Nathan Newman wrote:
>So you thought the abuses suffered by white folks in places like Wisconsin
>and Oregon were likely to be similar to those faced by blacks and latinos
in
>Florida.
-Fuck no. This is one of the things that make you such an excellent -propagandist - you attribute ludicrous positions to people you're -arguing with and then mount a high horse to denounce them. This will -probably make you a very good lawyer too. The bit you quote from me -was when we were talking about all the funny ballot design and quirky -counting. I'll bet if you scrutinized almost any electoral district -in the U.S. you'd find lots of anomalies, ranging from incompetence -to fraud.
Doug, not that I mind being known as a good propagandist, but in this case you are running away from your own comments and frankly suppressing my clear discussion of the racist attacks on voting rights, not just the ballot messup.
For the record, here is your full message from November 11, including the exerpts of my previous message that you yourself cited:
-----------------
Nathan Newman wrote:
>This is to repeat the gist of the articles I've just posted, but I just am
>appalled that the two Chucks are both denigrating the right to use the
>courts to fight voting rights violations, with Chuck Grimes comparing such
>legal battles to tantrums and ejaculation.
>
>The frigging ballot violated state law in Palm Beach, voters were denied
>translators, police setup road checks near polling booths, latinos were
>harassed to provide extra identification not required by law, and
registered
>black voters were told they were not registered.
>
>IT IS NOT A TANTRUM to demand that these illegal voting rights violations
be
>corrected. The right to go to court to fight such inequities is what the
>March at Selma and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was all
>about. People died for the right to use courts to override the illegal
acts
I'll bet if just about any state's voting procedures were scrutinized carefully, you'd find all kinds of abuses, ranging from negligence to fraud. How about recounts in the states Gore narrowly carried? Doug
-----------------------
Doug, that was a wimpy "everybody does it so why be outraged" response that did create an equivalence between the likely abuses suffered by white Oregonians and blacks in Florida. I clearly mentioned the racist assaults on voters and you ducked the issue.
You play a lot of verbal jujitsu yourself, making outrageous comments then running away from them when called on it, accusing me or others of "distorting" your position. You like to play intellectual provocateur, which is fine, but don't accuse others of twisting the truth when they call you on it.
>From day one, I've been most outraged by the racist assaults on black and
latino voting rights and there has been an amazing void of outrage among a
lot of Nader supporters over the issue. And that void of outrage has been
duly noted by a hell of a lot of the left Dem folks I'm in contact with,
further pissing them off at the whole Nader camp.
Michael Moore was one of the few prominent Nader supporters who could make the argument for voting Nader, then clearly see that in the aftermath of the election that the most critical issue for progressives was the assault on voting rights that had occurred in Florida. I disagree with him on his Nader support but he did not let his anti-Gore position blind him to the outrageous problems in Florida just because Gore might benefit from progressive action to address those voting wrongs.
I wish the same could be said of more Nader supporters. And I mean that because they could have played a critical role given their "swing" status in the state.
-- Nathan Newman