_____________________________
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
_______________________________
SPECIAL EDITION
- November 24, 2000 -
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The U.S. Election Crisis:
RACISM, THUGGERY, STATE POWER
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CONTENTS:
01. THE VILLAGE VOICE [New York]: Racism - Florida's Real Scandal.
02. THE MEDIA CONSORTIUM [Arlington, VA]: Mob Rule Wins for W.
03. WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE [UK]: The Republican Right Prepares for Violence.
04. THE NEW YORK TIMES: Protest Influenced Miami-Dade's Decision to Stop
Recount.
05. THE WASHINGTON POST: Rage Sharpens Conservative Rhetoric.
06. MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: A Stolen Democracy.
* * *
____________________________________________________________________
Chad Is a Country in Africa
RACISM - FLORIDA'S REAL SCANDAL
____________________________________________________________________
THE VILLAGE VOICE
Mondo Washington
November 22 - 28, 2000
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0047/ridgeway.shtml#chad
by James Ridgeway
When Joe Lieberman unctuously declared on Meet the Press Sunday morning
that "every vote counts," he wasn't talking about the ballots not cast by
African Americans, Haitians, and other minorities in Florida. In many
respects, the untold story of the election lies not with the excited
middle-class white Democrats of Palm Beach County, but with the thousands
of black people who were turned away from the polls in a bizarre rerun of
the segregated South before the Voting Rights Act. It is the most amazing
irony of the election in that the black populations, which for years have
formed the base of the Democratic Party--at least before the Democratic
Leadership Council took over--were prevented from voting with amazingly
little protest from the party bigwigs. These voters could easily have
carried the vice president to victory in Florida. And, of course, the
Republicans--who now are the real Southern Democrats--have refrained from
even mentioning the subject.
Not only were many blacks blocked from ballot access in Florida, but the
Gore team apparently ignored them on election day. Campaign boss Bill
Daley's main goal seems to have been to count and recount the votes of Palm
Beach County, which the vice president won by 140,000 votes. Not once did
Daley ask for a new election so these disenfranchised black citizens could
vote. And only as an afterthought did he even raise the possibility of
recounting all the votes in the state. In fact, the most vigorous proponent
of a state recount has been Nebraska Republican senator Chuck Hagel.
One thing now seems clear: On election day, many white Florida election
officials were doing their utmost to make sure blacks and other minorities
didn't vote. That's the real scandal in Florida. The NAACP, which continues
to pile up testimony from African Americans who say they were
disenfranchised, wants the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the
situation.
"This is a corrupted, tainted process, an attempt to steal an election,"
Reverend Jesse Jackson said last week.
Among the claims:
* That African Americans received phone calls the weekend before the
election from people who claimed to be with the NAACP, urging them to vote
for Bush. (Similar calls were reported in Michigan and Virginia.)
* That roadblocks were set up a few hundred yards from voting places in
Volusia County. Police stopped cars and ordered black men to get out of
their vehicles and produce identification. (The Justice Department is
reviewing the complaints to determine whether they amount to violations of
law.)
* That the morning after the election, employees at four predominantly
black Miami-area schools which had been used as polling sites found stuffed
ballot boxes, which apparently had not been counted. (The boxes were sent
to elections officials.)
* That, in a maneuver that smacks of the civil rights fights in the old
South, substantial numbers of blacks were turned away from polling booths
in various parts of the state. In Hillsborough County, sheriff's deputies
who checked voter IDs allegedly claimed that the race of the prospective
voters--which is listed on Florida voter ID cards--didn't match the race of
the person standing in front of them. "I can't tell you how many times it
happened," Sheila Douglas of the NAACP told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
"but it happened more often than not." (In addition, Nizam Arain, who works
with Jackson's team of investigators, claimed black men in Hillsborough
County were turned away from polling places as convicted felons, even
though such proof was lacking. Jackson later said some black voters in the
county were told there were no more ballots or that polls were closed.)
* That in largely Republican Duval County about 27,000 people were
disqualified when they attempted to vote. More than 12,000
disqualifications came from four districts that are mostly African
American.
"While I expected some complaints, it struck me . . . that this was
startling in its scope and size," said Penda Hair, director of the
Advancement Project, which advocates social and racial justice. "It seems
that in counties across Florida, voters who were qualified were turned away
at the polls. It was a denial of the right to vote that seemed to be
concentrated in African American precincts."
Additional reporting: Rouven Gueissaz and Theresa Crapanzano
This story is part of the Village Voice's ongoing 2000 presidential
election coverage. http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/powertrip2000/
Copyright 2000 The Village Voice. All rights reserved.
*****
THE CONSORTIUM FOR INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
Suite 102-231, 2200 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22201
E-mail: consortnew@aol.com
Web: http://www.consortiumnews.com
- Friday, 24 November 2000 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
MOB RULE WINS FOR W
____________________________________________________________________
http://www.consortiumnews.com/112400a.html
Texas Gov. George W. Bush appears to have sealed his claim to the White
House through a premeditated mob action that influenced the crucial Dade
County decision to halt a recount.
Egged on by Republican phone banks and heated rhetoric over Cuban-American
radio, a pro-Bush mob of about 150 people descended on the Dade County
canvassing board Wednesday as it was preparing to evaluate 10,750 disputed
ballots.
"Republican volunteers shouted into megaphones urging protest," The New
York Times reported in today's editions. "A lawyer for the Republican Party
helped stir ethnic passions by contending that the recount was biased
against Hispanic voters."
The protestors carried anti-Gore signs, including one that read: "Rotten to
the Gore." The demonstration then turned violent as the canvassing board
sought to go into closed session to begin examining the ballots.
Dade County's Democratic chairman, Joe Geller, was chased by the crowd and
required police protection. The mob also charged the offices of the
supervisor of elections and began pounding on the doors. Several people
were roughed up before sheriff deputies blocked the demonstrators' path and
restored some order.
The shaken three-member canvassing board promptly reversed its decision to
count the ballots that many observers believed contained a large number of
uncounted votes for Vice President Al Gore.
One canvassing board member, David Leahy, admitted that the board's
decision to bail out on the recount was affected by the presence of the
angry demonstrators. "This was perceived as not being an open and fair
process," Leahy said. "That weighed heavy on our minds."
When the canvassing board halted the recount, the Bush supporters cheered.
The Gore camp saw no recourse but to appeal again to the courts. On
Thursday, however, the state Supreme Court rejected a motion to compel Dade
County to resume the recount, although the canvassing board previously had
judged the recount necessary to correct errors in the voting-machine
tabulations.
By stopping the Dade County recount, the Republicans appear to have
guaranteed that Bush's 930-vote lead will survive any Gore gains in Broward
and Palm Beach counties. That, in turn, means that on Sunday night, Bush
almost certainly will be declared the winner of Florida's 25 electoral
votes and thus the presidency.
Gore's lawyers indicated that they might contest the Dade County results
after the certification of a Bush victory on Sunday. But pressure already
is mounting on Gore to drop any further legal challenges and accept Bush's
"victory."
Gore is coming under that pressure despite having won the national popular
vote and apparently having been the choice of a plurality of Florida
voters, though many of their ballots apparently were discarded for a
variety of reasons.
Typical of this Democratic desire to submit to angry Republicans, The
Washington Post's liberal columnist Richard Cohen wrote today that "Given
the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled
by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable
guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore.
That man is George W. Bush."
Cohen reached his conclusion although Gore has been the one to temper his
rhetoric while Bush and the Republicans have escalated their public
denunciations of Gore and the Florida Supreme Court.
The mob assault on the Dade County canvassing board came amid this angry
Republican rhetoric. Bush's top recount adviser, James Baker, denounced the
Supreme Court on Tuesday night and threatened to seek redress from the
Republican-controlled Florida legislature.
Bush blasted the Supreme Court on Wednesday as the Miami mob action was in
motion. Bush accused the court of using "the bench to change Florida's
election laws and usurp the authority of Florida's election officials."
In lockstep with the Bush campaign's verbal assaults, Republicans in Miami
unleashed the violent assault on the Dade County canvassing board. Rather
than a state Supreme Court order "usurping" the authority of election
officials, the Republicans opted for mob action.
The strong-arm tactics carried the day.
Bush now appears likely to ascend to the presidency not only as the first
popular-vote loser to do so in more than a century, but as the first in
modern U.S. history to benefit from a mob intimidating an election board
into throwing away thousands of ballots cast by American citizens.
Copyright 2000 The Media Consortium.
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Friday, 24 November 2000 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
THE REPUBLICAN RIGHT PREPARES FOR VIOLENCE
____________________________________________________________________
By the Editorial Board
News & Analysis: North America: US Elections
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov2000/elec-n24.shtml
The frenzied response of the Bush campaign and its allies in the media to
Tuesday's ruling by the Florida Supreme Court has highlighted a political
fact of immense significance: the Republican Party has become the organ of
extreme right-wing forces that are prepared to use extra-parliamentary and
violent methods to achieve their aims.
Spokesmen for George W. Bush and pro-Republican media outlets reacted to
the court's decision, which simply affirmed the constitutional requirement
that all votes be fairly counted, with calls for the Florida legislature to
defy the court and appeals to the military of a semi-insurrectionary
character.
The barrage of lies and misinformation--charging the court with "changing
the rules" and "rewriting the election statutes," denouncing Democratic
candidate Al Gore as a thug out to steal the election, appealing to racist
and anti-Semitic sentiments--had its intended effect. On Wednesday morning
a mob of Bush supporters besieged the Miami/Dade County board of
canvassers, grabbing a Democratic lawyer and threatening to assault those
involved in manually recounting the ballots. A few hours later the
Democratic-controlled board announced it was abandoning its recount,
effectively disenfranchising hundreds of Gore supporters whose votes were
not registered in the original machine tally.
The official responses of the Gore and Bush campaigns to the court ruling
provided a stark contrast. Gore went on national television late Tuesday to
appeal for a show of national unity and a public commitment by the Bush
campaign to abide by the ultimate result of the Florida recount. Repeating
his offer to meet with his Republican opponent, Gore spoke as a bourgeois
politician worried over the prospect of an open breach within the political
establishment that could undermine an orderly transfer of power, with
unpredictable and potentially explosive consequences.
Bush's representative, former Secretary of State James Baker, did not even
bother to acknowledge Gore's appeals for unity or his offer to meet with
the Texas governor. Instead he denounced the Supreme Court ruling as
"unacceptable" and incited the Republican-controlled state legislature to
defy the court, saying, "One should not now be surprised if the Florida
legislature seeks to affirm the original rules."
Baker was taking his cue from the Wall Street Journal, which had
editorialized in advance of the court decision: "The legislature has an
option, it seems to us a duty, to make clear that it stands ready to
resolve any dispute between Mrs. Harris [the Republican Secretary of State
and co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida] and the Supreme Court
Democrats. Since the Republicans now solidly control the legislature, they
hold the winning hand."
Paralleling its role in the impeachment conspiracy against Bill Clinton,
the Wall Street Journal has served as the mouthpiece for the extreme-right
forces that have sought from election day on to pollute public opinion with
wild accusations and disinformation and hijack the election for the
Republicans. It has spearheaded the effort to foster a veritable mutiny
within the military against a possible Gore victory, using as the pretext
the rejection of several hundred legally deficient absentee ballots from
overseas military personnel.
On Wednesday the Journal carried an incendiary column entitled "The
Democratic Party's War on the Military." Calling the exclusion of the
military ballots "one more battle in the ongoing culture war between the
core of the Democratic Party and the US military," the column exuded
racism, homophobia and hatred for the working class. The author spoke of
the "twitching carcass" of the Democratic Party's "left...teachers' unions,
feminist activists, gay victimologists, black churches, faculty clubs."
As the election crisis has progressed, thinly disguised appeals to racism
and anti-Semitism have with increasing frequency appeared in the broadsides
of Bush supporters. Republican backers have seized on the role of Jesse
Jackson to whip up anti-black prejudice and fastened on the large number of
Jewish retirees in Palm Beach to galvanize their fundamentalist partisans.
The Journal has not refrained from such methods. In the editorial cited
above it employed loaded terms to take a swipe at Florida's Jewish
population, charging that Mrs. Harris is "under fire for being a Southern
aristocrat rather than a New York sophisticate." It went on to denounce the
Democrats for "import[ing] Jesse Jackson for some race-baiting."
The editorial as a whole was a call for the Republican Party to forego
traditional constitutional restraints in its drive to capture the White
House. It concluded with a barely disguised injunction for a victorious
Bush campaign to fashion an administration along authoritarian lines:
"The conventional wisdom is that if with this hassle Governor Bush does
become President he will be a crippled one. Perhaps. But we find it equally
plausible that facing down the kind of assault now being waged in Florida
would be precisely the best preparation for what may lie ahead. It is
Governor Bush's nature to extend the velvet glove, but he will be much more
successful if he and his party can show that within it there is some
steel."
Significantly, the editorial was entitled "The Squeamish GOP?" The Journal
chooses its words advisedly, in this case employing a term that connotes an
aversion to bloodshed. The meaning of the newspaper's editors was
unmistakable--a Republican president must be prepared to use violence and
repression to impose its reactionary social agenda. Gaining the White House
by suppressing votes and riding roughshod over the popular will is an
excellent preparation for dealing with "what may lie ahead"--i.e.,
widespread popular opposition.
It is high time to stop masking the character of the Republican right with
the complacent term "conservative." These are fascistic elements who are
breaking with the traditional methods of bourgeois democracy.
There is a logic to politics. Once influential sections of the ruling elite
conclude they cannot achieve their aims through democratic means and take
the path of conspiracy and repression, they are well on the way to civil
war.
It is not here a matter of predicting the imminent imposition of a military
dictatorship. But it would be the height of folly to ignore the signposts
of such a danger looming ahead. If the campaign the Republicans are waging
to gain the White House begins to resemble a covert operation akin to those
mounted by the CIA against US imperialism's liberal and leftist opponents
in Latin America--for example, in Chile--then it must follow that an option
under serious consideration is the Pinochet solution. No one should doubt
that Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley and the reactionaries on his
staff are already working out the arguments to justify the use of violence
against their political opponents and the working class.
The Wall Street Journal speaks for powerful sections of American big
business. These forces within the financial elite have increasingly adopted
the standpoint of the extreme right, and sponsored, financially and
otherwise, the growth of this fascistic element, precisely because they
have come to realize that they cannot impose their social agenda through
normal democratic channels.
They rely on the right-wing rabble that populate the corporate-controlled
media to conceal their anti-democratic aims and fill the airwaves with
half-truths and lies. Their strength does not lie in any great popular
support--on the contrary, their support in the general population is
marginal.
Rather, the strength of the Republican right consists in the fact that it
articulates more consistently and uncompromisingly than any other bourgeois
political grouping the requirements of the American corporate elite. The
radical right knows what it wants and is prepared to ride roughshod over
public opinion in order to get it. The Republicans do not play by the
normal constitutional rules, while their bourgeois opponents in the
Democratic Party wring their hands as impotent and passive onlookers. They
embody a demoralized liberalism, whose watered-down perspective of reform
has been discarded by the ruling class.
At the same time the Republican right senses that it has a narrow window of
opportunity for realizing its ambitions. It was staggered by the results of
the election, which registered a victory in the popular vote for Gore and,
if the intent of Florida voters were officially acknowledged, a Democratic
victory in the electoral vote as well. The combined vote for Gore and Green
Party candidate Ralph Nader showed, broadly speaking, that a significant
majority of the electorate supported policies of a liberal and leftist
character, and opposed the increasingly naked domination of corporate power
over American politics.
A look at the electoral map underscores the fact that the overall
trajectory of American society does not favor the forces of the radical
right. Bush piled up the vast majority of his electoral votes in the more
backward and rural regions of the country--the South, the Southwest,
sections of the Midwest. The more urbanized, industrialized, densely
populated and culturally vibrant regions went for Gore. Within this general
scheme, the decisive pro-Gore margin in the popular vote was provided by
blacks and other highly oppressed sections of the working class, whose vote
expressed deep distrust of the Republicans and a determination to defend
past gains in civil rights and social conditions.
Moreover, the economic conditions fostering the rise of nouveau riche
layers that comprise a critical component of the Republican right's social
base are clearly receding. The stock market boom, based to a considerable
extent on speculative capital, parasitism and outright swindling, is
breaking up, leaving in its wake a society more economically polarized than
at any other period in the past half-century, and a spectacle of corporate
greed and criminality of unprecedented dimensions.
The response of the Republican right is growing hysteria. Its frenzy and
recklessness bespeak a rebellion by a minority that feels it must stake all
on immediate victory, because its future prospects are dwindling. The
Republicans sense that the 2000 election is their best, and perhaps last,
chance to seize hold of all the branches of government. If they lose the
White House, they face the prospect of internal warfare and political
disintegration.
Notwithstanding the many obvious differences, there are striking parallels
between the political crisis arising from the 2000 election and the
convulsive period that led up to the Civil War of 1861. One of these is the
similarity in psychology and methods between the Republican right of today
and the political representatives of the Southern slave owners 150 years
ago. In both cases, the most reactionary social forces in the nation were
driven by a sense of desperation, arising from the fact that the momentum
of historical development was moving against them, to employ the most
provocative and reckless methods.
One great difference, to extend the historical analogy, is the absence
within any faction of bourgeois politics today of a force either willing or
able to take on and defeat the radical right. As they have repeatedly
demonstrated, the flaccid ranks of liberalism, institutionalized in the
Democratic Party, are organically incapable of waging a serious struggle in
defense of democratic rights. That task now falls to the working class,
which must construct its own mass, socialist party to carry it out.
Copyright 1998-2000 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
Miami-Dade County:
PROTEST INFLUENCED MIAMI-DADE'S DECISION TO STOP RECOUNT
____________________________________________________________________
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Politics
Friday, November 24, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/24/politics/24MIAM.html
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY
By DEXTER FILKINS and DANA CANEDY
MIAMI, Nov. 23 - The Miami- Dade County Canvassing Board's decision on
Wednesday to shut down its hand recount of presidential election ballots
followed a rapid campaign of public pressure that at least one of the
board's three members says helped persuade him to vote to stop the
counting.
Republican telephone banks had urged Republican voters in Miami to go to
the Stephen P. Clark Government Center downtown to protest the recount,
which began there on Monday and which Democrats hoped would help swing
Florida's 25 electoral votes to Vice President Al Gore.
The city's most influential Spanish-language radio station, Radio Mambi,
called on staunchly Republican Cuban-Americans to head downtown to
demonstrate. Republican volunteers shouted into megaphones urging protest.
A lawyer for the Republican Party helped stir ethnic passions by contending
that the recount was biased against Hispanic voters.
The subsequent demonstrations turned violent on Wednesday after the
canvassers had decided to close the recount to the public. Joe Geller,
chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the
police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot.
Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched or
kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the
Miami-Dade supervisor of elections. Sheriff's deputies restored order.
When the ruckus was over, the protesters had what they had wanted: a
unanimous vote by the board to call off the hand counting.
Only that morning, the board, facing a tight deadline mandated the night
before by the State Supreme Court, had concluded that it did not have time
for a hand count of all 654,000 ballots cast by the county's voters. So the
canvassers voted to proceed only with a manual count of 10,750 ballots that
machines had not counted.
Now even that limited recount was being abandoned, a decision that brought
whoops and applause from the crowd.
After the charge on the elections office, and just before the vote calling
off the entire manual count, the three canvassers were led by police escort
back to the public recount area from the room where they had decided to
conduct their tally shielded from public view.
One nonpartisan member of the board, David Leahy, the supervisor of
elections, said after the vote that the protests were one factor that he
had weighed in his decision.
"This was perceived as not being an open and fair process," Mr. Leahy said.
"That weighed heavy on our minds."
After discussing the matter briefly with reporters, Mr. Leahy declined
requests for interviews, as did the two other board members, one of them
nonpartisan, the other a Democrat. But quite apart from any campaign of
pressure, the board did say that the court-mandated deadline had been a
factor that militated against even a limited recount.
Whatever the case, Democrats accused Bush supporters of gathering a crowd
and riling it up in hopes of forcing the board to back down.
"One hour they're telling us they're going to get it done," Luis Rosero, a
Democratic aide, said of the canvassers, and "the next minute there were
two riot situations and a crowd massing out in front. This was deliberate."
Mr. Rosero said he had been punched and kicked by Republican supporters
outside Mr. Leahy's office.
Republican supporters scoffed at the accusation that they had engaged in a
scheme of intimidation, saying the protest had been nothing more than a
spontaneous manifestation of people's anger.
"It's the same type of democracy in action when Jesse Jackson parachutes in
and starts a protest in the black community," said Miguel De Grandy, a
lawyer for the Republican Party. "People have a right to express their
opinions."
Yet some Bush supporters did acknowledge that they had helped inspire the
crowd in hopes that the recount would end, though saying they had certainly
meant no one any harm.
"We were trying to stop the recount; Bush had already won," said Evilio
Cepero, a reporter for Radio Mambi. "We were urging people to come downtown
and support and protest this injustice."
Mr. Cepero played a key role in the protests, roaming around the building
outside and, with a megaphone, addressing a crowd of perhaps 150 people.
"Denounce the recount!" he shouted repeatedly. "Stop the injustice!" He
regularly cut into Radio Mambi's broadcasts to encourage people to come
downtown. And he also phoned in interviews with two Republican lawmakers -
United States Representatives Lincoln Diaz- Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
both Cuban-Americans - who also helped persuade people to come.
Several people who attended the demonstration said they had decided to do
so after receiving an automated phone message, initiated by local
Republican officials, encouraging them.
One was Rebecca Totilo, who came to the protest with her husband and four
children, and carried a "Rotten to the Gore" poster.
Republican supporters said the canvassing board had decided to reverse
itself because it had acted illegally when it decided to hand-count
Miami-Dade's ballots, not because of the protesters. They added that the
canvassing board's members inflamed peaceful demonstrators when they
decided to count the ballots in a room closed to the public.
"People were pounding on the doors, but they had an absolute right to get
in," said Mr. De Grandy, the Republican lawyer.
Mr. De Grandy accused the canvassing board, all of whose members are
non-Hispanic whites, of ethnic bias, saying that at one point it had
intended to recount only those precincts that are not predominantly
Hispanic. (The county as a whole is about 50 percent Hispanic.)
The canvassers vigorously denied the accusation, saying they had initially
intended to recount all of Dade's ballots and then, after the court had
imposed its deadline, the 10,750 that had not been counted by the machines.
Whatever problems the canvassing board encountered, Republicans said, it
brought on itself. "Sure they were under pressure," said Paul Crespo, a
Bush campaign worker. "They had taken so many illegal decisions that they
were on the verge of provoking serious unrest."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
*****
____________________________________________________________________
RAGE SHARPENS CONSERVATIVE RHETORIC
____________________________________________________________________
THE WASHINGTON POST
Nation and Politics
Wednesday, November 22, 2000; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49363-2000Nov21.html
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Conservative anger over the Florida recount has gained such intensity and
momentum that leaders of the American right are now accusing Vice President
Gore of trying to destroy democracy and mounting an illegal coup to take
over the White House.
With extraordinary speed, conservatives have demonized Gore as the epitome
of the kind of venality and corruption they more typically ascribe to Bill
and Hillary Clinton. Gore, in the words of the Weekly Standard, learned the
lesson of impeachment that "taught the Democrats that they can get away
with anything."
Such anger is certain to intensify in the wake of last night's Florida
Supreme Court ruling.
The stalled outcome of the presidential election has tapped into the deeply
held belief by conservatives that they won a strong mandate when the GOP
captured both houses of Congress in 1994--but were frustrated by the
political machinations of President Clinton. Now, they say, Gore is
employing similar tactics to block George W. Bush's ascendancy to the White
House.
"Gore and Clinton have lost the democratic branches of government," said
Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform. "They know that in a
fair fight, they will lose their presidency and they are retreating to
their redoubt of trial lawyers and politicized judges."
Marshall Wittmann, an analyst at the Hudson Institute who is relatively
moderate in his views of the election dispute in Florida, said many of his
colleagues on the political right are convinced that "there would have been
a conservative ascendancy had not it been for the venality of the
Clinton-Gore team. From the 1994 election to the government shutdown,
through impeachment, to this point, it has been a seamless web, tied back
to the 1992 Clinton campaign and Gennifer Flowers and draft-dodging--and
Gore is viewed as the person spinning that web."
From talk radio to cable television to the editorial pages of the Wall
Street Journal, the howl of conservative pain and anger has steadily risen
in pitch and volume.
"This may be the worst thing I've ever seen," declared former education
secretary William Bennett during a hostile brawl on CNN's "Capital Gang."
"Al Gore is trying to steal this election."
Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservative talk radio, described Gore as
suffering from "an unquenchable thirst for power."
Janet Parshall, a talk show host who shares many of Limbaugh's views, said
in a CNN interview: "There's a movie opening this weekend called 'The
Grinch Who Stole Christmas,' and some of my listeners are wondering if
there are some grinches afoot that might steal an election" in a clear
reference to the Gore campaign. Referring to Bush, she added, "But there's
another movie that's out called 'Men of Honor.' "
Not to be outdone, David Tell editorialized in the conservative Weekly
Standard: "Al Gore's attempted coup has exactly tracked the trajectory of
the Monica Lewinsky episode, his mentor's own triumph over ancient taboos
of American public life. . . . Gore has pursued his goal with a speed and
cynical genius that Bill Clinton never dreamed of."
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan declared: "The
Gore-Clinton Democratic Party is trying to steal the election. . . . This
crew we have now, Messrs. Gore and Clinton and their operatives, they seem,
to my astonishment as an American, to be men who would never put their
country's needs before their own if there were even the mildest of
conflicts between the two. America is the platform of their ambitions, not
the driving purpose of them."
In two columns, George F. Will denounced Gore's Florida claims as
"slow-motion larceny" and referred to the vice president's "serial
mendacity."
The "Clinton-Gore era culminates with an election as stained as the blue
dress," Will wrote. "Consider his [Gore's] political ethics, which flow
from his corrupting hunger for power."
The left has not been lacking in hot rhetoric. Jesse L. Jackson compared
the Florida recount to the voting rights struggle in Selma, Ala.: "We
marched too much, bled too profusely and died too young. We must not
surrender."
And Democratic Gore supporters have not hesitated to attack Florida
Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Paul Begala has called her "a
dilettante debutante Republican hack" and Democratic lawyer Alan Dershowitz
said Harris is "a crook and an operative." But Democrats have offered
little direct criticism of Bush that resembles the critique of Al Gore from
the right.
The conflict has changed the culture of the Washington media. Last weekend,
CNN's "Capital Gang," the normally friendly show where journalists and
politicians of the left and right voice their opinions of world events,
turned into a hostile battleground.
Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues," declared the election would be
"illegitimate if Al Gore becomes president." Bennett told the four-member
panel of columnists: "If you don't call the kind the thuggish tactics that
the Gore campaign is doing right now for what they are, I think the notion
of objectivity in the media is gone."
"I just cannot disagree more strenuously," countered liberal co-host Mark
Shields. "Al Gore as we sit here leads in the national popular vote. Al
Gore has more electoral votes than George W. Bush. There is no question
that hand counting is more accurate than machine counting. . . . You can
sit there from your Olympian perch and issue your moral thunderbolts."
Later in the show, Bennett commented, "This may be my last appearance on
the 'Capital Gang.' "
Thomas Mann, a Brookings Institution political scientist, said conservative
rhetoric has begun to approach "what we saw at the worst of the impeachment
fervor, unbridled self-righteous defiance and venom, bordering on
conservative McCarthyism with accusations of traitorous behavior."
Bennett, Mann contended, "has lost his ability to be an arbiter of moral
behavior. He's become a partisan in the worst sense of the word." Repeated
attempts to contact Bennett over two days were unsuccessful.
Mann said the intensity of the anti-Gore views may be related to the
feeling among many conservatives that "the election would be a walk for
Bush, that finally they would have unified Republican government and pursue
the agenda that has been frustrated. And anything to frustrate that is
obviously illegitimate."
Tell, author of the Weekly Standard's outspoken editorial criticizing Gore,
acknowledged that he may be only "one in a thousand" who sees the vice
president's actions in strongly negative terms. He said the public is numb
from repeated scandals: "Why are the peasants not in the streets with
torches?" he asked rhetorically. "I would leave that to a sociologist."
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company
*****
____________________________________________________________________
A STOLEN DEMOCRACY
____________________________________________________________________
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
#481 Column Written 11/10/2000
Source: Mark Clement, MClement@bruderhof.com
- Thursday, 23 November 2000 -
I think the American public wants a solemn ass as a President and I think
I'll go along with them. -- Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) 30th U.S. President
Americans, by the millions, went to their polling places, to participate in
the political process. Notice, it was not said that they voted to elect a
President, for they did not do so. People voted for electors, a mysterious
bunch of virtually unknown political appointees, who will sit in state
capitals and decide who will be the President and Vice-President of the
United States. It is here that the Electoral College comes into play, a
group of 538 people who will vote for who they want to be president. It
matters not who millions of Americans thought they were voting for. The
Electoral College votes for whomever they want, and their choice becomes
the law.
Indeed, according to broadcast and media reports, the Democratic Party
candidate received a majority of the popular vote, and it appears the
Republican candidate received more electoral votes. If that figure is
affirmed and certified, then guess who gets sworn in in January, 2001?
What kind of democracy is that?
What it is, is American democracy.
Who really cares if some 19,000 West Palm Beach registered voters had their
ballots tossed out? One political spokesman, asked to comment on the
possible disenfranchisement of over 19,000 voters, Haitians, Jews and
African-Americans among them, replied, "Tough."
That is American democracy.
The nation that looks down its aquiline nose to Haiti, that lectures
Nigeria on democracy, and spits on Cuba while boasting of the "free vote,"
is a democracy of thieves. So much for the lie that "every vote counts."
Perhaps it should be said that every vote counted counts, eh?
American history is not one of democracy, but of undemocracy, as women,
Africans, Indians, and poor, unpropertied white men spent most of the
nation's existence unable to vote. When mass protests forced laws opening
up the vote, new means were found to suppress the vote of so-called
"outsiders."
The Electoral College is an institution constructed to protect the rulers
from too much democracy by the ruled. It is to protect the powerful from
the people. It is an institution that is profoundly undemocratic. In 1824,
1876, 1888, and now in 2000 the man who won the most popular votes lost the
Electoral College tally, and thus the election.
That's American history. That's American tradition. That's American democracy.
Copyright 2000 Mumia Abu-Jamal, M.A. All Rights Reserved.
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