The Looney Liberal Chronicles: Chapter 8

 by Phillip Ellis Jackson  

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Fairness is as fairness does — rewriting the rules after an election is held, and other great moments in the Liberal thought process.

Chapter 8:  Election Day Arrives, and Arrives, and Arrives

I don’t need to go through the roller-coaster history of the days following the November 7, 2000 presidential election.  Most of those reading this essay will have lived through it, from the butterfly-ballot controversy (where “accidental” votes were supposedly cast for Patrick Buchanan instead of Gore), to the controversy over hanging chads on punch-card ballots, to the issue of how to treat absentee ballots from U.S. servicemen. 

What I want to focus on in this segment is not how the big guys in both parties maneuvered on behalf of their candidates, but on how all this impacted my and Harry’s judgments about the comings and goings of American politics.  November 7, 2000 not only marked the beginning of a new era in American political history, it also signaled the impending breakup of our friendship. 

Although Harry and I never quite saw eye-to-eye politically, I still had great respect for him as a person, devoted husband to his wife and loving parent to two great kids, and as an accomplished business professional.  Where before our barbs were funny but pointed, they now became angry and, at times, somewhat personal.  It wasn’t long before we were both invested in “our guy” to the point that an attack against Bush was an attack against Phil Jackson, or my criticism of Liberal-think as phony and corrupt was perceived as a personal slap at Harry’s own integrity.  Like the country, we split into two polarized camps, talking past each other instead of to the other person.

On a personal level, I regret that this polarization occurred, because some of the most fun I had was trading political shots with Harry when we were not talking about the other non-political things we had in common.  I’d help his kid with a research paper, he’d lend his considerable business expertise to an important family matter affecting my parents. 

But those days went away, and on another level I have no regrets.  Harry, misguided Liberal though I believe him to be, was fighting a war of ideas as was I.  When the “war” surrounding those ideas is real, as happened with 9/11, the stakes are even higher — and passions rise accordingly.  So it is with this introduction that I ask you to place in perspective the back-and-forth between myself and Harry (and the other liberals I took on), as we fought the twin battles of domestic and international politics following the November 2000 election.

It all started off amicably enough.  I wrote Harry the following message on November 10, 2000, after learning that Al Gore was going to contest the Florida vote:

Phil: I’m very worried about all of this, for the future of our country. Consider where we are today.  Let’s assume that Bush wins all the disputed counties in a machine-recount, the subsequent four county hand-recount, and after tabulating all the absentee votes is still ahead.  Thus he is declared the winner.  I’m convinced that Gore will not let go, and encourage his surrogates to sue for either a “do-over” election, or some arbitrary ruling that the people who voted for Buchanan should have their votes applied to Gore. 

Can you imagine the precedent either of these decisions will set?  In the first case, we’ll have hundreds of similar actions taken all over this country, if not in this election then the next.  In the second case, any result from one county that diverges from neighboring counties (or previous years) will be subject to invalidation on this basis alone. My vote could be arbitrarily dismissed because I voted Republican in the last 8 elections, but decided to vote Democrat in the 9th, and thus the “profile” of my county changed.  This is absurd.

I’m not criticizing the automatic recount triggered by Florida law.  This is fair and reasonable.  But even before the recount is done Gore’s people are threatening to sue.  Gore has already changed the American political landscape whereby both political parties are now factoring lawsuits into their electoral calculus. If the Democrats succeed in changing the rules and overturn an election where voter confusion and stupidity is the reason for the lawsuit — not fraud — then no future election will be safe.
 
The stability of this country depends on certain inviolable facts, the main one being that you hold an election, and the winner wins.  Only fraud, not stupidity, can overturn an election and still allow the public to have confidence in the system. This issue is bigger than who becomes president.  The end does not justify the means.  Even if Gore sincerely believes that he really would have won except for confused voters in Florida (remember, it was the Democrats who created the ballot!), he has a larger obligation not to screw up the American political process by attempting to create new law to justify his election.  Bigger issues are at stake here.

Predictably, Harry didn’t agree with my assessment.  The issue for him was pretty straightforward, and an adumbration of many conversations still to come.

Harry: Boy do I disagree with you on this one.  The real issue here is that the election should not be stolen from the true winner, which could still be Dubya or Gore.

I look back upon these first few days after the November election as the halcyon times of the Great Debate, when Harry and I could still disagree cordially.  It rankled me to hear the word “stolen” apply to Bush’s lead, though, so I decided to lay the issue out more clearly for my friend, who I knew down deep to be a reasonable guy despite his Liberal trappings.  It’s one thing to assert that the other guy’s candidate is a hypocrite, drunk, idiot, or phony.  Those are fighting words in their own right, but ones easily defended or debunked by a reasoned reply.  The fact that Harry or another self-described Liberal wouldn’t accept my evidence didn’t particularly bother me, because I knew that any honest, objective, disinterested third party would see that I had made a better case for my position than them.  

But when you introduce the notion into the discussion that one of these guys might be a crook by implying that he’s stealing the election, it’s a completely different attack.  Bush was ahead at that point (as he was at all times during the course of the recount), so presumably he was the one doing the stealing — Harry’s lawyer-like disclaimer at the end of his remarks notwithstanding.  Nixon was a crook, and when this was clear I deserted him like most other conservatives with principles.  As a microcosm of what was going on at the national level, if I let this scurrilous notion go unchallenged, I risked letting our debate be defined by this phony issue. 

There was no election fraud at work here, just the stupidity of certain Florida voters at worse, or the superior electoral strategy of Republicans at best.  While Gore was chalking up big victory margins in states where he was already ahead, Bush focused on the true battleground states, one of which was Florida.  It didn’t matter if Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 or 5,000,000.  Both men knew going into the game that the only thing that mattered was reaching the magic number of 270 electoral votes. 

So I posed a series of questions.

Phil: Harry, think about your message back to me.  You used the word “stolen”.
 
Q.  Is fraud “stealing”?
A.  Yes.

Q.  Is confusion “stealing?”
A.  Perhaps, depending upon the circumstances.  I then ask you the following questions:

Q.  Did the Republicans or Democrats create the ballot?
A.   The Democrats.

Q.  Was this a new ballot design for 2000?
A.  No.  It’s been used by the same district for many years.

Q.  Did the voters using the ballot say it was confusing when they used it?
A.   No, the only complaints came after their guy lost.

Thus, in this case, “confusion” is not “fraud”. 
 
The Democrats are reduced to this charge:  we don’t like the ballot — created by Democrats and used over the past few elections — because AFTER our guy lost, we decided that MAYBE we didn’t vote the way we thought we did.  We don’t have any actual proof that we made a mistake, but since more people voted for the Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan here than anywhere else in Florida, it MUST be a mistake.  We’ll ignore the fact that there are 15,000 registered Reform Party members in Palm Beach County, and that Pat Buchanan got 9,000 votes in the Republican primary in 1996.  Bush obviously stole the election.

Harry, Republicans lost narrowly in 1960 and 1976.  They accepted the defeat, and moved on.  Our Constitution established the rules by which “fairness” is judged in electoral politics. Stupidity and alleged-confusion do not constitute fraud. “Fairness” is not what we decide it is today.

The election is not being stolen by Bush  Your guy needs to just suck it up and accept defeat if the final count goes against him instead of raising this extraneous, ad hoc “fairness” issue to claim an unjust victory.

Life isn’t always fair, but there is a broader issue here that needs to be appreciated.  Once Gore opens Pandora’s Box, the Republicans will respond (or to use your terminology, “retaliate”), and then nothing can save us.

Case closed, I thought. 

Well, not really.  I’m not a Liberal, so I can’t just wish my own version of reality into being.  Still, I thought I made a pretty compelling case for my point of view.  Harry — following the Democratic Party line — wrote back about “fairness,” and “voters’ intentions,” elections without defects, and all the touchy-feely kinds of things that had no bearing on a Constitutional issue, but gave the Democrats a good public relations platform to argue their case.

Having failed to persuade Harry and the other Liberals I took on in my emails that you actually had to know what you were talking about before you offered an opinion, I decided that the best plan of attack would be to join ‘em if I couldn’t fight ‘em.  So it was on November 11, 2000, four days after the most screwed up election in American history, that I did the unthinkable. 

I became a Liberal Democrat.

Mind you, this wasn’t an easy choice, because it went against every fiber in my being to renounce the logic and goals of conservatism and the Republican Party.  But it was convenient, and if I’d learned nothing at all from my conversations with liberals, it was that we shouldn’t feel constrained by our past positions when making a new one.  So I went into my Outlook address book and copied the world on the following message:

Phil: I just wanted everyone to know that from this point forward, I’m changing my political affiliation.  I am no longer a Republican.  I am now a Democrat. 

I still support George W. Bush, but by changing my party affiliation I am now unfettered by the need to actually know what I’m talking about before I make a categorical statement.  “Fairness” (that is, what I define as “fair”), now guides my actions, rather than some archaic, abstract notion of the law, ethics, or morality.  People who oppose me or call my motives into question are evil. The end justifies the means if the end is good and just, as I define those terms.  What I say in this email is only valid insofar as it supports my present arguments; if I need to change my reasoning tomorrow to support a contradictory position, it’s unfair to bring up my past position, because that is no longer relevant.

Now for today’s position.  If my guy is behind in the vote, we need to keep recounting the ballots until everyone who voted has their vote registered — regardless of whether fraud, stupidity, confusion, laziness, or just plain voting for the wrong person was the cause of my guy losing.  Once the vote count goes my way, we no longer need to examine the ballots.  The election is over.

Since my guy is ahead at this moment, the election is over.  Anyone who disagrees with me is evil.

Man, is this great!  It’s the shortest email I’ve ever had to write!

Two days later, after even more nauseating political maneuverings by the Gore team, coupled with endless rationalizations from Harry in support of their behavior, I expounded on my earlier “Democrats for Bush” email.

Phil: I should have become a Democrat years ago!  I don’t have to worry about following the rules, acting ethically, knowing what the definition of “is” is, or putting up with any other distraction.  I can simply say what I want, do what I want, and support the outcome I want with any justification that works.

Today’s position is as follows. In order to elect Bush, we must strictly follow Florida election law insofar as all ballots must be counted by 5:00pm Tuesday.  All other countervailing or contradictory statutes do not apply (either because that’s the way it actually is, or that’s what I’ve decided it needs to be as the only “fair” way to proceed).  Bush wins, and that’s all that matters.

For convenience sake, I’ll remind you of the Democratic credo that allows me to support today’s position, which may or may not be the same as tomorrow’s position, depending upon what short term objective I’m seeking that day.

1. I am unfettered by the need to actually know what I am talking about before I make a categorical statement.

2. “Fairness” (that is, what I define today as “fair”), now guides my actions, rather than some archaic, abstract notion of the law, ethics, or morality.

3. People who oppose me or call my motives into question are evil.

4. The end justifies the means if the end is good and just, as I define those terms.

5. What I say in this email is valid insofar as it supports my current position.  If I need to change my reasoning tomorrow to support a contradictory position, it’s unfair to bring up my past position because that is no longer relevant.  Bush will win, and the Democrats and liberals will scream. But who cares? We control the House, Senate, White House, and will soon appoint some new Supreme Court Justices.

You know, I could just kick myself all these years for trying to be consistent with my actions and pronouncements, and for trying to act ethically, and within the letter (and spirit) of the law.  There’s something to be said about this end-justifies-the-means credo after all.  

And don’t disagree with me, or I will pronounce you evil.

Harry failed to see the humor in my parody of his liberal thought process.  Instead, he went on to mirror the latest Democrat charge that the Republican Florida Secretary of State and Republican Governor of Florida were conspiring to steal the election for Bush.  His evidence? The Democrat State’s Attorney General and the Democrat-dominated Florida Supreme Court were extending the vote count and re-defining the criteria to help Gore cut into Bush’s lead.  The fact that these supposedly neutral (albeit partisan) forces were countering the dastardly Republicans' plans to implement the law as it was written before the election was proof-positive of a conspiracy to steal votes. 

I thought Harry was an idiot, and told him so in that exact way, which prompted another escalation in our own war of words.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Although the jabs were getting a more brutal with each new email, Harry and I were still good friends.  When he got himself involved with the actual recount (as an observer, not a participant), he kidded around in an email that Gore’s vote tally would soon begin to rise.  The “three amigos” as Harry called me, my brother Dan, and Chris Jefferson, sent him an email asking him to be careful about putting something like that in writing.  Even though we all knew it was a joke, there was no telling what someone might do if they ever got a hold of an email like this, and decided to misconstrue it for partisan reasons.  “I know you’re only kidding about skewing the results,” I said, “but these are highly charged political times.  Besides, the regular points you make are ridiculous enough that you don’t need any forced humor.”

If there were any jokes to be made about Harry’s participation in the recount, they were better off coming from us than him.  Harry agreed, and re-emphasized that he would never do anything to dishonor the process, which was never in doubt in any of our minds.  But I did remind him that as a fellow Democrat now, since I had converted to his party’s philosophy, the only definition of fairness he could accept was mine, so I expected to see the results I wanted, not what the law itself might actually say.

This notion of fairness continued to be a theme in Harry’s emails as we continued through the middle of November.  I was again growing frustrated at the patently absurd way the Constitution was being flouted by the partisan supporters of Vice President Gore.  It didn’t help matters when I would point out these facts to answer every charge Harry made that Secretary of State Katherine Harris was a Bush flack just trying to get him elected.  Bob Butterworth, the Democrat Attorney General, was up to his elbows trying to manipulate the process, but when I pointed it out to Harry I got this astounding reply.

Harry: Yes, Bob Butterworth is a Democrat and headed the Gore campaign in Florida.  But he is not in a position to influence the outcome the way Harris is.

More moral relativism of the worst kind, I thought.  “Sure, your Honor, my client stabbed Mr. Jones in the heart, but he used a knife.  The other defendant in this case used a gun on him too.  Guns are clearly more lethal than knives, so you should let my client go.”  Huh? 

The national debate over “dimpled” and “hanging” chads gave rise to a parallel debate between myself and Harry.  I concluded from the phony Democrat logic that there were actually other hitherto unknown categories of chads that also deserved to be counted, all in the name of “fairness.”

Phil: We all know what a “pregnant dimple” is, but given the way the Democrats are changing things, I think we should expand the language.  An “aborted” dimple is a dimple that, subjectively speaking, would clearly be a Gore-intended vote if it was on a Gore chad, but was a Bush-second-thought non-vote because it was on a Bush chad. Therefore it was aborted. Then we have a “masturbatory chad.”  It’s a chad that wasn’t there on the original card, but appeared only after Democrats dropped, twisted, prodded or otherwise “man-handled” it enough to make it a subjective Gore vote.

As if the whole notion of discerning votes from partially or incorrectly marked ballots wasn’t ludicrous enough, I heard on the news that same day that Broward and Palm Beach counties had set aside a number of dimpled ballots (that is, ballots where the punch-through chad had all its sides intact, but there seemed to be a slight mark of some sort on it), intending to make a decision about these ballots only after the entire manual recount was finished.  This prompted me to observe:

Phil: So, if Gore is still losing after the manual recount is over, they can ignore what they affirmed to the Florida Supreme Court and count the dimples to give their guy several hundred more votes if he needs them. I thought they only did this kind of stuff in Chicago. 

My anger at Harry and the Democrats was beginning to flair at this blatant attempt to manipulate the results of the Florida election.  I concluded my email to him with a pointed challenge:

Phil: If what I just said is indeed true, will you at least admit that:

A. There is no objective, non-partisan criteria by which the votes are counted.

B. The Democrats are willing to change the criteria to suit their needs when losing, even going so far as to state one thing to the Florida Supreme Court to help win their case on Monday, then doing another thing after all the votes are counted and Algore is still short.

C. This is not a simple, non-partisan process of making sure that “every vote counts,” but an outright manipulation of the vote to insure a Gore victory.

D. And you are now part of it.

I ‘d like to know from you if any of these facts are wrong (and if so, specifically why?).  And if my facts are correct, why don’t you care when your whole rationale for supporting this farce is to produce a “fair” vote?

There was no reply from Harry.  An earlier email that same day had cited his disgust for the “hatchet woman” Katherine Harris who he believed was deliberately throwing the election to Bush, and his belief that while some of our arguments were “cogent,” we were “leading with our hearts instead of our heads.”  He decried the fact that “Republicans dramatically turned up the rhetoric to a fever pitch today by accusing Al Gore of being unpatriotic,” citing the example of Republican condemnation for Gore’s effort to block counting the overseas absentee ballots from U.S. servicemen.  

As for my charge that the Gore team was misapplying the notion of fairness to an already-defined, purely legal issue, Harry concluded that what I was really saying was that “fairness, equity, and common sense does not have a place in this race.”  

I could only remind him again, fruitlessly, that what was at stake was not the superficial straw-man argument he posed, but the fact that:

Phil: Your definition of fairness, equity, and common sense is different than mine, and imposing your standard on me is unacceptable. We are a nation of laws, and the law must be followed.  We can’t decide after the fact that because we don’t like the outcome when the law is applied, we now need a ‘do-over; or must have some kind of modification to produce a ‘fair’ (as you define it) outcome.

Clearly we were living on different planets.  The world as I saw it bore no resemblance to Harry’s. I will give him credit, though, for stepping outside the Liberal-Democrat bubble from time to time, and writing some rather poignant and prescient comments. When Harry was defending the Lib-Dem talking points, there was absolutely no point reasoning with him.  If the lie of the day was that Bush shot his grandmother, Harry made it his own propaganda too, until a new Lib-Dem attack made the old charge inoperative or irrelevant, at which point he quickly adopted that line of attack.  But he was more than capable of intelligent thought when he wanted to, as he demonstrated in a November 21, 2000 email.  After towing the party line about the implications of a Gore-friendly ruling from the purportedly non-partisan, though Democrat-dominated Florida Supreme Court, he offered this comment. 

Harry: Whether Dubya or Gore wins, this is a travesty for America as nothing, and I repeat nothing, will get done in Washington [over the next four years].

I was not in a retrospective mood, however.  Whether Harry was right or wrong about the impending gridlock in Washington, I was still focused on the fact that “nothing short of the outright theft of this election is taking place in Florida.”  I had a few predictions of my own.

Phil: Partisan Democrats at the county level will count votes in heavily Democratic counties only, constantly changing the standards for judging what is or isn’t a “vote” — but insisting that the law be followed to the letter to reject military absentee ballots.  The sole purpose of their actions is to award Gore enough votes to win.  And once this happens, you’ll expect the country to smile and accept the “will of the people.”

This is beyond disgusting.  Pandora’s box has now been fully opened, and you will regret the day you supported substituting your notion of fairness for what is lawful and just.

Emails flew back and forth at a furious pace.  For every accusation of corruption and manipulation I made against Gore’s people, Harry countered with missiles back to me like:

Harry: Katherine Harris was only “doing her job” in trying to ram her decision down the throat of all the people of Florida and all the 50 million people who voted for Gore.  That slime was ready within 30 minutes to certify Bush if the [Florida Supreme Court] had ruled in her direction.  She’s as “unbiased” as they come.  The Republicans are trying to steal the election from the rightful winner.  I must admit, as a left-of-center Dem, I am getting sick of the Republican tactics.

Like the Bush and Gore forces assembling in Florida and Washington, at this point Harry and I seemed ready to slug it out.  But cooler heads prevailed.  Harry sent me an email which said, in part, that despite the barbs we both tossed back and forth, “I am having so much fun with this political banter.  I hope you are too.  Have a great Thanksgiving.”

I remember being taken aback a little by the friendly gesture.  Not that I ever doubted Harry’s honesty and integrity on a personal level, but I wasn’t in a lighthearted mood about any of this.  Republicans had suffered through eight years of Democratic corruption and incompetence, and had finally won back the White House — only to see the Democrats try to weasel their way back into power.  Nixon could have easily contested the 1960 election when a few thousand mysterious last minute votes magically appeared in Illinois to give Kennedy the state.  But he didn’t.  Nixon, the only president to resign from office in disgrace, had more class in his little finger than the entirety of Al Gore’s political entourage; Gore included.  This wasn’t some abstract, meaningless game.  It was a battle over the heart and soul of the Republic, and the future direction of the country.

But it wasn’t my battle, not in a direct sense.  To be sure my team was on the field, but win or lose my life would go on pretty much the same as it did before, minus the confiscatory taxes I expected from a Gore Administration, the high level corruption and incompetence that would diminish the effectiveness of governmental actions, and the nightly heartburn I knew I’d get from watching this Mr. Rogers-clone sitting in the White House condescendingly tell me what an idiot I was for not understanding that he had a superior intellect and instinctively knew what was best not only for me, but for the rest of the country.  So I stepped out of my bubble for a moment and accepted the gracious overture from my friend Harry.

Phil: I’m having a lot of fun too.  I know you never take any of this personally, even when I appear to impugn your integrity for supporting that scumbag Gore.  What am I going to do when Bush wins and I don’t have you to beat up any more?

Unfortunately, the Thanksgiving Day cease-fire lasted about as long as it took to finish off the turkey.  I challenged Harry to back up his claims that the Florida Republican Secretary of State, whose job it was to certify the elections, was a political hack.  I, and the two other amigos, had written dozens of emails analyzing what Florida law actually said; how the State Court was being openly partisan by overturning established law and precedent and generally pulling things out of the air to back up their rulings.  (“We’ll ignore Florida law here, and cite South Carolina law instead.  And if certain parts of Illinois law support us, we’ll cite those, but overlook the other parts that don’t — as if any of this has anything to do with the proper foundation for their judgment.”). 

Harry’s evidence was a bit less persuasive.  Where the Democratic Party affiliation of the Florida Supreme Court, and the fact that the State’s Attorney General’s had a direct link to the Gore campaign was irrelevant in Harry’s mind, there was clear and convincing evidence that Katherine Harris was a Republican operative skewing the election results to Bush.  Specifically,

Harry: Katherine Harris was the co-chairman for Bush in Florida, and she campaigned for him in Manchester New Hampshire, and rode a Winnebago throughout the pan-handle with signs all over it for Bush and Cheney.  And you are not going to tell me that she is not the most partisan hack in the history of America?

Even for “Hyperbolic Harry,” as we used to call him, this was a new low.  As with most Liberal Democrats, innuendo is evidence.  Appearance is fact.  And perceptions are reality. 

If one has the audacity to point out that their guy does the same exact thing they are accusing my guy of doing, it’s always apples and oranges.  Sure Butterworth acted in a partisan matter by attempting to block the Secretary of State from carrying out her duties, but he wasn’t as “effective” as Harris, so no harm, no foul.  Usually, though, the tactic is to concede nothing at all.  Bob Smith, Republican, occupied position A, said statement B, and did action C.  Bob Smithe, Democrat, occupied the same position A, said the same statement B, and did the same action C.   Smithe has more letters in his last name than Smith, so there’s no comparison.

Sure, the logic is never quite as clear-cut stupid as that, but it’s close.  Just think back to how NOW excused the behavior of Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky, and what they’d say if the 40-year-old Manager of Produce at a local grocery store chain was hitting on a young female cashier.  In the first case, the most powerful man in the universe can have a completely consensual relationship with a 20-year-old girl who works under him.  In the other case, that SOB produce manager would be using his superior position to coerce a defenseless young girl in an unequal power relationship to bend her to his will.

Phil: I concede that Harris is a Republican.  This isn’t news.  You ignored my question about proving that her actions were partisan.  Was the law clear or not?  If it wasn’t, what evidence do you have that she acted based on her partisan convictions vs. her professional interpretation of the law?  I know you don’t like her, Harry.  That’s come through loud and clear.  But where’s your evidence (other than your innate dislike for her) to support what you believe?  Your whole approach to this issue further reinforces my point why personal, subjective opinions like your notion of “fairness” shouldn’t be a substitute for the law.

Harry gave it one last shot with his assertion that:

Harry: It defies logic to argue that Harris’ actions have not been the height of partisanship.  She refused to exercise her discretion last week, and the Florida Supreme court had to step in and rebuke her.

Then in his best Liberal Democrat imitation of the question ‘tell me when you stopped beating your wife,’ Harry — who first raised the charge that Harris was a partisan hack — now said:

Harry: Prove to me that she isn’t unbiased and not just Jeb’s underling doing what the little brother wants.

Okay, I got it now.  Harris has the authority to do Action A, or Action B.  Both are completely legal, and she has complete discretion to do either.  She chooses Action A.  Harry and the Democratic State Supreme Court prefer Action B, so the partisan Democratic court officially rebukes her.  This proves that Harris is just a hack carrying out the wishes of Jeb Bush, whose own actions are being controlled by George Bush.

And if I can’t intuitively understand that this crazy charge leveled by Harry and the Democrats is true, I must assume the burden of proof to demonstrate that it is wrong.  If I fail to convince Harry that the stupid charge he made was in fact, really stupid, his stupid position wins by default. 

I think I have a headache.  

We never got a chance to discuss any further what life was really like on planet Harry, because by now the battleground had moved from the dastardly Republicans in Florida, to the despicable Republicans in Washington.  No, it wasn’t Newt and the boys, or their Republican hack protégés in Congress.  It was the other bastion of partisan Republican power — the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, I know that SCOTUS isn’t immune to politics, but they’re the closest thing we have in this country to a truly independent, impartial body.  It allows them to find abortion rights in privacy rights that we mere mortals cannot see by reading the actual Constitution.  It allows them to protect free speech by limiting campaign contributions from average individuals in favor of multi-billionaires, and it allows them to allow local governments to seize your home and evict you so that some other private citizen can use it for their own personal profit.  Which is to say, in addition to doing some things right, like outlawing segregation and permitting the government to keep enemy combatants locked away in prison, it can do some real bonehead things too. 

But as much as I disagree with killing unborn babies, seizing my property for another person’s private use, and limiting my ability to contribute money to the candidate of my choice, I still abide by these decisions. I may not like them, and I may criticize the judgment of the Court members who constituted the majority on that decision, but I don’t pretend that they are in the back pocket of the National Organization for Women or other far Left interest groups who pushed for these decisions.  I suck it up and accept the fact that my interpretation of the law was not the same as a majority of those on the Court.  

And then I get on with my life.

Would that the Harrys of the world should think the same way.  The only predictable aspect of their behavior is that they are 100% supporters of the law and process as it is today when their cause is winning.  When it isn’t, someone is obviously cheating.  Thus we come to the tortured logic that because the Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on a ballot dispute like the one in Florida, if they do now they are obviously being partisan.  The fact that there has never been another issue in U.S. history even remotely like the one in the aftermath of the 2000 election is just a minor “detail.”  We’ve had contested and disputed elections before — 1876 perhaps the most egregious — but Florida 2000 was clearly in a league of its own.

Harry saw the issue differently, to no one’s surprise.  A band of “ruffians” protested outside the Dade County canvassing board’s office.  This “mob” intimidated them into stopping the vote recount because Gore appeared to be winning.  The U.S. Supreme Court then signaled it’s “willingness” to take the case, violating a long-standing precedent where such issues have traditionally been left to the states. 

Never mind that the U.S. Constitution prescribes the manner in which electoral votes are certified and cast, and the Florida Supreme Court was arbitrarily circumventing the State Legislature’s constitutional role in the name of their brand of “fairness.”  This was clearly a case of a Supreme Court acting to impose their personal choice for president on 100 million total voters.  We had become, at last, a “banana republic,” to again quote Harry, in every meaningful sense of the word.

My head will explode if I have to re-live any of this off-the-wall exchange, so I’ll end it here.  History is written by the victor, and it’s my recounting of the story — not Harry’s — so I get the last word.  Even though I’ve made fun of the twisted logic and half-truths that Harry employed to promote his positions, I’ve tried hard to separate him from the truly viscious statements that the Gore-Lieberman team were making to hijack an election they knew they lost. 

Harry was just acting out the role of a good party loyalist and fellow Liberal Democrat in trying to support his guy.  I don’t fault him for this, but I do challenge his belief that he was arguing from a reasoned, principled position. Everything Harry said and did was a direct reflection of the bankrupt, morally equivalent clap trap that forms the basis of modern liberal thought.  

Nothing was to prove me more correct about Liberal-think than the attack on America on September 11, 2001, and subsequent actions of the Bush Administration in defending our freedom.

Look for the next chapter coming soon — “September 11, 2001: The Day the World Changed Forever (well, at least for some of us)”.

Looney Liberal Chronicles

Read more articles by Phillip Ellis Jackson