“Joe Geller was deep in the trenches. The county’s Democratic Party chairman was worried that thousands of Miami-Dade ballots might have been affected by a voting machine glitch, potentially costing Gore the election. So on Nov. 22, he headed to the drab government high-rise in downtown Miami where a manual recount was underway.
63 Bush v. Gore: Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight While the GOP Supreme Court Appoints George W. Bush
6/24/2024
If I seem like a guy with his hair pretty much constantly on fire it’s important to understand how we got here. This is the product of me as a US citizen engaging in our political system the last 32 years-going back to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign which I strongly and enthusiastically supported-1992 was the first year I was eligible to vote.
In Chapter Making of a Conspiracy Theorist I discuss the striking fact that the Democratic party has been the majority party starting with Clinton’s near landslide in 1992 but thanks to the electoral college, the undemocratic nature of representation in the Senate, and the Supreme Court along with garden variety gerrymandering, etc-the will of the majority of voters-who have voted election after election for the Democrats-has been thwarted again and again.
My increasing frustration over the last 9 years-going back to the breaking of the faux Clinton scandal Emailgate, and Trump’s stroll down the Trump Tower escalator-‘their bring drugs, crime, their rapists, and some I assume are good people-is the extent to which no one seems to learn ANYTHING. Not the media, not the Democrats, certainly not the “institutionalists”
Indeed, it’s striking how little the Biden Administration has learned from the travails of previous Democratic Administrations going back to when the GOP was investigating Jimmy Carter’s little family farm and trying to prosecute Carter’s brother, Billy Carter.
Clearly they learned nothing from Billy Carter, or from Vince Foster, Whitewater-which led to Susan McDougal’s being spending 18 months in prison because she refused Ken Starr’s demand that she lie to incriminate the Clintons-Moncia Lewinsky-who Starr locked up in a hotel room for 24 hours and threatened to lock Lewinsky and her mother up for 27 years if she didn’t agree to cooperate in his case against Clinton. Beyond that Starr entrapped her into the perjury charge by illegally disallowing her to call her lawyer and tell him not to send the letter Starr based the perjury charge on.
None of this happens to Bill Clinton had he not made the terrible mistake of appointing Ken Starr
-actually the first Special Counsel, Robert Fiske, had been honest and professional and admitted there was no case against Clinton but he was replaced by a three judge panel-of Far Right conservatives by Ken Starr. This Far Right panel of conservative judges was appointed by: yep, then Far Right conservative Republican Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist,
The recent pro Trump Supreme Court Justices from the Trump Supreme Court-or Trump-George W. Bush Supreme Court-are nothing new. Yet even now President Biden is squeamish about the prospect of reforming the Court.
FN: As usual Hillary was right but not listened to when she advised Bill not to agree to Janet Reno’s request.
But Democrats learned nothing from the Clinton years-perversely for awhile in 2019 it seemed the only lesson they’d learned was Democrats shouldn’t impeach the Republican President who had committed impeachable offenses because 20 years ago, the Republicans impeached the Democratic President under far more dubious pretenses.
Obama continued the long Democratic practice of appointing a Republican to run the FBI who then went on the long Emailgate boondoggle that despite having dubious Probable Cause was successfully weaponized by the Republicans-many within the FBI itself to take down Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Biden similarly has seemed to learn nothing-pretty much his first act as President was to keep on Christopher Wray-aka Chris Christie’s Bridgegate lawyer-despite how much Wray had defied House Democrats, had stopped sending updates on the Russia investigation, and stonewalled their questions.
FN: See chapter Adam Schiff.
Biden also failed to recall notorious Trump Post Master Louis DeJoy, notorious Trump Secret Service Director James Murray, notorious Trump Secret Service hack Tony Ornato and Biden’s essentially second act as President was to retain David Weiss-who has now just finished politically railroading Biden’s last surviving son, Hunter Biden, into a likely prison term. Biden also appointed Merrick Garland whose bright idea was to elevate Weiss to Special Counsel based on what has turned out to be yet more Russian disinformation, empowering Weiss to railroad Hunter Biden into a likely prison term over charges that no one who didn’t have the last name Biden would ever face-Weiss himself privately admitted this at one point.
Indeed, to say Democrats have learned nothing since Bill Clinton understates the point as Biden has actually promised ALREADY that he won’t pardon or commute Hunter Biden-his last surviving son’s sentence. One can assume this is not based on Biden doing a careful analysis of the case and concluding his son’s case doesn’t have merit-he just thinks the optics would be too bad if he were to pardon or commute his own son’s sentence. Even if it has merit, apparently.
This proves, however, that far from Hunter Biden being privileged by having the President be his father, he’s positively disadvantaged. He basically can’t get a fair trial BECAUSE his father is President.
At least Bill Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal-despite the “optics” GOPers might wail about there was merit in it as she was unfairly prosecuted in the first place.
Indeed, to see much of the liberal, Democrat, “institutionalist” reaction to Hunter Biden being successfully politically prosecuted, they seem to think there’s something to CELEBRATE about someone being railroaded into prison for political reasons.
Maybe he thinks he’s got a chance on appeal, given the Supreme Court’s expansion of Second Amendment rights. But successful appeals of criminal convictions are historically very long shots — about 1 in 15 get reversed — and it’s hard to see appellate courts ruling that the right to buy a gun includes the right to lie to get one.
“[[The conviction will hurt Hunter Biden’s father personally, and it can’t help him politically. The right wing’s fact-free attempts to link President Biden to his son’s criminality would have been there even with a plea, but Hunter taking responsibility for his conduct would have diminished the MAGA narrative’s staying power.
“One thing’s for sure: The hung jury or the acquittal Hunter Biden was hoping for would have been a political disaster for his father — and for the nation, in this election where the rule of law is on the ballot. For many in the media and for a substantial portion of the electorate, former President Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records in connection with buying Stormy Daniels’ silence to corrupt the 2016 election contrasted with Hunter’s non-conviction would have exponentially amplified the MAGA screams claiming that there are two standards of justice.”
For Hunter Biden to be acquitted and not face prison on charges no one without his last name would face would be a political disaster for Joe Biden according to this writer. This just shows you how much liberals have learned since Whitewater or even Bill Carter-the same as what war is good for: absolutely nothing, as well as how entirely perverse and upside down the way institutionalists look at the world. We should celebrate Hunter Biden getting railroaded-it’d be a disaster to the campaign if he were RIGHTLY not convicted. It’s not hard to understand how Republicans keep wiping the floor with “opponents” who look at the world this way.
Indeed, if anything Bill Clinton was superior to Biden as he wasn’t so afraid of optics or at least not so intimidated he didn’t do the right thing on Susan McDougal. Meanwhile Jared Kushner will never face a day in prison over his $2 billion from MBS and the Saudis. But, yeah sure, the prosecution of Hunter Biden is a boon to the Biden campaign…
Another example in the many examples of what Greg Sargent and Brian Beutler call the hardball gap between the parties, of the Dem propensity to bring a knife to a gun fight was: Bush v. Gore another grotesque case of the GOP stealing an election and running roughshod over US voters and the Democratic party establishment doing absolutely nothing about it and ultimately learning absolutely nothing from it.
FN: Again this is not one such hideous moment but one of many the last 32 years of my adult engagement in my country’s political system.
As I also discuss in Chapter Roger Stone Uknown Background no one today even denies what happened in Bush v. Gore. Mac Stipanovich himself-who worked at the right hand of none other than Katherine Harris to secure Florida for Governor Job Bush’s brother doesn’t deny that on the day of the 2000 Presidential election ‘more people voted for George W. Bush but more people intended to vote for Al Gore.”
This is an artful way of admitting that unlike the Democrat approach during the recount, the GOP strategy was to stop the recount so the Florida voters who had intended to vote for Gore but who’s vote wasn’t counted-due to the hanging chads, etc-were never counted.
A few years ago, CNN looked back:
“It’s been a trip in a time machine: Back 15 years to the confusion of Election 2000, and the resulting 36 days in Florida — a state whose governor, Jeb Bush, was the brother of the GOP candidate. Back to a tie presidential race that wound up decided by an unprecedented intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court. Back to a very different time – as we learned in reporting “The Endless Election” – that still remains an unmatched moment in modern political history.
You could not have written this script in Hollywood, as photographer David Hume Kennerly told us. And it would be close to impossible to duplicate. Because – even given all the fight and the heart and the struggle that was evident on both sides –there were overriding shared sentiments: Win, of course. Fight hard. But don’t destroy the country along the way.”
Bush v. Gore: Democrats brought a knife to a gunfight | CNN
I guess I have to give a spoiler alert right off the bat and admit that I disagree with the perspective of much of this CNN article. It’s far from clear that this was the shared sentiment of both campaigns: “Win, of course. Fight hard. But don’t destroy the country along the way.”
I think “Fight hard. But don’t destroy the country along the way” is a pretty apt description of the apparent attitude of the Gore campaign though not at all the Bush campaign. An apt description of the Bush campaign wasn’t “Win, of course. Fight hard. But don’t destroy the country along the way.” but rather ‘fight hard so we can win.’
By the way I don’t mean to praise the Gore campaign for their “congeniality” if you don’t want destroy the country, well what could destroy the country more surely than swearing in the candidate who didn’t fairly win the election which is exactly what ended up happening.
At least one factor in this terrible outcome was Gore’s seeming lackadaisical attitude throughout the 36 days of the recount until the GOP Supreme Court swooped in and aborted the recount before it was finished-the Republican Supreme Court may have ended national abortion rights but they are ok with aborting a free and fair election as they did in Bush v. Gore.
Looking back on this epic battle, as we did, a few things are clear: Communication, just 15 years ago pre-smartphone, pre-Twitter seems quaint, even ancient. On election night, when Gore was about to concede, his own war room had no idea that he had already called George W. Bush and was on his way to the War Memorial in Nashville to make it official. The scramble to find him, and hold him back, looks more Marx Brothers than modern – and only because campaign staffers could not communicate. Imagine that.”
Yes and this move by Gore was a terrible misstep as it played into the disingenuous narrative that Gore was a “sore loser” an entirely baseless charge that the mainstream media, naturally, bought into hook, line, and sinker. The narrative that Gore was a sore loser was based on a fatal misconception-that Gore had called for a recount. No-the call for the recount came from the state of Florida on the basis that of state law which called for an automatic recount as the final margin was only 529 votes. So this entire premise of “the sore loser” was flawed based on a false premise.
Again the genuine criticism of Gore wasn’t that he was a sore loser but the opposite-he seemed far too willing to lose, he was a very good loser to the point that as a Gore voter felt a little disrespectful to use Gore voters. Again regarding: “”Win, of course. Fight hard. But don’t destroy the country along the way”, Gore seemed to think that fighting hard would somehow destroy the country based on the way he approached it-indeed, he his final concession speech after the Republican Supreme Court set aside the law and elevated George W. Bush got raves for being so free of rancor from the Savvy mainstream but speaking as a Gore voter never did I personally feel less enfranchised than with Gore’s “gracious” concession.
(165) al gore 2000 concession – YouTube
Indeed, even now, almost 25 years it’s hard not to play armchair psychologist and wonder why he was SO happy to concede an illegitimate result-he sort of seemed relieved. His whole life had been built around being President I guess and perhaps he was relieved on some level to be free of it.
But, again, what matters is not how he feels but how his voters felt and that he had no sense of that certainly doesn’t speak well of him as someone who had aspired to be the People’s Representative.
Not only was it the closest election in modern times – and perhaps the hardest fought – but in its retelling it soon becomes clear that politics itself was transformed. Bush versus Gore went from being a close election decided by the voters to one that moved to the courts. The lawyers took over. The candidates seemed more sideshow than center stage – with detail-driven Gore managing his own legal strategy and Bush home in Texas, leaving it all to top man Jim Baker. To this day, some of the young Democratic guns who fought the fight look back on it as uneven – the GOP with a clear game plan and strategy, the Democrats with varying views of how to proceed and how hard to fight.”
Regarding the idea that the Democrats had no plan, in principle at least the Democrats were committed to the idea that every vote should be counted where the GOP strategy was to stop the counting-that was the foundational asymmetry in the entire fiasco. Or at least a large part of it-another part was the question of how much Gore’s heart was really in it. If he was he nevertheless allowed himself to be straightjacketed with the usual Old Guard Dem Establishment obsession with respectability politics-fight hard but not TOO hard less you break the nice girl rules of congeniality-see chapter Democratic Party is a Girl.
In listening to the Democrats retell it (and yes, they’re still not over it), it’s clear that, in retrospect, they now see it as a moment after which they learned of the need to fight. As Gore Florida Senior Adviser Nick Baldick tells us in the documentary, the Democrats “brought a knife to a gunfight.” Al Gore was the ultimate establishment candidate. And he had, after all, conceded on election night – only to take it back. Some on his team were worried about the “sore loser” label and how it might affect his future political plans. After eight years of Bill Clinton, somehow the Democrats seemed to have less fight in them than the GOP, which was itching to get back the White House.”
In other words the usual Democrat mortal anxiety over “optics”-again the correct response to the false sore loser label was to debunk it-it wasn’t Al Gore’s recount but the state of Florida’s. It’s this same anxiety here almost 25 years later that has led Joe Biden to do everything he could to enable his political enemies to imprison his only surviving son.
FN: To be clear, it goes without saying this is not what Biden wanted to do, it’s just what he effectively has done. This goes back to the crucial distinction between subjective intentions and objective results.
(165) Three Hours Of Pain & Suffering | Debating Destiny – YouTube
Find approximate time they touch on this topic.
End FN
I am happy to hear that the Democrats still aren’t over it or at least the Democrats who were on the ground in Florida like Nick Baldick.
The Gore pooh-bahs, who managed the details from D.C. at the Naval Observatory, were different from the Democratic warriors on the ground. Michael Whouley, Nick Baldick, Ron Klain, to name a few, were in the thick of everything in Florida. They wanted to win. Period. And to this day, they argue over vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman’s comments on “Meet the Press” in which he argued that late absentee military ballots should be given “the benefit of the doubt,” a statement that caused Gore partisans to go into orbit because they believed Lieberman had handed Republicans a strategic — if not actual— path to victory.
CNN claims Bush v Gore was a lesson Democrats haven’t forgotten-I wish I could believe that.
A lesson Democrats haven’t forgotten
Even 15 years later, Democrats bemoan their inability to match the clear and singular goals and message of James Baker and his GOP team: Bush won, and Team Bush was in Florida to preserve a victory, not count votes. It was a lesson in messaging the Democrats have not forgotten.
While Team Gore undoubtedly fought and fought hard, the candidate himself did not want to appear to be taking to the streets to win. Demonstrations were limited. Congressional visits to Florida were limited, too. Gore wanted to be a statesman in a dogfight. As Whouley told us, “When you’re in a fight, the first person who stops fighting always loses.” It still hurts.
Maybe some Democrats learned a lesson they haven’t forgotten but don’t know it’s the ones who make all these bad tactical decisions-clearly not in the Biden WH. And note that CNN did this piece-there was also a cable news version-in 2016 the year the GOP would steal another election-the Comey Letter, Russiagate, etc.
So the evidence that the Dem leadership has learnt anything all these years later are scant. Again, the perspective of this article is flawed in some important respects.
Fifteen years later, there’s no one saying the Republicans stole the election, because they didn’t. What’s stunning is that both sides seem to agree on what actually happened: As Baldick says, “I think more people went to the polls intending to vote for Al Gore for president than George Bush in Florida.” And GOP operative Mac Stipanovich, who became Secretary of State Katherine Harris’ brain, told us, “I believe the people who went to the polls that day and voted elected George Bush. I believe the people who went to the polls that day and intended to vote probably elected Al Gore.”
They aren’t? Define “they.” CNN missed the punchline of these comments.
So, it comes down to this: Maybe – just maybe – more people went to the polls intending to vote for Al Gore. But you need to count votes, not intentions. And that was the crux of the problem. In a series of post-election studies done by both the media and academics, the result is ambiguous: Bush likely would have won the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, by a small margin. But Gore would have likely won a statewide recount of all disputed ballots — a process his team never requested.“
Ok so if you acknowledge he would have won the statewide recount of all disputed ballots this means he in fact won the election yet his-defeated-opponent served as President for eight years. But per CNN that’s NOT a stolen election.
UPDATE: This part might have to be edited slightly on the distinction between all ballots and disputed ballots
This link can go above
Bush v. Gore | Summary, Decision, Significance, & Facts | Britannica
The point is that the GOP team understood exactly in real time that Gore would likely win a statewide recount-again, the fact that Gore was too neurotic to simply ask for it is hardly a credit to himself; again even if he didn’t care about his own ambitions anymore he should have shown more respect to his voters, or maybe even some or a little bit of respect.
Indeed, that the idea that the Republicans DIDN’T steal the election can in any way pass the laugh test is completely undermined when you remember Roger Stone’s Brooks Brothers riots.
FN: See chapter Unknown Background
That CNN doesn’t even namecheck the riots in the entire article suggests they know they can’t sustain the narrative that “, there’s no one saying the Republicans stole the election, because they didn’t.” if they acknowledge them.
The Brooks Brothers riots shutdown the recount and they were never restarted subsequently. This Washington Post article written two years after the CNN piece acknowledges and discusses the riots yet they too have an “interesting” not to say weird framing.
‘It’s insanity!’: How the ‘Brooks Brothers Riot’ killed the 2000 recount in Miami
Eighteen years after a chaotic recount, debate still rages over whether the antics went too far.
I mean you just admitted it killed the recount yet in the next breath you’re NOT SURE if it went too far?
This hits on another dynamic of 2000 and its legacy-for many years after the theft of the 2000 election by the Republican party, the media has been committed to the “postmodern” narrative-both parties have their stories about what happened and neither is right and neither is wrong, they’re just opinionizing.
Very soon after the stolen election, the media practiced impressive savvy discipline-by March, 2001 if not earlier they had already decreed ‘the election is over, it’s time to move on that was 3 or 4 whole months ago.’ And for years after the media has been allergic to the question of wether or not there was anything bad about swearing in the loser of the 2000 election and having him preside over the country the next eight years. This WaPo piece at least acknowledged the riots AND that they shutdown the legally mandated recount. But they still had to leaven it a little bit with the postmodern relativity bit.
Anyway let’s listen to WaPo:
But when he arrived, he found the lobby and elections office filled with several dozen protesters — many of them in suit jackets and button-down shirts.
Geller had walked into the “Brooks Brothers riot,” a protest organized by Republican campaign operatives, congressional staffers and lawyers.
When Geller asked election officials for a sample ballot to test his voting machine theory, the GOP operatives suddenly surrounded him, accusing him of stealing ballots to try to influence the election, he told The Washington Post in a telephone interview this week.
“This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me,” recalled Geller, who is now a state legislator. “At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death.”
Brad Blakeman, a Bush campaign operative who proudly admits to coordinating what he prefers to call the “Brooks Brothers Rebellion,” denies that things got violent.
“That’s all bulls—,” he told The Post. “There was no violence. There was no threatening behavior.”
Yet the two men agree on a couple of key points.
First, that the episode played a key role in clinching the election for Bush.
And second, that the situation in Florida today is eerily similar to that of 18 years ago.”
FN: That last sentence isn’t really relevant just kept it for logical continuity.
So this Bush operative literally admits he coordinated the riot and while he claims “there was non violence or threatening behavior” he then admits it was key to winning it for Bush-because it stopped the recount. Logically if it stopped the recount how is it possible to argue there was no violence or threatening behavior? If there was none how were they able to shutdown the legally mandated recount?
Again as I argue throughout this book the GOP’s history of political chicanery hardly started in 2016-quite the opposite.
And now for the ultimate opposite of a plot twist:
Working with about 20 paid GOP staffers or congressional aides and a small fleet of Republican lawyers — including Ted Cruz — Blakeman said the mission was simple.”
Ted Cruz was a Brooks Brothers rioter because of course he was-good training for his January 6 role 20 years later.
“We were ahead,” he said. “And the goal was never to be behind.”
Ok though let’s be clear: this is a euphemism for cheating, the only way they could guarantee this is by stopping the legally mandated recount. Again, as CNN itself admitted Gore would have won a statewide recount and it’s pretty clear the Bush operatives knew this which is why the goal was never to “count every vote” but rather stop the counting.
Once on the ground, Blakeman said he and his fellow GOP operatives set about connecting with local conservative leaders and Cuban radio stations, which encouraged people to protest.”
Yep-get me Roger Stone… I mean there hasn’t been a single GOP stolen election scheme in the last 52 years that didn’t include Roger Stone in a prominent role-the last time he wasn’t involved was when Nixon scuttled LBJ’s Vietnam peace talks dragging out the war another five years. For that one Roger Stone was only 15 but he would get in on Watergate four years later-arguably he was involved in the game winning shot a la the Canucks Letter-see chapter Roger Stone.
Perhaps the most famous operative on the scene was Nixon’s “dirty trickster” himself: Roger Stone.
In a 2008 New Yorker profile, Stone claimed he had been recruited by none other than James Baker III, the former secretary of state leading the Bush recount team, and that it was Stone’s idea to court protesters via Cuban radio.
“The idea we were putting out there was that this was a left-wing power grab by Gore, the same way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba,” he told Jeffrey Toobin. “We were very explicitly drawing that analogy.”
The Cuban dissidents in Florida have also been involved in a few of these GOP plots to steal Presidential elections-or at least in Watergate they were.
FN: The Cuban connection in the Watergate burglars remains one of the more tantalizing connections to the Bay of Pigs and-a number of JFK researcher types have surmised to JFK’s assassination.
Stone claimed he ran the Brooks Brothers riot from a Winnebago parked near the election office.
“I set up my command center there,” he told Toobin. “I had walkie-talkies and cell phones, and I was in touch with our people in the building. Our whole idea was to shut the recount down. That was why we were there. We had the frequency to the Democrats’ walkie-talkies and were listening to their communications, but they were so disorganized that we didn’t learn much that was useful.”
Of course, whenever you’re talking about Roger Stone there’s going to be lots of counternarratives-as all GOP co-conspirators are generally only truthful if it’s convenient to them and it usually isn’t. Just like Stone and the Alt Righter Chuck Johnson got into a catfight over who deserves credit from bringing the Clinton accusers to the 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton two days after the release of the Hollywood Access tape, he has battled other GOP co-conspirators on who deserves credit for the Brooks Brothers riots.
FN: Regarding the Clinton accusers it seems to me they both deserve “credit”-Roger Stone did write a book about them-note these are accusers but none of these allegations have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt or even a simple preponderance of evidence-or even a base level probable cause-while Johnson apparently paid them to be there. Wether genuine victims would allow themselves to be exploited so brazenly is another interesting question.
End FN
Bush campaign operative Brad Blakeman asserts Stone is taking credit for his dirty trick.
“I set up my command center there,” he told Toobin. “I had walkie-talkies and cell phones, and I was in touch with our people in the building. Our whole idea was to shut the recount down. That was why we were there. We had the frequency to the Democrats’ walkie-talkies and were listening to their communications, but they were so disorganized that we didn’t learn much that was useful.”
Blakeman says he was the one in the Winnebago, and he never saw Stone.
“Roger says a lot of things that aren’t true,” he said. “If he was there, everybody would know it, because nobody can miss Roger Stone.”(That idea is backed up by none other than Donald Trump, who Stone consulted on a possible 2000 presidential run. “Roger is a stone-cold loser,” Trump told Toobin. “He always tries taking credit for things he never did.” Tapper’s book, meanwhile, does include a Stone sighting in the Winnebago but identifies Blakeman as the man behind the effort.)
Trouble is, of course, all three of these GOP co-conspirators are pathological liars-Trump and Stone are pretty notorious for their pathological dishonesty and gaslighting. As for Blakeman he’s a pretty impressive liar in his own right.
According to Blakeman, the GOP operatives approached the recount with the same discipline and vigor as the election campaign. They met every morning in their hotel before heading to the elections office to observe and protest, and again each evening. And everything they did was with an eye on the media.”
“It had to be a three-legged stool. We had to fight in the courts, in the recount centers and in the streets — in public opinion,” Blakeman said. He dressed up two staffers as a turkey and a pilgrim with a sign that said “stuff the turkey, not the ballot box.” He put another in a Grinch outfit, calling him the Gore-inch who instead of stealing Christmas, stole the election. He flew an anti-Gore banner over the city from an airplane, handed out free “Don’t be had by a chad” T-shirts and gave away “Sore/Loserman” “crying” towels.
Regarding Gore as is clear from my analysis above IMO his campaign hardly hit on all cylinders-the goal should be to leave nothing on the field but he left a lot on the field-as noted above he didn’t even ask for a full state recount. Having said that the Bush campaign clearly had the third leg of the stool in their back pockets-the Supreme Court but more on this below.
But clearly Blakeman’s credibility in terms of basic honesty is no less challenged than Trump or his GOP co-conspirator Roger Stone. As we saw above he tersely dismissed any notion that the Brooks Brothers Riot of which he proudly takes authorship in any way engaged in violence or the threat thereof in leading to the halting of Florida’s legally mandated recount.
Brad Blakeman, a Bush campaign operative who proudly admits to coordinating what he prefers to call the “Brooks Brothers Rebellion,” denies that things got violent.
“That’s all bulls—,” he told The Post. “There was no violence. There was no threatening behavior.”
Yet in the next breath he admits that “the episode played a key role in clinching the election for Bush.”
It’s pretty hard to square these two claims together.
And indeed, when you scroll down further in the WaPo article we read:
“We took it to farce, because [the recount] became crazy,” he said. “We had to show people how crazy and absurd this whole system was.”
Or, more accurately they successfully framed the legal recount which was sacrosanct to maintain the honesty of the election as a “farce” based not in the law but because Al Gore was a “sore loser.” Not for the first or the last time the GOP successfully gaslit the public sphere.
In other words, violence, intimidation, and lies. Again, how else do you follow Blakeman’s credo: “We were ahead,” he said. “And the goal was never to be behind.”
That could only be guaranteed by discrediting and ultimately shutting down the process as, of course, is exactly what the Bush campaign went on to do.
In contrast, the Gore campaign didn’t seem concerned about the optics on the ground, just the situation in the courts, Blakeman said.
“Gore left a leg off the stool, and that’s why the stool fell,” he said.
Gore focused on the courts in the way that Democratic institutionalists do in the way that Biden does-and all he did was enable his political enemies to railroad his last surviving son into prison. Chapter Respectability politics
But what Dem institutionalists always miss is the GOP owns the Courts or at least the highest Court.
The scene in the plaza outside the elections office that day was “volatile,” Toobin wrote. Two days earlier, county officials had decided to do a manual recount of more than 650,000 ballots. But as a deadline drew nearer, they decided to instead focus only on 10,750 ballots that had been rejected by computer tabulators.
That decision enraged Blakeman and his GOP colleagues, who claimed the three-person canvassing board was gaming the system to ensure Gore came out on top.
In the plaza, Rep. John Sweeney — a Republican from New York whom George W. Bush would later dub “Congressman Kick-Ass” for his ruthlessness — said the board had bowed to the “Democratic machine.”
By the time Geller stepped off the elevator and into the elections office to grab a sample ballot, the Brooks Brothers riot was well underway with protesters shouting “voter fraud” and “let us in,” according to the New York Times.
“They were banging on windows,” he said. “People [in the office] were scared.”
Here you can channel Krystal Ball during Trump’s coup when she was like ‘is that all, liberals?! I was promised a coup.’
FN: Vaush link on Krystal Ball
Krystal Ball is STILL Downplaying the Trump Coup (youtube.com)
I mean clearly no one was intimidated people were scared.
As an elections officer handed him the sample ballot — clearly labeled as such, he said — a GOP organizer with a clipboard started shouting: “He stole a ballot.”
Geller quickly got back in the elevator. A group of protesters followed him.
“These people who had been kicking me were suddenly very quiet,” he said of the elevator ride. “When we got to the bottom, it started back up again. They were chasing me, and I was just trying to get to the exit.”
One man in particular seemed to be “setting a pick” on Geller, he recalled.
“He would jump in front of me and stop, so I’d run into him,” he said. At one point, the man threw himself into Geller before delivering a warning.
“If you do that again, I’ll be forced to defend myself,” Geller recalled the man saying.
The scene was captured in the Times and Tapper’s book.
“The crowd is pulling at the cops, pulling at Geller,” Tapper wrote. “It’s insanity!”
“Several angry Republicans, many of whom had acted as observers during the recount, surrounded … Geller … in the lobby of the building and accused him of slipping a ballot in his back pocket in the tabulation room,” wrote Dana Canedy and Dexter Filkins for the Times. “Soon, about a dozen sheriff’s deputies surrounded Mr. Geller, as the crowd, which had quickly grown to more than 100 people, yelled “cuff him” and “busted.”
Another Democratic official told reporters he was punched and kicked, as well.
When Geller told authorities what was going on, however, the deputies escorted him back upstairs to see the election officials, who confirmed his account, and then to his car.
He got home just in time to switch on the television and see the Miami-Dade canvassing board pull an extraordinary about-face, voting to abandon the manual recount altogether and potentially depriving the Gore campaign of hundreds, if not thousands, of votes they hoped to pick up in the county.
“All sides admitted the Brooks Brothers riot played a decisive role.”
But that’s got nothing to do with violence or intimidation, Miami-Dade’s aboutface where they elected not to do the recount as mandated by Florida law was because Blakeman’s Brooks Brothers rioters persuaded them to through calm, collected reasoning.
“This was perceived as not being an open and fair process,” said David Leahy, the elections supervisor and a board member, according to the Times. “That weighed heavily on our minds.”
“I think the board must have searched their hearts deeply and changed their position when they realized that the results would not be deemed legitimate,” Miguel DeGrandy, a GOP lawyer, told the same newspaper.
Hmmm…
It wasn’t perceived as being a fair and open process so this was rectified by being made in reality unfair-certainly changing the process through by intimidation seems like a fair process.
FN: Just like in response to the alleged perceived unfairness in Hillary’s favor in 2016 the Emaiglate investigation treated her unfairly for “optics.” And the same thing has now been done to Hunter Biden-except it’s even worse as he now looks likely to in fact be “locked up” in favor of “optics” where everyone involved -even his own father-felt that because of optics he couldn’t be given a fair trial and process.
See chapter Biden’s Respectability Politics
End FN
Then Blakeman completely contradicts his dismissal that violence or intimidation played any role whatsoever. The board just “searched their hearts deeply and changed their position when they realized that the results would not be deemed legitimate.”
“We scared the crap out of them when we descended on them,” Blakeman recalled. “They knew what they were doing was breaking the rules and totally subjective, so they all met and decided to put an end to it.”
Geller has a darker view of the demonstration that ended the recount.
“Anybody who says it was unrelated to the intimidation and violence floating around there is not telling the truth. I saw it with my own eyes,” said Geller. “Violence, fear and physical intimidation affected the outcome of a lawful elections process. I think that’s pretty bad.”
I mean Blakeman himself said “We scared the crap out of them when we descended on them.”
As for Roger Stone, my guess is he had a role wether or not he was the leader-Blakeman as a Bush campaign operative may have been more of a ringleader but Stone clearly does have some Cuban contacts in the area.
FWIW Mac Stipanovich in a Twitter convo says his impression that Stone had a role. Jake Tapper also saw both Stone and Blakeman.
FN: For more on Stone’s role see this article
The Brooks Brothers Riot Of 2000 Explained (grunge.com)
Usually when there’s a debate about which GOP co-conspirator is the biggest scammer and both sides make a strong argument.
On the theft of the 2000 election there’s more than enough “credit” to go around.
FN: Gore himself, again, almost seemed relieved to bow out.
Objections Aside, a Smiling Gore Certifies Bush – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
But that’s not admirable the theft is less about what was taken from him than what was taken from his voters; that he was so blase about that doesn’t speak well of him.
Finally, the Republican Supreme Court. The real big picture 30,000 foot view metaphysical lesson from Bush v Gore is the blatant GOP partisanship of the Supreme Court both during Bush v. Gore but also before and since. Today it seems everyday they outdo themselves. In 2014 they gutted the Voting Rights Act, in 2022 the overturned Roe, yesterday was their overturning the Chevron Doctrine
Mike Sax on X: “AND we should add electing Biden is the only way to expand the Supreme Court” / X
Their heavyhanded partisan finger on the political scales is so great and wide it’s hard to be able to fully itemize and apprehend it. OTOH it’s self evident that they appointed W to the Presidency in violation of Florida law that stipulates that any margin under 1000 votes required a recount. And let’s be clear, as we saw in the quotes above-the GOP knew perfectly well that if all the votes were counted they would likely lose-that’s why the goal was ““We were ahead,” he said. “And the goal was never to be behind.”
In other words, not to “count every vote” as the Gore legal team put it but to stop the recount. But then you remember that the main reason the election was so close in the first place was Gore’s refusal to utilize Clinton’s support out of alleged moral fastidiousness due to Clinton’s scandal and impeachment. But then you remember as we noted above that the original Independent Counsel, Robert Fiske, displeased the anti Clinton Republican firebrands as he was actually fair and honest and admitted there was no there there in Whitewater-much less “who REALLY killed Vince Foster?” and was replaced by a three judge panel made up of Far Right conservatives that were appointed by none other than GOP Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
In other words the GOP Supreme Court begat Ken Starr who begat entrapping Monica Lewinsky which begat Clinton’s scandal and impeachment which begat Gore’s moral unctuousness which begat his own very narrow edge-narrow enough to end up back in the GOP Supreme Court’s clutches so they could steal the election from Gore.
On the night of the 2000 election after Florida was initially called for Al Gore, Sandra Day O’Connor was overheard exclaiming “This is terrible.”
O’Connor ironically enough would 12 years later express some regret when she wrote her memoir-as Slate points out this was cold comfort.
“Justice Sandra Day O’Connor should never have retired from the Supreme Court. She is an 83-year-old with plenty of energy, which she expends hearing lower-court cases, giving speeches, and making me want to tear my hair out by talking like the sensible moderate-liberal she refused to be consistently on the court. Why didn’t O’Connor voice these views when she had power?
I’m prompted to my hair tearing by O’Connor’s statement to the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board that, oh, maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea for the Supreme Court to have decided the 2000 presidential election by taking Bush v. Gore and issuing the ruling that ended the Florida recount. Here are her musings, as the Tribune reported:
“ ‘It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,’ O’Connor said last Friday. ‘Maybe the court should have said, “We’re not going to take it, goodbye.” ’
The case, she said, ‘stirred up the public’ and ‘gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation.’
‘Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision,’ she said. ‘It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.’ ”
If anything, O’Connor’s late expression of doubts makes her vote in Bush v. Gore seem all the more partisan. Especially since, as Linda Hirshman points out, O’Connor was on record as rooting for another Republican presidential candidate, George W. Bush’s father, in 1988. “I will be thankful if George B. wins,” she wrote to Barry Goldwater in 1988. “It is vital for the Court and the nation that he does.” Couple this with Newsweek’s report that at an election night party in 2000—yes, that’s the year George W. ran against Al Gore—O’Connor’s husband, John, reportedly said that his wife wanted to leave the court, but wasn’t eager to do so if a Democrat was in the White House. “This is terrible,” she reportedly exclaimed when CBS called Florida for Gore. Terrible enough to undo, apparently, even if that seems unwise with the benefit of hindsight.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s Bush v. Gore regrets: She shouldn’t have retired. (slate.com)
At the end of the day her regrets real or imagined are cold comfort. She would express regret for how partisan andFar Right the Court would become but she herself was always pretty partisan and it’s pretty hard to believe her decision wasn’t influenced by her clear partisan wish for W’s victory so she could retire without the conservatives losing their ideological advantage. Once again, the Far Right GOP Court was self replicating like one of Dawkins selfish genes…
Her GOP partisanship and willingness to make decisions convenient to her GOP partisan preferences begat the future even more conservative Courts she bemoaned 12 years later. Indeed with all the new outrages regarding with the Sam Alito’s naked GOP partisanship-he takes the Far Right position on almost any issue; on the phony allegations that Biden had tried in an inappropriate way to unduly influence social media companies, Alito proved too Far Right for even some of his fellow Far Right Justices.
Even in the case of the life of the mother he wrote an angry minority position against any exceptions to his extremist Forced Birther ideology. So much of the scandals around Alito and his wife’s upside down US flag-a gesture based on the Big Lie that Trump “really won” an election he lost by 7 million votes-is just about thumbing his nose, of strutting, of rubbing it under the public’s nose that he and his fellow Far Right conservatives live in a world of total impunity.
Just yesterday they once again outdid themselves-gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2014, ending Roe in 2022-leaving us in a nation where in many parts of the country a 13 year old rape victim has less rights than her rapist-indeed she can be prosecuted by HER RAPIST to prevent her from “killing his unborn child.” Yesterday was yet another new low.
On the same day they also revealed that they will decide on Trump-who appointed 3 of them-on literally the last day of July-the last day possible-on Trump’s self-evidently absurd assertion of absolute Presidential immunity. While it’s still assumed they won’t grant this at least not COMPLETELY that they took the case at all is a bad signal-as the Trump Florida Judge Aileen Cannon’s willingness to hear almost any absurd pro Trump argument no matter how self evidently absurd. She has not seemed to find much merit in the latest defense gambit that the Special Counsel rule itself is unlawful but why did she take the case at all?
Similarly, the fact that the Supreme Court took the idea that Trump has absolute immunity seriously at all is itself a pretty bad sign. And let’s not assume they won’t grant it. They probably won’t in total-however, they could come up with a judgment that might be short of total immunity but would still immunize Trump against many of the charges he faces. That they are waiting to literally the last day-like the third time the SC has done this in the last 40 years is convenient for them for two reasons.
1. It gives Jack Smith as little time as possible to go forward with the case before the election-it virtually guarantees Trump can’t be convicted beforehand.
2. But it also gives them a jump on the torrent of criticism they will get if the substance of this judgment is outrageous-and again, it could be really outrageous even if short of granting Trump TOTAL immunity-maybe they “split the difference” and give him “only” 60% or 75% or 85%. Technically it wouldn’t be TOTAL but for all intents and purposes it might totally neuter much of Jack Smith’s case.
Then there was the very plausible 14th Amendment case that Trump isn’t eligible to run again after fomenting the coup and insurrection that they already made short work of-completely ignoring the clear text of the 14th.
And this current radical Republican Supreme Court-where 5 of the 6 Republicans were not only appointed by Republican Presidents who got in Office despite losing the popular vote, but by Republican Presidents who lacked legitimacy.
Trump was elected by Comey’s FBI-and Putin-Assange-whereas if you’ve read this chapter hopefully I don’t have to explain why George W. Bush lacked legitimacy. Again the GOP Supreme Court begat W who begat Samual Alito’s extreme anti abortion stand, etc.
Yet even now Biden is at least somewhat squeamish about expanding the court as well as Chuck Schumer. Again, how it’s possible to learn so little as the old guard Dem institutionalists is practically a superpower. Indeed, Biden has learnt so little he enabled his own last surviving son’s being politically railroaded-indeed his completely unnecessary promise not to commute Hunter’s sentence before he even knows what it is shows he understands less of how this game is played than Bill Clinton himself-at least he was willing to pardon Susan McDougal, optics be damned.
As I argue in chapter Adam Schiff, it’s a really positive, promising development that Schiff is likely headed to the Senate. If anybody could be an effective advocate to persuade Schumer-Biden, et al to stop being so squeamish on court expansion and ending the filibuster.
So that’s a major greenshoot to watch and I do think there’s some hope that the rising Gen X leaders like Hakeem Jeffries and Kamala Harris won’t be so diffidently “institutionalist”
But at least for much of the Dem establishment today, it’s stunning that they have seemingly learned so little-again you had Dem pundits arguing that it would have been a political disaster if Hunter Biden were NOT unfairly prosecuted and convicted. For an innocent man to NOT go to prison would have been a disaster to his father.
Which might explain what might seem to be my “cynicism” and “conspiratorial” nature. In reality this is very much a nurture not a nature story.