2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"When They Come For Our Vote"
http://commondreams.org/views/2016/04/20/when-they-come-our-vote?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetworkBy Hank Edson
People supporting Hillary Clinton often compare the Bernie or Bust movement to Ralph Naders third party campaign in the 2000 election, angrily accusing Sanders supporters in advance of handing the election to the Republican Partys worst candidate ever. But a progressive challenge to the Democratic Partys weak nominee is not the aspect of the 2000 election that ought to be remembered in 2016.
What should be remembered is the failure of Al Gore to fight against the political corruption in Florida, the GOP, and the Supreme Court. Florida, the GOP, and the Supreme Court stole the presidency from Al Gore and he never should have conceded the election, not even when two corrupt Supreme Court justices, Scalia and Thomas, failed to properly recuse themselves from participating in the hearing of Bush v. Gore, and the Supreme Court mangled the law in order to put their political preference in the White House, the integrity of our democracy be damned.
Gore's decision to give up did not turn out to be, as he hoped, for the good of the country. We paid dearly for our failure and for Gores failure to keep fighting. We should have been out in the streets. We should have surrounded the Supreme Court with tens of thousands of protesters. We should have demanded impeachment hearings for Scalia and Thomas. We should have demanded executive branch action from Bill Clinton. Had we stopped what we were doing, filled the streets of our nation and refused to go about business as normal, more than a million people would not have been killed in the Iraq War. Just think of that. It sounds extreme, but where is the line when theft of the people's government requires the citizenry to stand together to stop it? What consequences must we face before we demand unambiguous integrity in our political process?
Instead, of taking a stand in 2000, we allowed a coup détat, a forced takeover of the peoples democracy. We sat by and watched. And we know what ensued: Manufactured evidence to drive our nation into am imperialistic war of aggression littered with every kind of war crime, more than a million dead, and the funneling of trillions of dollars of our tax payers' wealth into the industrial-arms complex. We had a right to stop society still in its tracks for as long as it took for justice to prevail and our vote to be restored. We, and Gore, preferred not to fight and this is the mistake we must learn from.
..more..
boston bean
(36,186 posts)tonyt53
(5,737 posts)RelativelyJones
(898 posts)Is no coup détat, it's a democratic process.
onecaliberal
(32,489 posts)RockaFowler
(7,429 posts)She has 3 million more votes than Bernie
This has to stop. Please take off the tinfoil hat already
onecaliberal
(32,489 posts)TimPlo
(443 posts)We don't know the real count because most caucuses do not count the individual votes, instead the precinct that are won are added. That is way some idiots on her after Alaska where all giddy over only a few 1000 votes cast. They tried to claim it did not count because only a few people voted. But millions voted in caucus the number is just won precincts.
seekthetruth
(504 posts)Heat Street: EXPLAINED: The $12,495 Armani Jacket Hillary Clinton Wore During a Speech on Income Inequality. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwho30uCU
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)I understand that the lowest common denominator neither pays attention to these kinds of things, nor cares about them, so it's no surprise Clinton gets their votes.
qdouble
(891 posts)of democracy
eastwestdem
(1,220 posts)now it moved over there.
RandySF
(57,661 posts)Who had no trouble voting? It's insulting to thousands of people in Florida to equate that with people who just didn't pay attention to registration deadlines. Did you somehow not get to vote?
TimPlo
(443 posts)They said that people where just stupid for not using the punch cards right. I guess it is common to a RW agenda that people think that anything hindering voters is just them being stupid.
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)a Democrat?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)oh wait, that's Bernie?
NM
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)from the link:
We voters are going to have to fight for our vote and for our government if we really want it. We cannot acquiesce to what happened in the Arizona primary. We cannot tolerate a repetition of such a dead serious assault on our vote in New York and California. This is not a violent fight, but it may well be the fight of our lifetime, and in the context of climate change, the fight of our planet.
snip
Liberal progressives have learned a lot since the crushing defeat of 2000, we had to learn about neo cons and then neo liberals enough to distinguish ourselves from them and then recognize a true advocate.
This election will teach us a lot more--we WILL work together to get our true numbers represented and totally change the political landscape.
G_j
(40,366 posts)and, I might add, I posted this in GD as it is about the GE of 2000. Unfortunately, the mods made me switch it to GD-P.