PDittie
PDittie's JournalI'll give that a whirl.
1. The SCOTUS awarded the presidency to Bush.
2. Florida would not have been necessary had Gore won his home state of TN, or even NH. Or Bill Clinton's Arkansas. Or West Virginia, which was blue in 1988, 1992, and 1996.
http://www.270towin.com/states/West_Virginia
Gore placed all his chips on Florida by selecting Joe Lieberman as running mate. I believe it was John McCain, inveterate craps player, who made the phrase "game-changing pick " popular four years ago.
3. 200,000 registered Democrats in Florida voted for Bush.
http://prorev.com/green2000.htm
Google that phrase and you'll even find two archived DU posts that mention it. But the link above is the best assembly of data.
4. Theresa LePore's butterfly ballot cost Gore 30,000 votes to Buchanan. This goes in the "Murphy's Law" category, unless you would rather ascribe ulterior motives to LePore -- who, feeding the conspiracy theories, was a Republican before she was elected as a Democrat... and then switched her affiliation after 2000 to independent.
That's slightly more than the exit-polled 25% of 90,000 Nader voters who claimed they would have voted for Gore otherwise (scroll to the end of the above).
5. As indicated above, only a minor percentage of Nader's votes can be automatically counted for Gore. I believe that percentage to be closer to 10% than anything else based on my own fairly exhaustive search, but the 25% mentioned above is a reasonable premise.
6. One premise I do NOT accept belongs to Karl Rove, who said that the October Surprise of W's DUI five days before Election Day 2000 cost him five states. But there's that, anyway.
7. Finally, if you want to hold Nader's broken promise -- not to campaign in swing states -- against him, that's more than fair. I agree that it was dishonorable of him to say that and then not live up to it.
So to conclude: if you're typically in the habit of selecting the fifth-best option first, then go ahead and keep blaming Nader for Gore losing an election he should have won, for several tangible reasons and many intangible ones as well (refusing to campaign with Clinton, hanging/dimpled/pregnant chads, caged voting lists, etc.).
This argument has gone back and forth so many times that it has acquired a depth of truthiness that can barely be plumbed. At this point the only rational response to Nader Derangement Syndrome is: "It's been twelve years. When are you going to get over it?".
Bill Clinton Finally Just Shows America His ... (NSFW)
...penis.
?4449
Sources at the convention told reporters that shortly after stepping onstage at the Time Warner Cable Arena, the 42nd president of the United States quieted the audience’s extended standing ovation with his raised hands and began to speak loudly and confidently.
“My fellow Americans, for the past 20 years you have all, at various points, talked and thought about my penis, or at least heard direct or indirect references to my penis in news reports, in court records, or in the culture at large,” the former commander in chief said. “My penis has, in a sense, been a central part of American life for the better part of two decades. And yet, the nation has never seen it. Tonight, I’d like to finally change that.”
“So should we just get this over with then?” the president asked the 20,000-member audience, as well as millions watching the nationwide telecast. “Should I show you my penis?”
http://www.theonion.com/articles/breaking-bill-clinton-finally-just-shows-america-h,29453/
I hadn't spit coffee on my laptop in a long time before this.
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: Texas
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 8,322
