Why didnt we freak out like the Iranians when the election of 2000 was stolen from us?

[NightWatcher]

and yes, by "freak out" I mean take to the streets and demand satisfaction.

I'll tell you why, we're overfed, over stimulated, under educated, easily distracted, oh look, American Idol is coming on.

[secondwind]

1. I thought we DID! The pickets and posters were everywhere! Everyone was in the street.

[NightWatcher]

21. pickets and protests? I dont recall seeing these scenes from DC or New York or anywhere

Calling your congresscritter right fugging now doesnt accomplish jack shit

[KoKo]

31. What you are saying is that "without violence in the streets" the MSM will not cover it...

because there's "No story there?" Think about what you are saying.

[csziggy]

46. There were certainly lots of protestors in the streets of Tallahassee

Before the state Supreme Court decision. The crowd scenes in "Recount" - lots of those were real news footage. They actually had trouble getting enough extras to recreate the crowd levels for the staged movie shots.

Demonstrators march to the Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla., Dec, 13, 2000 in support of Vice President Al Gore and in protest of the U.S. Supreme Court decision stopping the manual vote recount in Florida.
Photo: AP



But by the time SCOTUS awarded the election to Shrub, the people I knew who had been protesting realized that the fix was in. They were not ready for an armed insurrection, so they just suffered along with the rest of the populace.

[OKNancy]

2. I just wrote the same thing only about why

I'm not afraid the right-wingers will be in the streets against Obama.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5842046&mesg_id=5842198

[Kaleva]

3. Not that many thought it was stolen

[Bicoastal]

4. Because it was just close enough for all but the most outspoken of us to be mollified.

Give Rove this much--he wasn't stupid enough to claim a 60% win in Florida.

[newspeak]

44. actually the 2000 election was stolen

and the ballots in FL were counted by some journalists--Gore had not only won the popular vote, but the electoral as well. Remember when * did the traditional walk and was pelted by the crowd and had to hurry and get back into the car? I think people were really pissed, but they still thought * couldn't do as much damage as he'd done. Also, the corporate owned MSM backed *. The media also had a hand in validating *'s presidency. Of course, there were some who knew that he'd get us in a war and cause all kinds of damage, just because of Bush-Cheney business connections. They've made their fat greedy war profiteering corporate friends much richer, obscenely rich.

Now where were we in "freedom of the press?" I mean this is supposed to be a republic with a free press--oh yeah, weren't we number 53 on the list for a free press. Keep telling yourself we're not living in a corporate owned Banana Republic--I think we might be number 48th on that list now.

[BlueJazz]

5. Americans are Cowards

[EFerrari]

9. I don't think, cowards. But we definitely don't do things in groups

like other peoples do. When they stole the election in Mexico, everyone was out on the street for weeks.

[havocmom]

15. Not cowards, just lazy and willing to TALK about democracy, but not participate much

We The People whine that somebody should do something about.... Not enough realize that for democracy to work, SOMEBODY is us.

[RagAss]

25. Bingo !

[kenny blankenship]

6. Because 9/11 changed EVERYTHING!

Even stuff in the past. Especially stuff in the past. Like the Constitution.

[hedgehog]

7. Where are we supposed to protest? The Mall? McDonald's?

America has no public meeting places left.

[EFerrari]

10. That's a good point. No public square. But most cities have

a Federal Building. :shrug:

[readmoreoften]

18. Organizing obstacle #54293.

You got it.

[TankLV]

19. Speak for yourself...

My favorite public space:

[hedgehog]

27. Is that Buffalo?

[TankLV]

56. Yep - and one of the best city halls and public squares in the country!

and my hometown...

[Odin2005]

36. My city (Fargo, ND) has plenty of public areas for protests.

That doesn't change anything. Some just don't care and others are too cynical to think it will make a difference.

[GoesTo11]

8. We did! Remember?

[KoKo]

33. You mean the "Fat Gas Repugs?" Those Thugs who Got ALL Media Coverage?

Yeah.

You know, at that point in time, we Dems believed the CONSTITUTION RULED...we thought this was MAJOR HYPERBOLE and GRANDSTANDING by the RW.

We were so innocent that even after the RW trashed a Dem President for a consentual dialiance with a "woman of age" off the Oval Office that "WE" as Democrats would be considered "Partners to Clinton's Sexual Crime."

How innocent we were.

[lunatica]

11. Most people still believed the media told the truth, as in facts.

[sandnsea]

12. Two reasons, the courts and the closeness

Well three, the right wing did take to the streets and the potential for real anarchy probably seemed to great.

But I think Florida was just too close, a coin toss really. And we foolishly trusted the courts.

[JI7]

43. but what if last year as the results were coming in, McCain was winning

in most areas by the same numbers as Ahmadinjed claims . and this is after the campaign and polls had been just as they were. with huge turnouts for Obama and polls showing him leading.

but when the numbers are reported they are saying McCain is leading by a huge margin.

do you think Americans would have protested then ?

i would like to think so but i'm not able to say we would have for sure. there might have been some at the start but with time people would just start talking about race, bradley effect etc.

[hedgehog]

13. When all the Democrats in leadership positions wandered off,

what could the rest of us do?

[blm]

14. There was one wing of the party pleased that Bush took the WH and helped him STAY there

with their vigorous support and defense of his national security decisions.

[KoKo]

34. What you say is the TRUTH! We believed in Democratic Leaders in those "old days."

We thought they would PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION! WE WERE WRONG TO TRUST! Has taken us awhile to figure this out..

[Marr]

16. I think it's because Americans were particularly cynical in 2000.

Don't you remember all the jokes back in 2000 about how the two candidates were identical? And to a casual observer, they *seemed* practically identical. Many people thought it seemed like two essentially indistinguishable political factions arguing over who was going to get to enrich themselves for the next four years... and many really didn't care.

If the same thing had happened during the last election, I think the results would've been very different.

[KoKo]

35. 2000 was the Height of the Dot Com BOOM...we FELT GREAT!

About AMERICA and EVERYTHING! It was after that with the "Stolen Election 2000 and the installation of the IDIOT FROM OZ that the "average American" started to suspect "Something's Up..and might not be good."

The rest of us were out there trying to take down the damned DRAGON!

[readmoreoften]

17. Because we have internalized ruling class consciousness and believe our system is unchangeable.

The entire thrust of our society is geared toward, what in the 19th and early 20th century was called "bourgeois ideology": the notion that the world is comprised of unchangeable objects put in motion by natural law. It takes an incredible amount of mysticism (invisible hand of the market, American values, justifiable wars, etc) to keep this system together. To a certain degree, it takes a good amount of labor policy to keep us this way: the redefinition of everyone from carpet cleaners to strippers to professors to nurses as either "management" (petit bourgeois--medieval throw back to Kingsman) or "independent contractor" (petit bourgeois--medieval throw back to troubadour, itinerant craftsman). The business schools have read enough Marx to know that unrest is best squashed by mimicking feudalism--where the working-class (generic humanity) is decentralized and unable to congeal into a force to reveal that it is not eternal or natural but a force that it is sustained by and for, not a few kings, but a somewhat larger spread of modern industrialists.

But this system considers itself immune to history. It believes that its the end of history. Without a historical and material understanding of the world, our only tool of battle is secret ballot and public outrage (which is easily put down by advanced military technology and private ownership of media outlets.)

Of course, Iranians aren't at a different phase than we are. They are not more advanced than we are in this respect. But while we are fighting our way through a capitalist system that uses the mixed consciousness of nouveau-feudalism to ward off class consciousness of the average joe and joann, Iranians are still directly fighting the vestiges of feudalism: theocracy, the God-King, extreme enforcement of the veil. They have seen others do this and win, so it is impossible to convince them that they can't fight it.

In short: they are fighting to join modern global capitalism and we are fighting to have a democracy within global capitalism (which is fighting its own mathematical collapse through any and all possible imperialist expansion into any and all underdeveloped markets.)

And TV doesn't help.

[KittyWampus]

20. Did YOU get out and protest? Yeah, I thought not.

[dysfunctional press]

22. some of us did. where were you...?

i drove from chicago to dc to protest at the coronation. the banner i made made it into fahrenheit 9/11:

[varelse]

23. I thought he'd actually won, albeit by a very small number of votes

and was too busy being overwhelmed by grief and shock, not to mention severe disappointment in my fellow citizens.

[wuushew]

24. Rioting is less likely in colder months

Many of the warmer states without snow went red in 2000.

[KG]

26. only a third of citizens care enuff to cast a ballot. the avg american is more interested who won

on 'american idol' than who was elected president.

[Libby2]

28. We probably didn't realize how bad it was going to be.

[DCKit]

29. A picture *IS* worth a thousand words. n/t

[KoKo]

30. More of Blame the Victim instead of "Blame the Media" for not reporting anything but RW

:Google Eyed" checking "Hanging Chads."

Get over it. If you want something to BLAME..then BLAME the "McCorporate Media" for not reporting ...just like they didn't report the hundreds of thousands who marched and protested against the Iraq Invasion! THEY...NEVER COVERED IT! But they give hundreds of hours to Sarah Palin and her daughters who are "acting out" against their Mother and make it "Milk and Honey!"

Give me a break with this "BLAME GAME" for the LEFT...that we didn't do enough. Without Media Coverage (for fake "Tea Parties") what is the MEDIA COVERAGE. :puke:

[Sebastian Doyle]

32. Are you fucking kidding me?

There are DLC'ers right here on this fucking board who still blame the whole thing on Ralph Nader, rather than acknowledge any fraud from the Bush Crime Family, or complicity from their own corrupt crowd.

[omega minimo]

48. True dat

[nini]

37. because we're afraid of our government

and we're a bunch of soft lazy brainwashed idiots?

[madamesilverspurs]

38. From what I heard at the time

that's the very question that was being asked around the world.

[Toucano]

39. Bingo! n-t

[SoCalDem]

40. Our corporate media believed that "both were the same"

They had been telling us all that for months....years.. So to THEM, it mattered little, which candidate "won"...Bush or Gore. Their story would change little. They worked hard for a year or more, equivocating the two, and creating an image of a razor-thin closeness.

Whichever candidate had the most "colorful" supporters" in the aftermath got the most coverage. The "SoreLoserman Brigade" and the steady stream of republican microphone-hogs filled that bill. (Plus, they knew that GW had more "political clout", so they backed him, and showed very little of the protests that DID happen AGAINST him.)

Media made up its mind early, and barring an armed insurrection, Gore supporters had no chance to be considered more than "disgruntled losers".

Iran is different, because had they gotten a fair vote-count, things might have radically changed there. The Ayatollahs would still be in charge, but "win" for the people would have ushered in a new era of hope...hope for real change. Does anyone really think the ayatollahs wanted that?

In America, which one wins is still not as earth-shattering as what happens in a totalitarian society. Our individual lives go on pretty much as always, regardless of our winner. Over the long term, looking back, we can see what might have been, but in the moment, things stay pretty much the same for us. We swallow hard, curse a little, and then go on, vowing to try harder, be more vigilant next time.

With a right-leaning corporate media, we have very few options for complaint anyway. Our media is covering Iran's uprising, but soon that coverage will fade away, because their government will clamp down.

[glitch]

52. It wasn't just the Corporate Media telling us that.

The Left Media was playing that one hard as well.

[Juche]

41. Probably because 2000 caught us off guard

Iranians have been living with human rights abuses and fraud for their entire lives, especially the youth. Here in the US we were able to take for granted that our democracy works, and 2000 basically caught people off guard. However by 2008 whenever GOP secretaries of state would try doing what Harris did in 2000 and disqualify voters, it would always be blocked by democratic, civil rights and progressive organizations. I know voter purges were tried in many states, and they all were blocked.

Anyway, if the 2008 election had truly been fraudulent (ie if McCain had won with 70% of the vote and ended up winning states like CA, VT, MA or NY) then you likely would've seen what you are seeing in Iran. Many of us were ready to protest if the 2008 election was fraudulent.

But for the most part, we have been able to take for granted that our democracy works until recently. So it has caught us off guard. Democracy in Iran has never really worked. The theocracy can always overrule the elected officials, and they can disqualify candidates.

[McCamy Taylor]

42. We are pretty complacent here compared to folks in other countries. The prevailing

wisdom is that America will do alright (i.e continue to be as rich as sin) no matter who is in charge. Bush did not become massively unpopular until he wrecked the economy.

[girl gone mad]

45. Because our leadership caved.

I think it's that simple.

[Thickasabrick]

47. Agree 100% n/t

[Pisces]

49. Because we are lazy, apathetic fools.

[omega minimo]

50. B/c Americans swallowed so many lies since 1980, they forgot how to react.........

[glitch]

51. I was on the steps of the Seattle courthouse with about 100 other protestors.

In Seattle, home of the WTO protests. 100 people. And the later protest in SF (where DU had an info table BTW) about 2000 people, tops. Should have been 50,000 minimum.

Complacent-Americans are trained to be helpless, even fearful, of even the mildest criticism (or simply a dirty look).

However, they can flip off other drivers IF they are driving away AND the way is clear.

[Release The Hounds]

53. AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

[anigbrowl]

54. It was considerably less clear-cut or immediate

If Bush had been declared victor with 65% of the vote, maybe you would have. As it was, the result was close and came down to the votes within a single state, and it went through the normal process up to the supreme court. The apparent incongruity of the result in Iran seems considerably more blatant.

[Kaleva]

55. Gore supporters were more likely to accept Bush....

then Bush supporters were to accept Gore as legitimate.

"While more than 4 in 10 of Mr. Gore's voters said that if Mr. Bush became president they would consider him the legitimate victor, only 2 in 10 of Mr. Bush's voters said the same about a Gore presidency."

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/politics/30POLL.html?pagewanted=1

[Kaleva]

58. More polling info

"An overwhelming majority of Americans -- 80 percent -- are prepared to accept Texas Gov. George W. Bush as the legitimate president, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted today. This comes on the heels of last night's historic Supreme Court decision effectively ending the thirty-six day presidential election stalemate between Bush and Vice president Al Gore."

http://transcripts.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/13/cnn.poll/index.html

"Suspicion about vote tampering didn‚t reach close to home, however. Seven in 10 expressed confidence that their vote was counted, including 64% of Democrats, 70% of independents and 88% of Republicans."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/timespoll/la-001217bushpoll-450pa1an,0,7324149.htmlstory

[BeFree]

61. Heh

64% of democrats, eh?

Lets say there are 100M each of Dems, Indies, and pubbies.

That means 64 M dems think their votes could be stolen.

30 M Indies think their vote could stolen.

12 M pubbies thought their vote could stolen.

That's 106 M Americans who think their vote could be stolen.

And these are probably the only people who even thought about the idea that their votes could be stolen. The rest of the people probably never even considered it?

That fits in well with my own personal experiences. 2/3 of the people are clueless about how votes can be stolen.

[tavalon]

57. We televise the unrest in Iran

We don't televise the unrest here, unless it's the brown people in their matching white shirts. I think the only reason that was televised was to scare whitey.

I was at many of the protests that didn't happen in the last eight years. I can tell you first hand that you were lied to. Lied to by omission. To update an old koan for a new age: Did a huge protest happen if the media didn't cover it?

[deaniac21]

59. Because we lost.

[leftofthedial]

60. we are pussies.