But mostly after the event. My point was that during the actual conflict, the folks fighting on the issue were mostly partisan Dems, whether unionists and NAACP folks in the streets down in Florida or folks like myself writing, doing the legal research and propagandizing during the count.
Raise your hands folks-- who on this list was doing something about the stolen Florida election WHILE the theft was going on, as opposed to using it afterwards as a nice rhetorical device.
And Doug, you were in the lead initially on dismissing the Florida outrage as nothing particularly to be outraged at compared to any other electoral problem in our system. You questioned the good faith of most of the Dem activists-- myself excluded -- and you frankly were wrong that Dems wouldn't continue to raise the issue, Gore included, despite his bowing to the Supreme Court. (Which has more to do with liberal deference to the courts that I have criticized elsewhere).
From: Doug Henwood (dhenwood at panix.com) Date: Sun Nov 12 2000 - 10:11:37 EST Gar Lipow wrote:
>If fraud,
>intimidation of minority voters, and gross incompetence that
>disenfrachises voters have become a basic part of our electoral system
>-- this is a great opportunity to fight on the issue.
Certainly. But I see a lot of Dems - excluding Nathan, who is a serious and honorable guy - all exercised about this not on the basis of principle, but because their guy lost according to the current counts. I'd love to see a serious extended investigation of vote fraud around the U.S., not to mention serious scrutiny of the intentional anti-democratic structures of U.S. electoral practice (from technical stuff like ballot access through the systemic stuff like divided government and the Senate). I suspect that sometime in the next few days, after Gore folds, all the critiques of our pseduo-democracy will disappear, except maybe for some maligned Greens and other assorted malcontents, the very people now derided as spoilers.
Doug