http://www.crisispapers.org/essays6w/dem-nov.htmMay 9, 2006
I know it doesn't make much sense, given how the Republicans seem to be imploding every day in new scandals and corruptions and reckless policies -- and with the Administration's approval numbers about to head into the 20s -- but I can't shake the fear that somehow Bush&Co. will keep both houses of Congress in the November election.
This anxiety was heightened the other day when, in a local supermarket, I ran into Stephen Rosenfeld, one of the key electoral-integrity activists in this country.
Since he had been examining electoral chicanery in the 2004 balloting for more than a year-and-a-half, I asked Rosenfeld if he was close to finishing up his research.
My simple question released a torrent of information from him about how the Republicans were able to steal the election in Ohio, and thus the Electoral College vote that elongated the HardRight's hold on power, with Bush as their frontman.
Customers who were reaching around us to get to the bread and cookies were party to the rush of facts about how and why pundits are not now analyzing the presidency of John Kerry -- but I don't want to diminish Rosenfeld's thunder by listing the details here, since he (with co-author Bob Fitrakis) has a book on the subject coming out in the Fall.
Suffice it to say that the information he laid on me, along with what has been picked up from other electoral-fraud experts -- Mark Crispin Miller, Ernest Partridge, Steven Freeman, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Brad Friedman, Alastair Thompson, Bev Harris, John Conyers, et al. -- makes it clear that Kerry was robbed. In some states, it's likely that the Republican vote-counting corporations massaged the numbers to create a Bush "victory." But it's equally clear that, in key locales around the country, the GOP might not have needed to fiddle with the computer software since enough votes were stolen from the Democrats by other slimy methods.
HOW TO HIJACK AN ELECTION
As many have noted, the Bush campaign was aided enormously in this thievery because their campaign co-chairs in key states were also the Secretaries of State -- that is, the officials in charge of conducting elections and certifying the vote results: Katherine Harris in Florida in 2000 (with brother Gov. Jeb Bush overseeing her work), and, in 2004, Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio, Terry Lind in Michigan, Matt Blunt in Missouri, Glenda Hood in Florida, et al.
It has been widely documented that nefarious techniques were employed in key states to aid Bush's "victory," such as: removing hundreds of thousands of likely Democratic voters from the voting rolls; rejiggering the precincts so that when those voters went to their usual polling place, they were told they had to go vote elsewhere and when they got to the new place, they had to vote by Provisional Ballots (in Ohio, thousands of those ballots apparently are still uncounted!); making sure the voting machines in heavily Democratic wards were out of commission or malfunctioning or too few in number for the crowds who wanted to vote, thus forcing working-class citizens to stand in line for many hours, with the result that many gave up and went back to their jobs; thousands of unstamped ballots that were moved around to various precincts; locked warehouses in which various electoral irregularities were carried out; dirty tricks to keep likely Democratic voters from showing up (supplying them with the wrong voting date, telling them that anybody with unpaid parking tickets would be arrested at the polls, that sort of thing); not always catching that e-votes for Kerry automatically, either deliberately or because of technical malfunctions, were being switched into the Bush column, etc. etc.
With several hundred thousand voters kept from casting their ballots in Ohio, for example, the ultimate conclusion is that Kerry would have won that key state, and other close states, had the election been conducted honestly, absent the dirty tricks and fraud. But, of course, before any serious recounting could take place, Kerry, despite his promise to fight, quickly threw in the towel, as had Al Gore four years earlier, which haste and timidity permitted Bush&Co. to continue on their corrupt, incompetent, deadly ways.
These were shameful, cowardly Dem retreats by the candidates in the face of fire. Only now are Gore and Kerry starting to behave and speak out the way they should have during their campaigns, at least about the environment and civil liberties and the war in Iraq, leading one to believe that those two are readying themselves for another go in 2008.
TIMID DEMS ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
And where were the rest of the Democrats during all this electoral thievery? Lost and asleep at the wheel, as usual.
One can't escape the conclusion that the Democrats in general still don't know how to respond to cutthroat aggressiveness and criminality on the part of the Republicans. The Dems never knew what hit them in Florida in 2000, in Ohio in 2004 and don't really have their oppositional act together now in 2006, with the midterm election just six months away.
On occasion the Democrats display a bit more starch in their spines, but in general liberals remain locked in a more naive frame of mind, from an earlier era, when elections, no matter what their deficiencies, were more or less on the up-and-up and fair-mindedness was the operational mode for politicians: Elections were held and the declared winners got to rule, but they governed by taking into account the legitimacy of the opposition minority. Those days are long gone, thanks to Rove's bullyboy tactics.
The Democrats just don't want to deal with, or don't know how to deal with, the reality that in the Bush/Cheney/Rove era the Republican leadership has a singular goal in mind -- to win, by whatever means necessary -- and that it has a meticulously worked-out system for victory that violates every rule and tradition set up in years past. The lasting legacy of Karl Rove.
And yet the Dems are planning their first weeks in office post-November, as if all they need to do is to watch the GOP sink further in the polls and then waltz into control of the House and/or Senate.
PERMANENT CAMPAIGN, PERMANENT WAR
Why am I so snarky here about the Dems? Because there is a too-long history of Democrats tending to gear up once every two and four years for an election campaign, refusing to face the fact that the Republicans are in campaign mode every minute of every day, with the goal of decimating and destroying their political opposition. It's the permanent campaign which, not coincidentally, ties in to their permanent war ("the war on terrorism," a war against a tactic) that serves as the underpinning for their domestic and foreign agenda.
The end result has been an increasing slide into a homegrown kind of American fascism: a desire by the HardRightists for one-party rule; Bush's fondness for dictatorial governance; his 750 "signing statements," where he asserts that he can override laws passed by Congress whenever he so chooses (see Charlie Savage's mostly-ignored Boston Globe story, "Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws: President Cites Powers of His Office," and Bob Egelko's "How Bush Redefines the Intent of the Law"); his conviction that he has a blank-check to initiate wars of choice; his authorization of torture; his ordering the NSA to spy electronically on millions of American citizens; his attempts at neutering the Legislative and Judicial branches of government, etc. etc.
WHAT ORDINARY CITIZENS CAN DO
So, if all this is true, with Karl Rove (assuming he's not indicted shortly for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plamegate case) unleashing his campaign and foreign-policy "surprises" during the next six months, what do we ordinary citizens do about the situation? Specifically, what can we do about the reality of a corrupted election system?
More on this interesting article.
http://www.crisispapers.org/essays6w/dem-nov.htm
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