> Whether it was the right
> strategy or not can be disputed, but it was a quite reasonable strategy
> that blunted Bush's power for a number of months until Jeffords
> defected
> and the GOP lost control of the chamber.
Thanks for the information, Nathan. It seems that I not only missed the scenes Moore shows, but also the context they occurred in, which Moore didn't include (for obvious reasons).
It appears that this was a reasonable strategy in a strictly parliamentary-strategy context, but it obviously was not calculated to look good to the public. This is one of the constant problems in political strategy, I guess; the procedures that are sometimes necessary to gain the most power one can get in Congress often look pretty awful when displayed in the media. Of course, this is especially true with the votes Congresspeople need to cast -- usually a whole string of votes on each piece of legislation, at least one of which can be portrayed as a horrible evil.
In the case of Moore's use of this scene in the film, I guess he included it because he is really pissed off at Gore for 2000, and wanted to get in a dig at him on the way to his main target Bush. But I really sympathized with the black Representatives' disappointment.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax