#election 2000

[tomorrowusa]

Don't risk a rerun of the 2000 election.

In the first presidential election of the 21st century many deluded progressives voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

Their foolishness gave us eight years of George W. Bush who plagued the country with two recessions (including the Great Recession) and two wars (one totally unnecessary and one which could have been avoided if he heeded an intelligence brief 5 weeks before 9/11).

Oh yeah, Dubya also appointed one conservative and one batshit crazy reactionary to the US Supreme Court. Roberts and Alito are still there.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post offers some thoughts.

Why leftists should work their hearts out for Biden in 2024

Ask a Democrat with a long memory what the numbers 97,488 and 537 represent, and their face will twist into a grimace. The first is the number of votes Ralph Nader received in Florida in 2000 as the nominee of the Green Party; the second is the margin by which George W. Bush was eventually certified the winner of the state, handing him the White House. Now, with President Biden gearing up for reelection, talk of a spoiler candidate from the left is again in the air. That’s unfortunate, because here’s the truth: The past 2½ years under Biden have been a triumph for progressivism, even if it’s not in most people’s interest to admit it. This was not what most people expected from Biden, who ran as a relative moderate in the 2020 Democratic primary. His nomination was a victory for pragmatism with its eyes directed toward the center. But today, no one can honestly deny that Biden is the most progressive president since at least Lyndon B. Johnson. His judicial appointments are more diverse than those of any of his predecessors. He has directed more resources to combating climate change than any other president. Notwithstanding the opposition from the Supreme Court, his administration has moved aggressively to forgive and restructure student loans.

Three years ago the economy was in horrible shape because of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. Now unemployment is steadily below 4%, job creation continues to exceed expectations, and wages are rising as unions gain strength. The post-pandemic, post-Afghan War inflation rate has receded to near normal levels; people in the 1970s would have sold their souls for a 3.2% (and dropping) inflation rate. And many of the effects of "Bidenomics" have yet to kick in.

And in a story that is criminally underappreciated, his administration’s policy reaction to the covid-induced recession of 2020 was revolutionary in precisely the ways any good leftist should favor. It embraced massive government intervention to stave off the worst economic impacts, including handing millions of families monthly checks (by expanding the child tax credit), giving all kids in public schools free meals, boosting unemployment insurance and extending health coverage to millions.

It worked. While inflation rose (as it did worldwide), the economy’s recovery has been blisteringly fast. It took more than six years for employment rates to return to what they were before the Great Recession hit in 2008, but we surpassed January 2020 jobs levels by the spring of 2022 — and have kept adding jobs ever since. To the idealistic leftist, that might feel like both old news and a partial victory at best. What about everything supporters of Bernie Sanders have found so thrilling about the Vermont senator’s vision of the future, from universal health care to free college? It’s true Biden was never going to deliver that, but to be honest, neither would Sanders had he been elected president. And that brings me to the heart of how people on the left ought to think about Biden and his reelection.

Biden has gotten things done. The US economy is doing better than those of almost every other advanced industrialized country.

Our rivals China and Russia are both worse off than they were three years ago. And NATO is not just united, it's growing.

Sadly, we still need to deal with a far right MAGA cult at home who would wreck the country just to get its own way.

Biden may be elderly and unexciting, but that is one of the reasons he won in 2020. Many people just wanted an end to the daily drama of Trump's capricious and incompetent rule by tweet. And a good portion of those people live in places that count greatly in elections – suburbs and exurbs.

Superhero films seem to be slipping in popularity. Hopefully that's a sign that voters are less likely to embrace self-appointed political messiahs to save them from themselves.

Good governance is a steady process – not a collection of magic tricks. Experienced and competent individuals who are not too far removed from the lives of the people they represent are the best people to have in government.

Paul Waldman concludes his column speaking from the heart as a liberal...

I’ve been in and around politics for many years, and even among liberals, I’ve almost always been one of the most liberal people in the room. Yet only since Biden’s election have I realized that I will probably never see a president as liberal as I’d like. It’s not an easy idea to make peace with. But it suggests a different way of thinking about elections — as one necessary step in a long, difficult process. The further you are to the left, the more important Biden’s reelection ought to be to you. It might require emotional (and policy) compromise, but for now, it’s also the most important tool you have to achieve progressive ends.

Exactly. Rightwingers take the long view. It took them 49 years but they eventually got Roe v. Wade overturned. To succeed, we need to look upon politics as an extended marathon rather as one short sprint.

Republicans may currently be bickering, but they will most likely unite behind whichever anti-abortion extremist they nominate.

It's necessary to get the word out now that the only way to defeat climate-denying, abortion-restricting, assault weapon-loving, race-baiting, homophobic Republicans is to vote Democratic.

[isaacsapphire]

I don't know if I would say that left of center people claiming a USA election was stolen is novel. That's the line that was taken in 2000, and in 2016.

2000 was a long time ago, and the 2016 election theft accusations never got much traction.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 3, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 04, 2024

The election of 2000 was back in the news this week, when Nate Cohn of the New York Times reminded readers of his newsletter, using a map by data strategist and consultant Matthew C. Isbell, that the unusual butterfly ballot design in Palm Beach County that year siphoned off at least 2,000 votes intended for Democratic candidate Al Gore to far-right candidate Pat Buchanan. 

Those 2,000 votes were enough to decide the election, “all things being equal,” Cohn wrote. But of course, they weren’t equal: in 1998 a purge of the Florida voter rolls had disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters, making them ten times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected.

That ballot and that purge gave Republican candidate George W. Bush the electoral votes from Florida, putting him into the White House although he had lost the popular vote by more than half a million votes.

Revisiting the 2000 election reminds us that manipulating the vote through voter suppression or the mechanics of an election in even small ways can undermine the will of the people.  

A poll out today from the Associated Press/NORC showed that the vast majority of Americans agree about the importance of the fundamental principles of our democracy. Ninety-eight percent of Americans think the right to vote is extremely important, very important, or somewhat important. Only 2% think it is “not too important.” The split was similar with regard to “the right of everyone to equal protection under the law”: 98% of those polled thought it was extremely, very, or somewhat important, while only 2% thought it was not too important. 

Recent election results suggest that voters don’t support the extremism of the current Republican Party. In local elections in the St. Louis, Missouri, area on Tuesday, voters rejected all 13 right-wing candidates for school boards, and in Enid, Oklahoma, voters recalled a city council member who participated in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and had ties to white supremacist groups. 

Seemingly aware of the growing backlash to their policies, MAGA Republicans are backing away from them, at least in public. Earlier this year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for making it harder to ban books after a few activists systematically challenged dozens of books in districts where they had no children in the schools—although he blamed teachers, administrators, and “the news media” for creating a “hoax.” 

Today, lawyers for the state of Texas told a federal appeals court that state legislators might have gone “too far” with their immigration law that made it a state crime to enter Texas illegally and allowed state judges to order immigrants to be deported. (Mexico had flatly refused to accept deported immigrants from other countries under this new law.) Nonetheless, Arizona legislators have passed a similar bill—that Democratic governor Katie Hobbs refuses to sign into law—and are considering another measure that would allow landowners to threaten or shoot people who cross their property to get into the U.S.

Indeed, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party seem less inclined to moderate their stances than either to pollute popular opinion or to prevent their opponents from voting. 

While Trump is hedging about his stance on abortion—after bragging repeatedly that he was the person responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade—MAGA Republicans have made their unpopular abortion stance even stronger. 

Emily Cochrane of the New York Times reported today that the hospital at the center of the decision by the Alabama state supreme court that embryos used for in vitro fertilization have the same rights and protections as children has ended its IVF services. And on Monday, Florida’s supreme court, which Florida governor Ron DeSantis packed with extremists, upheld a ban on abortion after 15 weeks and allowed a new six-week abortion ban—before most women know they’re pregnant—to go into effect in 30 days. 

In the past, people seeking abortions had gravitated to Florida because its constitution upheld the right to privacy, which protected abortion. But now the Florida Supreme Court has decided the constitution does not protect the right to abortion. Caroline Kitchener explained in the Washington Post that in the past, more than 80,000 women a year accessed abortion services in Florida. This ban will make it nearly impossible to get an abortion in the American South. 

Anya Cook, who in 2022 nearly died after she was denied an abortion under Florida’s 15-week ban, gave Kitchener a message for Florida women experiencing pregnancy complications: “Run,” she said. “Run, because you have no help here.”

Extremist Republicans have managed to put their policies into place not by winning a majority and passing laws through Congress, but by creating cases that they then take to sympathetic judges. This system, known as “judge shopping,” has so perverted lawmaking that on March 12 the Judicial Conference, the body that makes policy for federal courts, announced a new rule that any lawsuit seeking to overturn statewide or national policies would be randomly assigned among a larger pool of judges. 

On March 29, the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas, where many such cases are filed, told Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that he would not adhere to the new rules. 

Rather than moderating their stances, extremist Republicans are doubling down on their attempt to create dirt on the president. With their impeachment effort against President Joe Biden in embarrassing ruins, House Republicans are casting around for another issue to hurt the Democrats before the 2024 election. 

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico reported today that in the last month, House Republican Committee chairs have sent almost 50 oversight requests to a variety of departments and agencies. Haberkorn noted that there is “significant political pressure on the party to produce results after months of promising it would uncover evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors involving Biden.”

But it is Trump, not Biden, who is in the news for questionable behavior. In The Guardian today, Hugo Lowell reported that Trump’s social media company was kept afloat in 2022 “by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.”

There is more trouble for the social media company in the news today, as two of its investors pleaded guilty to being part of an insider-trading scheme involving the company’s stock. They admitted they had secret, inside information about the merger between Trump Media and Digital World Acquisition Corporation and had used that insider information to make profitable trades. 

Meanwhile, Trump is suing Truth Social’s founders to force them out of leadership and make them give up their shares in the company. His is a countersuit to their lawsuit accusing him of trying to dilute the company’s stock. 

Of more immediate concern for Trump, Judge Juan Merchan denied yet another attempt by Trump—his eighth, according to prosecutors—to delay his election interference trial. The trial is scheduled to begin April 15.

Finally, in an illustration of extremists aiming not to moderate their stances but to impose the will of the minority on the majority, Republicans are putting in place rules to make it easier for individuals to challenge voters, removing them from the voter rolls before the 2024 election.

Marc Elias of Democracy Docket noted today that states and local governments have regular programs to keep voter registration accurate, while right-wing activists are operating on a different agenda. In one 70,000-person town in Michigan, a single activist challenged more than a thousand voters, Elias reported, and in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, right-wing activists have already challenged 16,000 voters and intend to challenge another 10,000.

One group boasted that their system “can and will change elections in America forever.” 

Rather like the election of 2000.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[futurebird]

December 13th 2000 in The White House's Old Executive Office Building

Al Gore: (speaking very slowly and clearly, as if trying to calm a heard of raving mad red-eye's kelpies*) "… while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it."

The first really big election I voted in! I was devastated at how easily Al Gore gave up. My more moderate/liberal friends are saying "Surely you can see why this was the right thing to do, *now* right?"

uh… not really?

Listen, I want to! I really really do! But I don't. Do you see this moment in a new light now?

*it's me. I'm the mad kelpies

[tomorrowusa]

At the time the assault weapons ban was ended, Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress by notable margins and had doofuss George W. Bush in the White House.

Rightwingers regard gaining and holding on to power as a long term and even multi-generational pursuit. They never relent and do not get discouraged by occasional setbacks; it took them 49 years, but they finally managed to kill Roe v. Wade.

Too many progressives have had a lackadaisical attitude about voting, have gotten into useless internal ideological food fights over trivia, or have sporadically been easily seduced by impotent third parties.

So that’s why we have a situation where a gradually shrinking minority of the population has been able to exercise a disproportionate amount of power.

If Al Gore had gotten just 539 more votes in Florida in 2000 then he would have carried the state and won the presidency. If Gore won: the assault weapons ban would probably still be in place, there’s a good chance 9/11 would not have happened, there would be two fewer far right justices on the US Supreme Court, and the Great Recession would not have happened.

Elections have consequences. Not voting or wasting votes are what lead to elections with bad consequences. The 97,488 Floridians who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and tens of thousands more who could have voted but didn’t bother to ended up putting the United States on an expressway to dystopia.

The good news is that we can get off that highway to hell. But it will take a decade of strong unity, high voter turnout, and never missing a single election for any level of government. Since 2018 there have been encouraging signs of that beginning to happen. But more needs to be done.

Let’s not be shy about asking like-minded people if they are registered to vote and then reminding them to vote when they're registered.

The other side has fundamentalist churches, the NRA, and tax-dodging billionaires behind them. But we have more people. We need to vote like the majority that we are and not let anything distract us.

Be A Voter - Vote Save America

It doesn't matter if we're a majority if we fail to vote like a majority.

The red line is when Republicans ended the national assault weapons ban.

[gpstudios]

Gore’s Revenge: The Lasting Impact of Bush v. Gore and the Politics of the Supreme Court - Reflections on Chapter 7 of The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

Chapter 7 of Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine, titled “Gore’s Revenge,” dives into one of the most controversial and consequential cases in recent Supreme Court history: Bush v. Gore (2000). This chapter explores the political fallout of the decision, its impact on the justices involved, and its enduring influence on American law and politics. The chapter begins by revisiting the dramatic events of the…

[cirrus-grey]

[tomorrowusa]

Elon Musk essentially bought the election. And he had no ethical problem with deceiving voters in the process.

Elon Musk plowed at least $260 million into efforts to send Donald Trump back to the White House, new filings show – a massive infusion that makes him one of the largest single political underwriters of a presidential campaign and underscores the outsized influence of the world’s wealthiest person on this year’s election. Thursday’s filings with the Federal Election Commission show that the Tesla and SpaceX executive gave a total of $238 million to a super PAC that he founded this year, America PAC, which worked to turn out voters on Trump’s behalf in key states. But he also was the financial backer of other groups that cropped up in the final days of the election to support Trump, including one that spent millions on advertising to defend his record on abortion. It had sought to link Trump’s views on abortion to those of late Supreme Court Justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Musk, through a trust that bears his name, donated $20.5 million to the group, named RBG PAC, on October 24, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. He was the sole donor to the group, which was formed in mid-October. The donation’s timing meant that Musk’s involvement was not disclosed until Thursday’s post-election filings with the federal regulators.

And Musk even promoted RFK Jr. in swing states where Brain Worm was still on the ballot.

According to the new filings, Musk also donated $3 million to the MAHA Alliance, a super PAC that ran stark ads in key swing states urging supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to back Trump in the closing stretch of the campaign. Kennedy himself had ended his independent campaign over the summer and endorsed Trump. MAHA stands for “Make America Healthy Again,” Kennedy’s spin on Trump’s MAGA catchphrase. Trump has now tapped Kennedy, one of the nation’s most prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, to oversee the Health and Human Services Department.

If Musk invested $260 million in getting Trump elected, you can imagine what sort of return on that investment he is expecting.

A historical digression...

The ability to buy elections is a result of the odious Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission SCOTUS decision in 2010. Citizens United happened because George W. Bush was able to appoint Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court. And George W. Bush won in 2000 thanks to the idiotic third party candidacy of Ralph Nader. If just 538 of the 97,488 people in Florida who voted for Nader had instead voted for Democrat Al Gore, Bush would not have been elected and Citizens United probably would not have happened. And without Citizens United, it would be very difficult for billionaires like Musk to buy elections.

[lordnot]

Remember: sometimes people screencap another post because they hate the OP,

sometimes they do it because they want the notes all to themselves,

and sometimes they do it because they don't like that it was already effectively debunked in the notes.

With Kamala/Walz going up DAILY, I've seen more people talking about voting third party/Jill Stein (EW) and I believe the above screencaps from @three--rings can explain WHY Third Party votes NEVER work NOR is this the election to screw around in.

Everyone....like she says above.....PLEASE LEARN FROM HISTORY!!!

(Because if Trump gets in, he's NEVER LEAVING).

[isaacsapphire]

"the 2000 election was stolen by the supreme court for bush" and "the 2016 election was stolen by russia for trump" are the majority opinion among normie democrats.

The 2000 election, yes.

The Russian interference was understood to be misinformation resulting in misguided voters, whose votes were counted correctly. The legitimacy of the election process itself was not questioned at the time.

[themissingmango]

[alwaysbewoke]

and they're at it AGAIN!!!

[baconmancr]

My favorite Dick Cheney story is that he was put in charge of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential selection process in 2000. He used this position to gather dirt on other other prominent Republicans, then determined that the best man for the job was, in fact, Dick Cheney himself.

I can't get over the fact that Dick fucking Cheney said, basically, that Trump is too evil of a dude for him to get behind.

That's like... fuck, idk... that's like Dick Cheney saying a politician is too fucking evil for him to work with. The dude who famously shot a dude in the face and the dude apologized to him. That fucking guy.

[culthermag]

RIHANNA wearing a shirt of herself wearing a shirt of Hillary Clinton in 2016 is the most Rihanna thing ever. 😭 - [ xxx ]

[dicapiito]

To all those who wanna vote for Donald Trump Jill Stein

Here’s her running mate being transphobic as fuck:

And here’s the Green Party’s policies in a nutshell. Wonder if any of them sound familiar ? 🤔

Oh and what else she stands on? Another website for ya

[isaacsapphire]

I honestly kinda don’t remember 2004 tbh. I wasn’t paying close amount of attention to politics at the time (the media environment was different back then), and 1. The leftlibs had already been bitching about GWB stealing the 2000 election for four years, so any continued “Bush stole the election” was kinda not really noticeable because it was not new. 2. GWB was up for reelection, which was a sure thing before 2020. 9/11 improved GWB’s ratings and created a sense of him as a wartime president.

hey hello how can I make fucking sure we get a properly secured re vote because I know he cheated (we all do, don't hide behind your pathetic 'he won get over it' or 'well now we can't change anything' ) BECAUSE I LITERALLY NEED TO GET THAT RIGHT FUCKING NOW. I WANT A REAL PROPER INVESTIGATION ON THIS BULLSHIT THERE IS NO WAY WE'RE JUST LETTING THIS HAPPEN RIGHT??? THERE'S NO WAY EVERYONE WHO IS POWERFUL RIGHT NOW IS JUST GOING TO TURN A BLIND EYE TO ALL THE FUCKING EVIDENCE??? I DONT CARE IF THE ELECTION WAS TWO WEEKS AGO AND ITS NOT TRENDING ANYMORE I WANT MY FUCKING LIFE AND RIGHTS AND ACTUAL FREEDOM AND SAFTEY NOT THIS FUCKING SWEETPOTATO HITLER WHO IS A FACIST MISOGYNIST RAPIST RACIST HOMOPHOBIC TRANSPHOBIC DELERIOUS OLD MAN WHO DOES WHATEVER OTHER COUNTRIES DICTATORS WANT TO CONTROL MY FUCKING LIFE