This was a critical failure by the Democratic Party, not only morally but as a matter of pragmatic politics--even though the Senate vote-counters and power-brokers undoubtedly saw themselves as the "pragmatists."
It is somewhat reminiscent of the suppression of the Mississippi Freedom Delegation at the 1964 convention. Party "leaders" thought that maintaining a nice coronation for Lyndon Johnson was of supreme importance, but in fact history had forced them to take a stand *on protecting the legitimacy of the Constitution itself,* and they failed to do so. In fact, they seemed not to have recognized it.
Most Democrats, in retrospect, will admit that this was a mistake--that they ultimately gained nothing by appeasing retrograde Southerners, but lost much by alienating a new, fighting activist core--and by treating the democratic process and the rule of law as only so much bargaining material.
But they do not appear to have learned from it.
Now, in 2000, the crisis was not just an internal party matter, but was played out in Congress, with the very legitimacy of national elections on the line--and the Democratic leaders in the Senate thought they were being very clever in protecting what was, in the larger context, a penny-ante deal. Their whole comfortable world was coming down, and they didn't see it. I'm sure many of them still don't.
And no, I don't think that it's a coincidence that both instances involved disrespecting the protection of the civil rights of black people.
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2004 10:51:59 -0700
>
>
>John Thornton wrote:
>
>>> 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 ...>>
>Well said and cogently argued. Last I heard, those disenfranchised
>voters in Florida still can't vote.
>
>Joanna
>
>>>
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