It ain't over till Florida is counted

[Mickey Finn]

Miyagi

Reverse it. Then tell me how it sits. Gore wins in a previously Republican stronghold. The polls close the time they have always closed. Everyone was faced with the same closing time. Now the Republicans run to a judge, get him to reopen the polls and jump on the phones to try and pull it out. I suspect you would be screaming your head off. The fact remains that they were trying to change the rules midstream. You just can’t DO that.

I will give you this, Gore should be president. The electoral collage is something that has outlived its purpose. It makes a sham of the word democracy.

[nhb_wanabe]

beautiful

I've gotta remember that.

(the one about talk about god, act like a prick.)

[Playa]

Aw hell man it don't make no difference, close at 7 or close at 11pm they a bunch of hicks man and vote for monkey head anyway!

[Ronin]

nhb_wanabe:

No charge. Liberals may quote freely.

[Darren]

Whoa!

If ANYONE is a "Go for the jugular" type of person with no care about ethics it is Gore! He is reknowned for it and NOBODY argues this.(or very few)

As far as dirty tricks it can be said that extending the election FOR HOURS, in a district that is Democtratic almost to the man is NOT about giving a few more minutes to allow for a larger than expected line.

Please don't let bias cloud you of any and all common sense. How long does a line have to be to require several hours to squeeze in all voters? 5 MILES? 10 MILES? Voting does not take that long to do.

As it is, it's my understanding that they were not turning away people who were there on time to vote.

It sounds like an inexcusable trick to bring in extra voters unlawfully...And the trial court judge was a Dick Gephart crony. Geez, what a coincidence.
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As for the Third party talk. Everyone in the country is free to vote for whomever they choose. I think it is humorous that people complain when their candidate gets a WHOPPING 3% of the vote. If he were able to move people with his message, then his support would rise.

Certainly there is an argument that says MANY people MIGHT have voted for him that instead chose to support a more viable option. This is true only to a certain extent--This is true when a man runs a campaign for a long time and GAINS ALMOST NO DISCERNABLE SUPPORT!!! If he was building a strong coalition for the last YEAR, and if his ideas TRULY resonated throughout our COUNTRY, then he would have started to build a FAR higher level of support so that when election time DID roll around, he would have been a VIABLE candidate himself.

To me it merely seems that some have to face the fact that, while EXTREME parties may appeal to YOU individually, the vast majority are near the center in many ways, and on most issues.

The REAL reason that extreme fringe candidates do not get REAL support is NOT b/c there is some vast conspiracy fighting to keep them out. (As though except for this conspiracy, he would be garnering 70% of the vote!lol) Rather, it is b/c the VAST majority do not agree with the POSITIONS on the ISSUES.
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[Atomic]

Darren--

I don't know what type of crack you're smoking now, but voting does take some time. I arrived to vote at 7:15 AM and didn't get out of there until a little after 8 AM. There were a total of 8 voting boths and a ton of people. There were quite a few things to vote for, so it took some time to do the whole process or read the wording of everything there.

So, yes, it does take some time to vote, no doubt. Turning away people that were waiting in line is blatantly wrong, though. Keep in mind many places had higher than normal turnout, esp. Florida. The secretary of state said something like 68% voted this year. I don't know how that compares to last year, but it does add more time onto the process.

Atomic

[Tony10]

Well, Darren, with Buchanan maybe.

However, it's hard to get the message out when you don't take millions in PAC soft money and flood the airwaves with your "message." It's hard to get the message out when you're excluded from the national debates. It's hard to get the message out when the one-track media focuses simply on the Bush/Gore race and never gives any serious coverage to a third party candidate.

Now, Perot made a splash. But Perot spent his own ample millions to make that splash. Are you saying Perot was less of a "fringe" character than Nader? Khmer Rouge on his front lawn and all?

Don't forget that an unknown just won a senate seat in New Jersey--an unknown--who also conveniently happened to spend $65 MILLION of his own dough.

In other words, Nader + serious money = "legitimate"

[Ronin]

Darren:

Gore may be vicious, but it is at least partly because he has had to deal with the Republican Congress for the last six years, along with the accompanying witch-hunts.

As disappointed as I was by Clinton's conduct in the Lewinsky scandal, I was appalled when I learned that the entire Whitewater matter had to be dropped this year based on lack of evidence. DROPPED!!! Maybe it should never have been started in the first place - a practically open effort to unseat an elected president, by finding something, ANYTHING, they could. Republicans just couldn't stand the fact that Clinton beat them, twice, using many of their own issues, and made them look stupid doing it. Actually, they made themselves look stupid, Clinton just held up a mirror.

Let's not even get into the Lee Atwater/Roger Ailes-led campaign of George Bush Sr. which practically created the "negative attack ad". Remember Willie Horton? Code-name for "big black mutha who the Democrats want to rape your kids?" Don't even talk to me about Gore playing hardball, he wouldn't have lasted five seconds in Washington with that pack of drooling dogs you call a Congress if he didn't have killer instinct.

You are right about Nader-ites being on the fringe, but to imply that the Democrats have sunk as low as the level the Republicans started at is laughable. LOL.

[Darren]

Atomic,
Sure it takes some time,(though I was through it in 15-20 minutes with a line), but again, they were not turning people away if they had arrived in time.

Still, it smacks of something improper. They, like all others, had ALL DAY TO VOTE, not just the last 10 minutes. You simply do NOT need extra hours when the rest of the country was able to make due with the preset limits, and have been able to do so for years and years...That is, of course, unless you planned to improperly get votes out there after you heard that the results were unfavorable to your party and you needed something extreme to turn the result...

Tony,
Money DOES matter of course. You're right, and Perot WAS a bit of a kook, BUT his MESSAGE RESONATED!!!! His message was a business-like approach to solving the problems of massive deficits and debt, and a gridlocked system in Washington that could not get it done, and proved to be incompetent in terms of their financial approach to the issues. He wanted to curb spending and run a tight ship and he offered common sense approaches to everything--"We'll get a bi-partisan group together and we'll solve this here medicare problem, etc."

He was the right man to explain speak this message. He was also wild and funny and he could capture the attention of vast throngs of people b/c of his personality. (unlike Nader.LOL)

All of THAT was great and he probably even could have WON if he was not so radical in some fringe areas. He lost almost SOLELY b/c he proved to be such a freaking NUTCASE!!!! He shot himself in the foot by undermining his solid messages by exposing just how kooky he was in other ways. but AGAIN, his main message that was resonating and making a HUGE impact was NOT radical. In fact it was pretty conservative. He was NOT basing his campaign on issues that are considered "Fringe" in nature.

Ronin,
Lee Atwater. God rest his soul.

[Edited by Darren on 11-08-2000 at 04:49 PM]