>And if some Senators had agreed to challenge the certification, they still
>would have lost the vote. (One irony of the whole election in 2000 is that
>if the Supreme Court had never intervened, Bush still would have been
>certified as President, since given disputed ballots in Florida, the House
>of Representatives would have voted on which to accept and who won.)
>
>However, the Senate Dems did negotiate strong power-sharing agreements in
>exchange for dropping the certification fight. 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.
You cannot know for certain what would have transpired had a different course of action taken place. It is by its nature unknowable. Challenging the legitimacy of the sham election in FL would have demonstrated to the citizens of the US and the rest of the world that this election was not recognized as legitimate by members of the ruling class themselves. That could have translated into many things in the "real world". That act may have provided some members of the administration with the fortitude to oppose the current war in Iraq before it started. It is impossible to know what effect positive or negative it may have had but it would have at the very least denied the appointed President legitimacy in many peoples eyes. You're making excused for the fact that every Democrat in the Senate shit on everyone including you.
John Thornton