This article depresses me – not just because of what it says about 2004, but because of what it means for the future. If Republicans can rig any future election to come out in their favor no matter what the voters want, then we’re screwed.
The single greatest threat to our democracy is the insecurity of our voting system. If people lose faith that their votes are accurately and faithfully recorded, they will abandon the ballot box. Nothing less is at stake here than the entire idea of a government by the people.
Voting, as Thomas Paine said, “is the right upon which all other rights depend.” Unless we ensure that right, everything else we hold dear is in jeopardy.
Only when Americans can vote from the comfort and familiarity of their livingroom couch will the majority of them care to do so. Americans are way too sated to care about voting, democracy, never mind any larger notions concerning community.
Let’s put things in perspective…
We had a large portion of our summer filled with videos of abject poverty, death by neglect (old and young alike), and of a mass-migrations from a disaster zone — all of it avoidable, most of it government made. No marches. No angry riots.
Just more lawn furniture purchased.
Oh, and then XBOX 360 was released.
America has its priorities, and voting and democracy ain’t it. Too bad we won’t be able to eat all this lawn furniture laying around come the next disaster when food-and-fuel supplies are disrupted for months (yes, months). Good thing we have lots of plump, slow-moving people laying about stuffing their faces; We just might need em in the end.
rob@egoz.org
Ah, RFK Junior the conspiracy theorist returns. A lot of his argument has been debunked elsewhere.
Also, Kerry somehow managed to lose by 3 million votes in total. THAT is the bigger problem for the Democratic party.
A lot of his argument has been debunked? How much of it, and where?
Also, the 2004 presidential election was one of the closest in history. Yes, if Kerry had won Ohio he would have won the presidency with a minority of the popular vote, and yes, the Democratic party has big problems. But if you’re going to have people vote, it should be an honest vote. (And yes, I’m thinking of 1960 as well.) If popular elections are going to be rigged, the state legislatures might as well go back to choosing presidential electors themselves.
I’ll have to look around for good links. After 2 years of reading about this on Kos- where even a lot of the more respected members have said that rigged ballots and/or exit polls are a tinfoil theory, and that the real issue is suppression of turnout- I guess I’m just tired of the issue. RFK Jr. has some credibility issues, but he’s a good name, and so Rolling Stone clearly decided (in my humble opinion) that it was much better to make headlines with a questionable writer espousing a theory that a lot of people would like to believe rather than closely examine the arguments against what he’s saying. THe experts he’s selected are only those that agree with him, of course- you could put together a great article saying global warming is a hoax, with some really impressive experts… but that wouldn’t make the article true, now would it?
This article has (already!?!) been debunked? Wow. And i mean “WOW!” Really now.
Why, RFKJr and (his alleged conspiracy theories) just enjoyed a lot of exposure on American MassMedia. Someone might want to tell the producers and their fact-checkers at CNN, MSNBC, and a few other radioshows. Or, instead, someone needs to check their own “facts” — and their own assumptions.
FACT: The RNC has a whole staff solely dedicated (and trained) in electionary dirty-tricks. Just ask any paid DNC operativew residing in NH during 2002 (and 2004). Then again, that is easily dismissed as a conspiracy theory — never mind the court case.
The DNC, as a matter of policy (and philosophy), does not.
rob@egoz.org
Reminds me of a book by a female academic, looking for reasons to explain the glass ceiling besides discrimination and the “mommy track.”
She argued (stereotypically) that when growing up, girls may pay more attention to classroom rules – raise your hand, wait to be called on, color in the lines, penmanship counts – while boys may pay more attention to rules of the playing field.
The best football players get penalties, the best hockey players sometimes check, the best soccer players sometimes get carded, the best tennis players aim for the very edge of the court, the best basketball players sometimes put their hands where they’re not supposed to, the best baseball players sometimes get injected with…
Point being, achievement in sports might involve being as aggressive as officials will let you get away with – push it to the limit, leave worrying about precise lines to the referees. (Which still requires ability and some sense of the limits, since being ejected game after game doesn’t get anyone to the top either.)
Okay, that doesn’t address referees on the team payroll. But what amounts to poor sportsmanship after the fact? Or before the fact? If both teams had tried the same tactics, would there have been more Reagan-style mutually assured destruction when everyone wound up before state judges?
Okay, agreed, this is all horribly deplorable, tsk tsk. But for those “other people,” the ones aiming for the top, the book suggested some personal attitude adjustment, rather than holding one’s breath waiting for the competitive dynamics of the workplace to change much during a single career or single lifetime.
I finally had a chance to read this. So depressing, so infuriating, to think that the people running our country into the ground have derived the authority to do so from two, count ’em TWO, stolen elections. I mean, I just weep at all the things that may never have occurred or would have turned out differently if President Gore were rightfully in our second term. Since the Clinton administration’s warnings about bin Laden fell on deaf ears in the Bush cabinet, perhaps 9/11 might have been prevented. And, even if that’s a stretch, with Gore in command does anyone think we’d have gone to war in IRAQ? Would we have just pulled out of the Kyoto treaty instead of continuing to work with other nations to improve the protocol’s deficiencies? Would we have hundreds of men from the middle east, kidnapped by the American government because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, being held prisoner indefinitely in Cuba (!?!?!?!?!?! that one always blows my mind) without ever being charged with a crime. Would we be tiptoeing through a minefield of legalese to redefine torture so that we can torture without having to call it that? Would the Enron-engineered California energy crisis that cost consumers and taxpayers billions have happened? And on, and on, and on, and on…
As a person of faith, the greatest insult to me is the way this administration exploits Christianity to achieve their nefarious purposes, invoking the sanctimonious rhetoric of “morality” while they launch unjustified wars, steal elections, rape the environment and attempt to write discrimination into the Constitution. May they find that the Lord is not as easily duped as the American electorate.
Andy,
A couple of quick comments. The Enron strategy in California was hatched in December of 2000- before Bush was inaugurated- and implemented in the spring of 2001, shortly after he took office. I’m not sure what a President Gore would have done about THAT. In reality, the conditions that allowed it to happen were created during the Clinton Presidency.
Second, the Kyoto Treaty was rejected 100-0 by the Senate during the Clinton Presidency. So not only did we not “pull out,” we were never a signatory. Apparently a VP Gore was unable to convince a single senator it was worthwhile.
Some things that are conventional wisdom on the left are simply not true.
It’s the same with some things that are conventional wisdom on the right… :)
Oh, I agree. It’s just my view that commingling facts and myths makes oneself vulnerable to having an argument picked apart.
There are examples of this all the time- one that comes to mind from Kos-land is a Congressional candidate from Arizona full of all the right progressive positions… except he’s not fully convinced a plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11. His campaign will be dead in the water because of that statement.
If Andy, for example, were running for office, and I were his opponent, I’d point out that Enron implemented their plan before the election was decided, as evidenced by December 5, 2000 energy trades where they bought energy for $200 and sold it for $1250. And all of a sudden Andy would be on the defensive, and it’s very possible that I could pull attention away from his valid Iraq points and onto his misstatement of the facts. And generally, I think, politicians who misstate get hurt worse than politicians who take the “wrong” positions on things.
FI, you don’t feel that the “Energy Taskforce” meetings Cheney held with industry leaders during early 2001 largely enabled that crisis?
And as for the “debunking” of the article: I believe the more accurate description would be to say that alternative explanations for the discrepancies in the data have been put forth, but I do not believe that these allegations have been conclusively disproven.
Andy,
No, I don’t believe the Energy Taskforce had anything to do with the crisis. I don’t know how to post links well, but here are 2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Enron_scandal
Note that before Bush’s inauguration, Gray Davis had already attacked the company and fraud had already occured.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/california/timeline.html
Note that the worst blackouts and power shortages occured in 2000, and that the crisis was well in motion (if not at its worst) before Bush took office.
In contrast, Dick Cheney did not meet with Ken Lay, I don’t think, until April 2001, at which point the crisis was starting to lessen…
Just by way of follow-up, here’s a roundup of media response to RFK Jr’s article:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002651747
We now return you to your Little Cicero programming.