Socialists are such a hoot....doesn't take much to whip up a base that can't punch a hole in paper or find an arrow, does it?

After screaming about every LAW that has spoken so far (including a Dem Judge with the District Court), they are now sending Microsoft-Boy to the Supreme Court to ask, "But, but, butttt, it ALL depends upon what your definition of the term 'legal vote' issssss."

-pitiful-

-- Will Continue (farming@home.com), November 19, 2000

Answers

IF AL GORE emerges as the winner of the hand recounts — including those hand recounts requested by George Bush should he decide to reverse his newfound bias in favor of machines — then Gore will be the next president. If not, then George W. Bush will. Neither man will easily be able to impose his will or that of his most vociferous supporters on a recalcitrant Congress. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how either one can have a successful presidency. WHAT WE'VE LEARNED

We have learned quite a lot about both candidates in this mess. Al Gore has lived up to his reputation as a candidate who is cautious to a fault. Except for one foolish impulse when he rashly phoned George Bush to concede the vote following the networks' foolishly premature ejaculation of Florida's results - their second of the night - Gore has been a model of excessive prudence. For the first week of the conflict, he allowed James A. Baker and the pro-Bush punditocracy to define the debate as one in which the networks were simply waiting to be proven right in the first place.

Never mind that George W's cousin, John Ellis, had been the one to start the stampede over at Fox News, where bias is their business. Never mind that if you pay attention to Florida's election laws, and their emphasis on the fair-minded search to discern the "will of the people," Bush was actually in a considerably weaker position than was Gore. Because the pundits, working as if on retainer for the Texas governor, decided that "indecision" was the worst imaginable fate that might befall the republic, Gore fell under steady pressure to concede almost no matter what the ultimate result in Florida. (Note that overnight on Tuesday, the question of the popular vote became irrelevant to all issues of "legitimacy" on the grounds that Gore pulled a surprise upset.) His appointment of the somnolent establishment relic Warren Christopher to represent him, aided by the wily William Daley, did nothing, moreover to improve his standing in the public relations war. George Bush, however, has suffered even more in the public eye. Picking daddy's secretary of state to do his bidding might have seemed like a smart idea, given the media's uncritical embrace of the tough-talking Texan, but it reinforced the notion that Bush was just a immature placeholder for a dynasty bent on revenge. What's more, either because of the Baker team's incompetence, or because they are doing the best they can with a losing hand, virtually every major action the campaign has undertaken in the past ten days has led to catastrophe.

When at first, the Bush/Baker team thought it had the contest wrapped up, Baker insisted that "The purpose of our national election is to establish a 'constitutional government,' not unending legal wrangling . . . For the good of the country and the sake of our standing in the world, the campaigning should end, and the business of an orderly transition should begin."

Oops. Twenty four hours later, the campaign found itself filing its own lawsuit, beating Gore to the punch. What's more, the Bushies did so in federal court, asking the national government to overturn a local law, thereby directly contradicting the campaign's entire raison d'ętre, which was to return power from evil "Washington" to the good "people" at home. Their case was not helped much when it was discovered that the hand recounts to which they objected so vociferously in Florida were the law in the land in Texas, in a bill singed by one Governor George W. Bush. That law explicitly stated, "A manual recount shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount."

Things went from bad to worse when it became clear that, given the likely outcome of a manual recounts, the Bush campaign's only hope was to rely on Bush's Florida campaign co-chair, Secretary of State Katherine Harris to try to short-circuit them. Harris continues to insist that the sanctity of the state's discretionary certification deadline trumps even a citizen's right to see his or her vote accurately counted. Just why this is, however, she does not seem to be able to explain.

Fortunately, Harris is unlikely to be ultimate arbiter of that decision. If the Florida Supreme Court rules that Harris does have the power to end the counting in order to railroad her preferred candidate into office, then the Bush presidency will be a failure even before it begins. While Washington insider-types will call for all good men and women to rally behind the new man, the rest of us will have witnessed the ascendancy of a candidate to the presidency who owes his office to the transparently manipulative machinations of a minor political functionary. Bush will enjoy neither the moral nor political authority to try to pursue his campaign promises of a radical restructuring of federal programs like Social Security or Medicare, nor to appoint far-right clones of Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. His presidency will be recognized by all as a caretaker regime, unless he somehow manages to win a fairly-monitored election in 2004.

Gore presidency, on the other hand, will be only marginally less successful. While his legitimacy will be questioned only by hard-core conservatives, Gore's instincts will be to placate his opponents by embracing as much of the Republican philosophy as his supporters can stomach. Given the weakness of the liberal base in the Democratic Party and the foolishness of Nader partisans who have taken themselves out of the game, this may constitute quite a bit of regressive legislation. Voters on both sides will begin to wonder why they cared so much about this election in the first place, since a Gore presidency will look so much like a Bush presidency. Cable news hosts will soon return to stories about about six-year old boys, celebrity murderers, and sportscaster sex scandals. Abortions will remain legal. Affirmative action will remain in place, though it may be renamed "affirmative access." And the rich will continue to grow richer and the poor, poorer. . . at least until the next recession.

At that point, whichever party has won this struggle will likely wish it hadn't.

-- msnbc (msn@bc.com), November 19, 2000.

If I woke up one day and discovered that I had turned into an illiterate rightwing gun-toting redneck she-man hillbilly from Montana who enjoys sex with farm animals, THEN I would be ashamed.

-- Alan Parsons (wouldn't want @ to. be like you), November 19, 2000.

Gore intends to be the next POTUS, and I believe he will slink in through the cracks opened by court litigation.

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), November 19, 2000.

"he will slink in through the cracks opened by court litigation."

lol dinosaur, that is what is known as "justice".

-- (Truth,Justice@the.American.way), November 19, 2000.

Obviously Alan is willing to admit to being a shameless socialist. Bully for you and your liberalwhiningeveryonesavictimanythingtofurtherthecauselawsweremadefor OTHERS attitude. Clinton whore.

After studying the county by county electoral map, it is exceedingly obvious that 'vote early, vote often' Daley and Gore are *shocked* by the Bush victory. After all, their fix was well in place in each high population center needed (surrounded by red, baby).....and it failed. Just keep diggin' Al, you're bound to find it sooner or later.

And then we have poooor Billy boy. He's not gettin' any air time for his historic trip to Nam....the last jewel in his crown of legacy. He's gonna drop off a bag of dog bones in Hawaii and limp back to the Oval Office. He might make it through the crowds of veteran protestors alive....hehehe

-give Al a hanky-

-- Will Continue (farming@home.com), November 19, 2000.

Go back to your barn tomboy, your favorite donkey is waiting for you! ;-)

-- (heee haaaaw! @ heeee. haaaaaw!), November 19, 2000.

Dream on jack-ass.

-- Will Continue (farming@home.com), November 20, 2000.