🚀 go-pugleaf

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"WitchDr" <Witch--Dr@usa.nojunkmail.net.ru> wrote in message
news:HiaOb.11043$2L6.376@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
>
> "Russell Senior" <seniorr@aracnet.com> wrote in message
> news:86k73rt64z.fsf@coulee.tdb.com...
> > >>>>> "Lobby" == Lobby Dosser <lobby.dosser.mapson@verizon.net> writes:
> >
> > Lobby> The votes cast in each state Determine the Electoral Votes.
> >
> > Or _should_ determine the Electoral Votes (or however the state
> > chooses to select them).  In this case, it was a subset of votes cast
> > in Florida that was used to choose the Electoral Votes.  There was
> > never even one single offical count of all the legally cast ballots.
>
> Gore's strategy was to recount select counties and it didn't fly.

He also asked to recount the entire state - Bush refused.

>It sucks
> that what decided the election was legal tactics but Bush wasn't an idiot
> and used his own legal challenge. Bush's strategy prevailed/
>
> > I "got over" _that_ it happened.  I have a harder time getting over
> > that the public doesn't even seem to know what _did_ happen.
>
> You seem to think that somehow the stupid American voters doesn't know. We
> all know what happened and Gore lost. If Bush is so terrible, he'll be
> evicted from office come November.
>
 You really want the end of democracy and for the US to be run by an
Oligarchy?
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America as a One-Party State

Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging
the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself.

In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with
broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and
actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet
the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little
press scrutiny or widespread popular protest.

We are at risk of becoming an autocracy in three key respects. First,
Republican parliamentary gimmickry has emasculated legislative opposition in
the House of Representatives (the Senate has other problems). House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay of Texas has both intimidated moderate Republicans and
reduced the minority party to window dressing, rather like the token
opposition parties in Mexico during the six-decade dominance of the PRI.

Second, electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult
for the incumbent party to be ejected by the voters, absent a
Depression-scale disaster, Watergate-class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style
ruling party split. After two decades of bipartisan collusion in the
creation of safe House seats, there are now perhaps just 25 truly
contestable House seats in any given election year (and that's before the
recent Republican super gerrymandering). What once was a slender and
precarious majority -- 229 Republicans to 205 Democrats (including Bernie
Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats) -- now looks
like a Republican lock. In the Senate, the dynamics are different but
equally daunting for Democrats. As the Florida debacle of 2000 showed, the
Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with
complicity from Republican courts. Reform legislation, the 2002 Help America
Vote Act (HAVA), may actually facilitate Republican intimidation of minority
voters and reduce Democratic turnout. And the latest money-and-politics
regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage
than ever.

Third, the federal courts, which have slowed some executive-branch efforts
to destroy liberties, will be a complete rubber stamp if the right wins one
more presidential election.

Taken together, these several forces could well enable the Republicans to
become the permanent party of autocratic government for at least a
generation. Am I exaggerating? Take a close look at the particulars.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/2/kuttner-r.html