American Politics Journal

Why the Panic? Don't Blame Al
The millionaire media go into overdrive to justify their bashing Gore, and gushing over Bush.
by Mike Hersh

Oct. 24, 2001 (Political Sanity/APJP) -- AWOL Bush is riding high, according to the polls. He's more popular than any other person who ever lived! His decisions are masterful! His oratory is second to none! He is brave, kind, courteous, thrifty....

I wonder.

If Bush is doing so well, why all the defensiveness and vindictiveness whenever anyone asks questions about the fearless leader who hid in a hole on September 11?

If their man is walking on water, why does GOPocrite blood boil?

Why threats from Ari Fleischer against the press? Why does the media cower before these threats? And why does the White House still whine when the millionaire media fires anyone who doesn't mindlessly support AWOL Bush?

Why does the press breathlessly lie to us as they claim that Al Gore's closest supporters are secretly glad AWOL stole the White House?

Oh, and pay no attention to the votes behind the curtain -- better we DON'T know what really happened in Florida last year.

If even "liberal" media like the New York Times are in Bush's pocket, how will we ever know the truth?

We aren't getting the truth from revisionist books that "blame" Al Gore for "messing up" and "essentially handing" Florida to Bush. These authors seem desperate to let Bush's people off the hook. They get their facts wrong, again and again.

The simple fact is this: there are two phases for post election remedies under Florida law.

The first seeks to correct the unofficial tally, before certification.

The second attempts to overturn an official tally.

Many people remain confused on this fact. They blame Al Gore for an allegedly poor decision -- a flawed strategy -- during the first phase for an outcome in the second phase. That analysis does not make sense. Also, no matter what the Gore team did, "the fix" was in anyway; the final result was as inescapable as it was illegal and unconstitutional.

During the first phase, Vice President Al Gore's representatives sought to correct flaws in the machine tally process which discarded thousands of votes. Time was of the essence, so they called for manual counts in four predominantly Democratic counties which used the most error prone method -- punch cards.

After that, the Vice President called for a full statewide manual recount. Was this wrong? Hindsight is 20/20, even allowing for Al Gore probably having won but for the violent criminal Republican riot that halted the Palm Beach count. Also, Gore corrected any strategic flaws in a timely fashion.

Right-wing crackpots claim that since Al Gore's campaign manager's late father, Richard Daley, was the powerful Mayor of Chicago, this somehow proves Al Gore was able to "thwart" the Jeb Bush Florida machine, throw out Bush "military" votes, and make up tens of thousands of fake votes.

Of course, all of those assertions are rubbish.

The only serious legitimate charge against Al Gore is that he innocently erred strategically, and therefore contributed to his own "loss" in Florida. This is entirely unpersuasive. Even if it were, it pales in significance contrasted against the wholesale Bush criminality and misconduct.

The Bush operatives also conducted unauthorized manual counts in six Republican counties, and defied legal orders to rerun the ballots through counting machines in 12 counties. Worse yet, the Bush crimes and dirty tricks included spending millions of dollars in Florida tax revenues to disenfranchise tens of thousands of mainly African American voters, and illegally soliciting and "fixing" flawed absentee ballots -- even late votes from the military -- using state and county election offices!

The best evidence shows that even this crime wave failed to deliver Florida to AWOL Bush. This forced Bush to sue the voters of Florida. In a fixed lawsuit, right-wingers on the US Supreme Court claimed counting the votes that showed Bush losing Florida would violate "equal protection," but failed to establish why that was so. Against this illegal bias and partisan unconstitutional abuse of power, nothing Al Gore did or did not do could have changed the outcome.

People who attack Al Gore blame the victim of a conspiracy by Florida and national Republicans to rig the election. Local election officials, the Tallahassee triumvirate of Jeb Bush, Clay Roberts, and Katherine Harris, Republican officials from as far away as Alaska and the right-wingers on the US Supreme Court worked in concert to rig the Florida result.

Claims faulting Al Gore are simply wrong. Gore did his part. He won the election, and carried Florida.

Don't blame Al. We're stuck with an unqualified, unelected pretender because of Republican crimes and media complicity. Clearly, the Republicans and their handmaidens in the media know all of this. Why else would they rant, lie and bleat while AWOL Bush is supposedly the most popular man who ever lived?

Mike Hersh is an attorney, freelance writer, and webmaster of the Political Sanity Group at http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/political_sanity