General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Make no mistake about this: we are watching a coup in real time. [View all]LisaM
(27,806 posts)I am not sure that Gore could have requested a statewide recount on the first go-round. I've heard varying accounts, one of which ws that you can't request a full state recount without first identifying areas where there may have been harm (it's been a while, but I remember the various accounts). I'm not going to open an Intercept link, but I did read up on it voraciously at the time.
The justices who should have recused themselves were:
Scalia (son worked for a firm representing Bush in Bush v. Gore)
Sandra Day O'Connor, who'd made partisan remarks about the results on election night 2000
Clarence Thomas, whose wife was on the Bush inauguration committee.
You could make an outside case for Rehnquist, whose daughter ended up working for Bush.
Why the media didn't go screaming all this from the rooftops is beyond me - I still hold their feet to the fire on this. They had all this information and a means of disseminating it, but chose not to do so. People who knew the facts, and could have exposed them, too - Geoffrey Toobin, Margaret Carlson, Chris Matthews, and Tim Russert. Instead, they treated it all as some hilarious side show. I'm not going to engage in victim-blaming Al Gore. He had few enough allies at the time (on top of which people who should have known better dismissed him as boring. Yeah, saving the environment is so boring).