November 7, 2000, 20 years ago: November 7 is a bad day for Presidential election winners:
* 1848: Zachary Taylor wins, but dies in office.
* 1876: Samuel Tilden wins, but the Electoral Votes of 3 States are in dispute. He ends up with none of them, and loses to Rutherford B. Hayes by 1 Electoral vote, 185-184.
* 1916: Woodrow Wilson thought he lost, then won, and then won a war but lost the peace.
* 1944: Franklin Roosevelt wins in a landslide, but dies in office just 5 months later.
* 1972: Richard Nixon wins in a landslide, but his resignation was already set in motion.
* 2000: And now, Al Gore.
Then Vice President of the United States, Albert Arnold Gore Jr., gets more votes than Governor George W. Bush of Texas: Gore 51.0 million, Bush 50.4 million. Gore gets 48.4 percent of the popular vote, Bush 47.9 percent.
Ralph Nader, famous as a consumer advocate since the 1960s, runs as the nominee of the Green Party. He gets 2.9 million votes, or 2.7 percent.
Bush's brother, Governor John E. "Jeb" Bush of Florida, sees how close the vote is in his State, and tampers with the voting process, and that one State holds everything up for 5 weeks.
When the U.S. Supreme Court finally rules on December 12 that the recounts must stop, and Bush be accepted as the winner, it is the ghastliest decision in the Court's history, aside from the Dred Scott
decision that said black people weren't citizens (a decision remedied by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution).
Nader, appealing to leftists who felt betrayed by Gore and President Bill Clinton over the last 8 years, won 97,488 votes in Florida. Bush's final lead in Florida was 537 votes. Nader won 22,198 votes in New Hampshire, which Bush won (as far as we know, without cheating) by 7,211 votes.
decision that said black people weren't citizens (a decision remedied by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution).
Nader, appealing to leftists who felt betrayed by Gore and President Bill Clinton over the last 8 years, won 97,488 votes in Florida. Bush's final lead in Florida was 537 votes. Nader won 22,198 votes in New Hampshire, which Bush won (as far as we know, without cheating) by 7,211 votes.
If Gore had won either State, he would have won beyond any doubt, and it couldn't have been stolen. But Nader's voters wanted their "pure" candidate, and the result was the most under-Nader-like Administration ever.
The lesson of 1968, when people disappointed over not getting Gene McCarthy or saddened over not getting Bobby Kennedy stayed home and didn't vote for Hubert Humphrey, this throwing the election to Richard Nixon, had not been learned.
Nor was either lesson learned in 2016, when leftists refused to accept that a vote for Jill Stein, or a vote for Gary Johnson, a vote for anybody but Hillary Clinton, or no vote at all, was a vote for Donald Trump, and everything he represents -- which a liberal, leftist or progressive voter, should opposed with everything they had.
But was the 2000 result really Nader's fault?
Nor was either lesson learned in 2016, when leftists refused to accept that a vote for Jill Stein, or a vote for Gary Johnson, a vote for anybody but Hillary Clinton, or no vote at all, was a vote for Donald Trump, and everything he represents -- which a liberal, leftist or progressive voter, should opposed with everything they had.
But was the 2000 result really Nader's fault?
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Ralph Nader for Al Gore Losing the 2000 Presidential Election
5. Joe Lieberman. He was a terrible Vice Presidential nominee, maybe the worst ever in terms of effect on the top of the ticket. He got into the Senate in 1988 by running to the right of liberal Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker. He had no enthusiasm for either Gore or the Democratic campaign. And he let Dick Cheney walk all over him in their debate.
4. George W. Bush. There are many occasions on which he looked stupid. But he handled his campaign like a genius, even brushing aside the drunk-driving revelation as if it didn't matter, much like Donald Trump would do with his scandals 16 years later.
3. Al Gore. He ran a weak campaign. And he pushed Bill Clinton, the most popular living American politician, away, because he didn't want to be tarred with the "immorality" tag. It was a cowardly thing to do. One joint appearance in Miami, and, quite literally, it would have made all the difference in the world.
2. The Supreme Court. John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer were always going to vote to continue the recount, which was absolutely the moral thing to do, regardless of who it would have helped, and it almost certainly would have helped Gore. William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were always going to vote to stop the recount, thus absolutely helping Bush.
So while the Democrats needed either Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy to break with the Republican Party, whose President Ronald Reagan appointed them, the Republicans needed both of them to stay loyal to their Party, if not to the Constitution. Both of them stayed loyal to their Party.
So over 100 million Americans – Bush's voters, as well as Gore's – essentially had their votes canceled by 2 voters: Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy.
1. The Bush Machine. Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, Tom DeLay… They could have accepted the truth, which is that Gore won Florida, despite Bush and Harris having purged 55,000 people from the State's voter rolls, nearly all of them black men who'd been convicted of crimes, all of whom should still have legally had the right to vote. Instead, they needed to steal it, culminating in the Brooks Brothers Riot.
Jeb Bush
If not for that, there would now be a Gore Presidential Library in Carthage, Tennessee; Dubya would have gone back to Midland and had as much to drink as he wanted, and nobody outside his family would have cared; the World Trade Center would still stand; and if Iraq were in chaos after Saddam Hussein's overthrow by rebels, or after his natural death, it would be something that America would need to watch, but not something that America caused.