In Arizona the GOP Senate is paying a bunch of clowns called Cyber Ninjas to do god knows what by mishandling millions of ballots with zero security...probably in violation of state & federal law...to gin up some sort of vague doubt about ballots already counted multiple time.
Across the country in states where the GOP has total control of legislatures & governorships they are rushing through laws to make it harder to vote claiming it protects something they call "election integrity"...which apparently means Democrats much never win...from the very laws previously put into place by Republicans that were just fine until they lost an election.
While in Washington their members do everything in their power to delay investigation into the January 6 assault on the Capitol encouraged and perhaps abetted by their party.
All inspired by their anger over an election they lost. Clearly, indisputably, undeniably lost.
20 years earlier a very questionable election put a Republican in the White House. I can't say with certainty that is was stolen but I can certainly say they were willing to steal it if that's what it took.
The entire state of Florida was decided officially by 537 votes. On the way there Republicans rioted in Broward County to stop ballot counting. The Republican Secretary of State...who was also chair of the George W Bush campaign...wrongly removed thousands of voters from the rolls using faulty information. That his brother Jeb was Governor of the State only added to suspicion.
In the middle of the recount the Supreme Court stepped in with a 5-4 decision along party lines stopped the counting, though Vice President Gore had been steadily gaining ground throughout.
The night after the Court rendered its verdict Vice President Gore went on nationwide television & conceded the election, though not the rightness of the decision. As he later said "There's no middle ground between a final Supreme Court decision & Civil War." He himself presided over the official Electoral Vote count.
For all that...nothing more than a Court battle that extended over a period of 6 weeks...Republicans were up in arms. Gore was ridiculed & insulted. Lord knows he had a better case by far than the made up muddled up gobbledy gook offered up by the Trump people but swallowed his own hurt & pride for the good of the country.
The truth is we will never know who the most Florida votes were cast for in 2000. There were a number of media financed unofficial recounts in the months after. Most though not all suggested that Gore should have won but without knowing the exact standards & procedures that would have been used a certain answer isn't possible.
Me...I always wished that Gore had fought harder, at least in the public relations war where Democrats seemed to cede the field. I think even then we were slow to realize how far down the road towards power at all costs Republicans had gone.
Sure a lot of us never thought Bush was a legitimate President. I promise you that in 8 years I didn't use the phrase "President Bush" once.
But we didn't attack the Capitol. Play shady games interfering with the right to vote. Blame everyone but ourselves for the outcome. If anything we flagellated our candidate & ourselves too much.
But now the Fuck-Your-Feelings crowd is all up in the feels because they don't like an election result & can't handle the truth; that the selfish & short-sighted goober that they all unaccountably fell in love with is despised by over half the country. And they'll do anything to avoid having to face themselves in the mirror again.
Elections are won. Elections are lost. But a country is in a hell of a lot of trouble when it’s got just two major political parties & one of them is three quarters of the way down the road of elections-only-count-when-we-win-them.
Al Gore was no "Sore Loserman" but what the hell is Donald J Trump?