What would have happened had Kerry not conceded so quickly

[Stinky The Clown]

NOTE: this is NOT a Kerry bash. I hope anyone with that intent will start their own thread and not hijack mine.

In fact, let's assume it wasn't even Kerry who was running. Let's say it was me ... or you .... or your HS math teacher.

Given the facts and evidence we know today, what would have happened if our 04 candidate had said he wasn't going to concede?

Would it all have wound up again in SCOTUS? Would open investigations lead to the media covering it? Or covering it up? Would very public investigations have given anyone a better insight into what happened? Would the citizenry have taken to the streets, pitchforks and torches raised? Would the result have been different?

Play fiction writer and paint a picture of what you think would have happened.

[leveymg]

1. Same thing as 2000. n/t

[Selatius]

2. It would be similar to 2000

Only the activists on the left and right would be outraged. It probably would end up in SCOTUS, yet again. Everyone else wouldn't give a flying rip. Apathy, comfort, ignorance--these are the three greatest destroyers of democratic institutions in the world today.

Pain is the only answer to these three killers. Given enough pain, even the greatest giants will stir from their slumber. People are asleep. Pain will wake them up.

[cornermouse]

3. Probably should look to Oregon? or Washington? and the

ongoing gubernatorial race for insight?

[Kipling]

4. Likely scenario:

SCOTUS decide in Dubya's favour, the media don't investigate anything, the citizenry sits about eating and watching TV, the Democrats are discredited as liars and whiners.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. The media would likely have had no choice but to cover any challenge

and spin though they might, the truth - at least some of it - would have come out. Leaving the extremists at both ends out of the equation, I should think most of 'main street' would side with the notion of fairness and honesty and want to see what really happened.

Extremists on the right would be screaming 'we won! we won!'. Extremists (I use the word advisedly) on the left would have been yelling a mixture of truth and conspiracy theories.

But in the end, I think the underlying notion that 'something' wasn't right would percolate up. And that may well have led to more thorough and honest investigations.

The actual outcome, based on this? I dunno. :shrug:

[Cleita]

5. There was no way to count the votes in Ohio that

used touchscreen technology. Although the polls and exit polls showed Kerry winning in these precincts, there was no way to do a recount. I think Kerry knew this and this is why he conceded.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. I agree there was no way to recount, but

a challenge could well have been leveled against the very system. In a fair world, massive evidence of an inaccurate and flawed system may have been grounds for some redress. Like maybe even a whole new vote.

I'm not saying that **would** have happened ... just that it is one of a number of possible outcomes.

[Selatius]

9. Theoretically possible, but it would've required heavy commitment

The Republicans would be using the corporate news media as a propaganda gun and would've been laying down withering fire on Kerry et al. Kerry would be facing the same situation with the corporate news media that Hugo Chavez in Venezuela faces every day.

[dogday]

10. Now they are finding out that a few hard drives were switched

from the voting machines in Ohio, there are sworn statements to that fact. Kerry is not going to play the sore loser, but Bush can play the lying winner...

[FreedomAngel82]

15. Exactly

There's no proof. So how do you know George Bush won? You don't! It's all a sham! Those people who voted don't know if their votes were counted or switched. According to Arnebeck on the Washington Journal (you can find it on cspan.org) any republican who voted for Kerry their votes got switched to Bush. There was also all those cases where someone voted Kerry and Bush's name popped up and they had to re-do it until it came up Kerry. Did those vote's count or just the Kerry vote?

[MelissaB]

6. My view is more positive.

The outcome just may have been different than 2000. How many people know that there was a terror alert to count votes in secret? Would the media have covered it? I don't know, but it's an interesting thought...

[FreedomAngel82]

16. They might have

The FBI denied it so they might've just ran with that story alone. Maybe the local news would've covered more. Here one of my local news stations does a lot of really good stories. They're so much better than someone on CNN or MSNBC (except for Olbermann). So you never know with a local network. They're all different.

[ooglymoogly]

7. more of the voting public would have realized

election fraud and that would have been a plus for defenders of the constitution and democracy

[Warren Stupidity]

13. right

As it is, the 'discrepancies' have fallen into the memory hole. At least some of the general population would have understood that we no longer live in a democratic republic.

[FreedomAngel82]

18. For that you can

look at the latest polls. Every poll that has been done since the election has sided with the democrats on issues or just polling in general. Bush's numbers are really low. I believe they're barely above Harry Truman. The people who are representing the public aren't doing anything the public wants. The public is ready, and wants, stem cell research but you know Bush will veto it (how's that for the first thing he'll ever veto?). The public wanted DeLay, Frist and the like to butt out of Terri Schavio but they didn't. The public wanted John Kerry but they didn't. It's also fair to mention the people who did our polling also did the Ukraine's polling. Their exit polling outcome became their winner and detected fraud. So what went wrong here?

[blm]

12. The evidence would have been altered or destroyed quicker, while

the corporate media ran polls asking: Is the Democratic party trying to steal another election or are they just sore losers?

[FreedomAngel82]

14. The exact same thing as 2000

Why? The media. The "riots." I, personally, think it was smart to concede so quickly because look at what has gotten done. We know they stole it and we know they know they stole it. I remember around that time I was on another board and some rightwinger told me they respected him for doing that. Of course I was pissed as hell because they'd been bashing him leading up to the election. He only said that because Bush "won" and Kerry wasn't doing like Gore. It would've eventually lead up to the SCOTUS just like with Gore and we would've "lost" again. Only one or two of the judge's were appointed by Clinton. The rest of them by either Reagan or Poppy Bush. Like any good prosecutor if you have a case you have to have the proof that will hold up in court. Kerry didn't have it at the time and the country was already really divided. He, and the others with him, would've been seen as "sore losers," "sour grapes from 2000" or hell even "consperiacy theorists." It wouldn't have worked. The neocons already had so much power that nobody would've believed John Kerry and John Edwards without proof.

[Stinky The Clown]

17. Not challenging anything you said or what you believe, but where will

we find ourselves in 06 or 08?

Will the awareness that has come out of three stolen elections (that we know of so far) translate into fairer elections to come? Or will we be moving toward Saddam's Irag model of elections (99% victory margins)?

[FreedomAngel82]

20. I think for 2006

you have to worry more-so on the local level. There are still a lot of places that don't have voting machine's such as my area at my polling place anyways. Find out where you don't have voting machine's and help get those democrats elected where it counts whether it be in a high state level or whatever the person is running. Then get a case for closing down the voting machine's all over the state. Show how flawed they are. I believe in Minnesota they have a democratic governor and someone from a high state level presented a case on voting machine's and now voting machine's aren't allowed there. So then hopefully by 2008 a lot of the state's, especially state's where it counts, can be rid of the machine's and never used again.

[Stinky The Clown]

22. If I understand you correctly, you're (guardedly) optimistic for 08?

AS am I. I think the jig's up. Few dispute that there were problems. Unless there's a fix to the basic system, there will be open talk on 'main street' of inaccurate voting in the campaign season. And that's a good thing.

[jobycom]

19. Same thing that happened anyway

Concession means nothing. Kerry would have had to file lawsuits, challenges to elections, etc, to make anything happen. Since this was done, anyway, as much as could be done, nothing else would have happened. Might have gotten more press coverage, but unless Kerry came up with something substantially better than what has come out, he'd have just been a sore loser, and would have become a laughing stock, and would have hurt us more in 2008.

[FreedomAngel82]

21. I agree

Now we have a bigger chance in 2008. In polls lately where it's McCain and Hillary more people are siding with Hillary. People are seeing the neocons for what they really are and aren't happy with it. The republicans have been waiting for this time for thirty or so years. Instead of doing good with this and promoting themselves for the better it's for the worst. They're paying more attention to corporation's and fundies then the mainstream public.

[marions ghost]

25. absolutely...

even after the disaster of 2000, people have NO idea how weak the system is in addressing election fraud, irregularities, etc.--and even if there WAS media coverage the public is not organized or in much of a position to protest, not when it costs a small fortune for litigation. The media would have tarred and feathered Kerry. Look what they did to Conyers and the group who worked to get more attention on Ohio...ignored.

It's a miracle that some people are growing more suspicious at this point. That's how it's happening--a slow realization. But it's a long road to true election reform. Meanwhile the Bushcons are lobbing every other assault they've got, and the election issues remain in the background.

"...the 2004 presidential election in the United States was left intact despite legal challenges and protests. In large part this was because U.S. election laws and political culture fail to take into account the potential for systematic bias in election administration. U.S. laws and public opinion focus, instead, on the possibility that unscrupulous candidates might arrange for votes to be cast illegally by individuals using false identifications, forged absentee ballots, or other ruses." (Lance deHaven-Smith, Miami Herald guest columnist, Feb 2005)

This debate about what Kerry could have done is not productive. The odds were against him in a corrupt system.

[Stinky The Clown]

26. Just to put a finer point on it

This debate is not about Kerry, per se. It is about the situation around the 04 elections, and the aftermath. Was my red letter disclaimer in the orginal post insufficient?

[marions ghost]

29. semantics...OK let me rephrase that....

our "04 candidate" did not have a chance in a corrupt system, and I don't care WHO you want to fill in the blank with, they would've either. And I think my post says exactly that. We don't live in a system that supports contesting a federal election. The candidates are not the ones to fix this massive problem. We need a system that works...really works.

[Algomas]

23. Someone posted a rumor..

that Kerry was warned not to contest. If he did his daughter would be murdered. Has anyone else heard this and is there any more info about it.

[Stinky The Clown]

24. That was floating around for a while

I have no idea where it came from or where it went. But I gotta tell ya .... that one would need a case of tinfoil to make the necessary hat .... yanno?

[Algomas]

30. They are playing for keeps... Failure is not an option for them...

The end will be ugly... I hope the planet will recover from this assault on all living things... We won't be missed...

[LittleClarkie]

27. Hard to know, but some factors that go into my thinking

As I realize how much I as a sheeple was lied to about Gore, and how much of it I bought even though I was a vague Democrat who was going to vote for him anyway, I wonder how Joe Normal would have reacted as our "liberal" media made Kerry out to be the most unpatriotic person ever.

(An aside about the "liberal media: I can't believe that Chris Matthews complained about the Dems bitching and whining. We're trying to save democracy, and Tweety is complaining about the noise. LIBERAL MEDIA MY ASS!)

Remember we didn't have the added factor of 9/11 in 2000. And Falujia (I just killed that spelling) was but days away, by design I reckon. Who plans a war around politics? Bush and Rove do, that's who.

I still can't believe how much still hasn't been done to make us safer that would be a hell of alot more effective than going to war in Iraq. But that's another thread.

I would probably change your heading (if it were me posting, that is. I'm not trying to tell you what to do) to "What would have happened if Kerry hadn't conceded *when he did*. I say that because without Gore's precedent, we wouldv'e thought Kerry's concession was kinda slow by the standard of those that came before.

I think Ohio would have become a Florida-style circus with Blackwell as ringleader instead of Jeb. I think evidence would have been destroyed as fast as they could, while now we may have saved some of it.

I think that K/E were looking more at if they could realistically win, and were being told they could not. So I understand the concession.

Did the concession affect information gathering? I think that was going to be damn difficult either way. Did the destruction of information slow down because of the concession. That would be nice. But we're dealing with things in the dark right now.

All I know for sure is that there is a lawyer named Don McTigue, and a lawsuit still pending. And from lalarawraw, I know that some of the people Kerry thought were on his side in Ohio turned out not to be on his side. I think he was set up like a bowling pin. I think they set him up so that he would do what he did. I don't understand why he originally had a Repub lawyer in OH, btw. But that dude is gone and McTigue is in his place.

Since I'd like him to try again, I'm glad he's not politically destroyed. Even if he doesn't try again, I'm glad that he as a Senator is not politically destroyed. He'd be even more ignored than he is now. Now he's still able to get some things done.

It's too easy to blame him for what happened. I think he and his team expected a replay of 2000, and were caught off guard when 2004 was a whole different ballgame. I think Kerry thought the voting machine issue was tinfoil hat stuff. It is said his eyes would glaze over when someone talked about it. I think he knows better now.

But I think that even now, we have no idea what's going on or if anything is. What people say and what they are doing is two different things. We're not going to be privy to everything. I hope somebody from the campaign writes a book, 'cause that may be the only way we find out what the hell happened.

Kerry himself said that he thought the Bin Laden tape had alot to do with his ultimate defeat. His numbers stopped going up that day. So maybe he really did lose. Or maybe there was fraud, and Karen Hughes was right when she said Kerry was winning by an electoral landslide. Or maybe there was just a mountain of suppression. I don't know. It needs fixing. I hope there is more going on to fix the system behind the scenes than we're seeing on the surface.

That was a bit of a ramble. Hope there's something useful in there.

[seito]

28. There would have been a recount

and it would have turned out exactly as it did.

It would never have made it to the SCOTUS.

Of course the liberal media would have painted the entire Democratic party as a bunch of obstructionist, treasonous whiners that hate America and want to thwart the will of the people.