so much for women and other minorities.
Which people, which “freedoms” and when?
’45 – ’63
following the murder of jfk who opposed the wallstreet bankster thieves and the likud terrorists in israel and their silent threat to wipe the planet off the face of the earth with their dimona nukes combined with the monstrous military global initiative beginning with the crazed military megalomaniacs, vietnam and the psycho paranoid crooked nixon. It was all downhill from there.
So just ignore the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Jim Crow and Segregation, the Cold War and McCarthyism? The internment of Japanese Americans was also still going on in 1946.
And i would counter that the situation of the poor minorities is worse than the 50s,no matter MSM bloviation to the contrary.
Their communities were never as drug infested,or as having no good job opportunities as now.The ghettos have expanded,not contracted,and violence everywhere.
Here on LI we now have a illegals drug gang war over illegals ethnicity hostility.Which of course is muted for the Hell bitch and her open border wishes.
My God,Trump save US.
The crisis of democracy is a product of the decay of American capitalism, overseen by a ruling class that is determined to advance a policy of war abroad and austerity at home—a policy that requires ever greater attacks on democratic forms of rule. Whatever happens on November 8, it will resolve nothing, and only set the stage for a protracted political crisis that can be resolved only through the independent intervention of the working class on the basis of a revolutionary socialist program. wsws.org
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/21/pers-o21.html
completely accurate.
the criminals that run the economy have almost completed their coup by hijacking the SEC, FBI, Hellary Clinton. All they need is for her to be elected and then get their TPP TPIP TISA passed.
matthew 12:33-35
obscene wealth and unequal power is the rot of the apple.
Yeah, you’ve quoted that already.