WI: Bush gets Gored in 2000

Could President Al Gore win re-election in 2004?

  • Yes!

    Votes: 70 54.7%
  • No!

    Votes: 20 15.6%
  • Maybe?

    Votes: 38 29.7%

  • Total voters
    128
Where can I find extra information on the voter purges in Florida in 2000? Do you know exactly around the time of they when they happened, and how could an official or citizen thwart it?
I think my last trawl for information began with Wikipedia on Katharine Harris which had a bunch of footnotes referencing a bunch of newspaper articles. There is enormous controversy about it and the magnitude of the purge. It is a fact that simultaneous with most counties applying the purge lists, some only partially, others refused to use it, as in the case of the county where the Registrar or whatever her proper title was saw her own name on the list. It is established that in those counties, and maybe some others, people who did in fact have felony records from somewhere in the USA were in fact permitted to vote, many of them being on the purge list accurately. The controversy rages about what percentage exactly of the people on the lists were in fact not felons.

The time frame was between 1998 and 2000. In the wake of the 1998 elections in which people with felony records were shown to have voted, with Republicans arguing that this was a form of Democratic voter fraud, the legislature passed new laws mandating the state make more vigorous efforts to purge the rolls, and Harris as SecState had the responsibility to execute this function. Jeb Bush I hold responsible on the "buck stops here" principle of a chief executive being accountable for everything their administration does, but it should not be too difficult to find positive links in the form of directives to Harris as SecState and other documented communications I suppose.

In the late '90s, it was unprecedented to act as the Florida state administration did in hiring a private contractor firm to do their data searching for them, but this is what Harris under Jeb Bush did. It's good Reaganite doctrine to argue private is always better than public, and that hiring a contractor is the way to get anything done, but the J Bush admin pioneered putting this into practice in this application.

Harris as SecState kept on issuing directives for the firm to broaden its search and include people on the lists based on very broad criteria; the contractor objected, if not out of citizenship concerns then presumably with an eye toward their future liability perhaps, that following the directives would raise the number of "false positives," that is people who in fact were not felons, being included, and Harris specifically directed them not to worry about that.

I am no lawyer, but as I understand it is generally impossible to get a court to act preemptively on a law or executive action until it has had some actionable effect on someone with standing to sue as a result of alleged harm done. A law for instance could be passed in flat contradiction of near-universally accepted norms, but until it is acted on, no one can take it to court anywhere. But the sources I remember perusing said that some actions in the new purge regime were taken well before the 2000 election. As I understand it, part of the layered voter suppression strategy was to delay implementation in most cases until very close to the election, which obviously gives people little time to act.

It would be premature to act anyway even if courts would intervene in incomplete actions based on knowledge that Harris was repeatedly demanding modifications to capture more names at ever increasing risk of innocent people being swept up--because implementation would be a step finally taken by the state, not the contractor. One could defend a procedure that sweeps up a maximum number of names as a first step, if it were followed by due diligence pruning the haul back to verified cases. Until the process had reached the step of transmitting the lists to the counties with orders to act on them, one could not be sure such a proper reining in would not eventually happen.

So I suppose it would be impossible for any citizens to act to challenge the purge until at least one county did act on the lists, and some number of citizens who could show they had never been convicted of any felony anywhere could bring suit. I suggest they could sue on two counts, of wrongful disfranchisement under Florida's laws, and of libel by the state or county. I'd think the right party to name in a suit would be Harris and the Department of State, but again, I am no lawyer, perhaps only the county could be named since it would be individual county offices that did the actual purging.

Another layer of suppression involved limited, late and poor notification; I believe many, perhaps most purged people got no notice at all, presuming their registration remained valid since they had done nothing to put it in doubt, and finding out on election day that they were purged and it was too late to do anything about it.

So--for there to be an effective injunction stopping the process, or a strong deterrent in the forms of either looming legal liability, versus bad political optics making the process politically risky, it would be necessary for some counties to have acted promptly, based on lists that did contain a high number of non-felons, and for some of these purged citizens to find out. Obviously then some of them would have to happen upon the procedurally correct naming of proper respondants, citing the right laws, and choosing a court of first resort that was not actively hostile to their case.

Again being no lawyer it seems to me common sense that on the one hand, a court would countenance only limited redress, in the form of directing county officials to reinstate wrongly purged persons case by case, if a very small percentage of the former voters purged showed they were not felons. But if an early case showed a high percentage of "false positives," a reasonable court might, if presented with suitably well grounded arguments by the plaintiff, order individual county lists to be disclosed and scrutinized, and verifying that a large percentage were wrongly accused of having felony records, perhaps issue injunctions reversing the purge pending verifiably near perfect accuracy, and might demand some oversight over these claims. I suppose in such initial civil case trials, the injunctions would be limited to individual counties named in each suit separately. However, if notoriety about the process achieved a certain level it might become possible for other citizens to argue and demonstrate statewide coordination of such patterns, and perhaps show how they emerged from Harris's orders. Contractor witnesses or respondents might be named who could document their protests and overriding directives, if not persuaded to stonewall, and the appearance of stonewalling might feed into political backlash. It would be possible for the Clinton administration to acquire standing to act under Civil Rights laws and court rulings, though some strategists might prefer that Clinton not be seen as taking a partisan side. By the way in addition to a pattern of large numbers of citizens with no criminal record emerging, if the process can snowball fast enough, the plain pattern of racial discrimination in the naming of presumptive felons would also become plain to the courts and media. It does not follow this would not be spun away somehow.

My general notion is that initial phases need not require any partisan Democratic activity at all, and indeed Democratic party functionaries might prefer not to have such cases being brought, fearing a political boomerang effect. But initial action might be accomplished largely under the radar, by relative handfuls of individuals seeking individual or small class action redress, just wanting their franchise restored and their names cleared of allegations of felony. Note that it might be possible some individuals might suffer immediate harm beyond the loss of voting rights and the abstract damage of being libeled, perhaps losing jobs from private or public employment on the "grounds" the county purge could be presumed accurate and these persons were believed to be doubly guilty of both disqualifying felony records and perjury in denying these when questioned in job or promotion interviews in the past. I've never heard of this happening but it would hardly be surprising if it did, and a few cases demonstrating these kinds of damages might greatly increase the weight of citizens alleging harm by the libel.

Also, it is not clear to me as a non-lawyer whether libel could involve some criminal penalties, which would require parallel criminal law trials, or laws on the books mandate criminal penalties for abuse of state power in specific forms that might legally apply. Having a wave of criminal trials going on amid civil ones would add to the general bad political optics.

If the wave of litigation snowballs while Jeb Bush's state administration continues to push for the lists being applied, serious political animosity toward the governor might carry over to the assumption his brother is hostile as well and raise Democratic turnout while depressing Republican turnout a bit, as well as infusing some militant resolve into Democratic operatives and volunteers for more aggressive campaigning.

Alternatively, seeing which way the wind is blowing, Jeb might rein in Harris, changing his orders and consulting with her on how to salvage the operation, perhaps suspending the purge orders pending R&D of a more bulletproof way of achieving legitimate (in terms of Florida's laws if not my personal view of what election laws should be) approaches toward banning all felons and only felons. If he gets far ahead of the problem--either he falls back on more stringently vetted felon purge lists, with false positives effectively eliminated, which leaves people who were purged OTL unpurged and able to vote, or reins in the whole program, leaving even more, including some felons to be sure, able to vote.
 

Bomster

Banned
@Shevek23 How about this for a POD, some guy with a very similar name to Governor Bush commits a crime and lands himself on the list, inadvertently causing Governor Bush himself to be scrubbed from the voter list. When the county recorder notifies Bush about this in May of 2000, he orders the program to be ended out of embarrassment.
 
Minor nitpick. With "could Gore win a 2nd term" yes and maybe are the same thing. No implies a certainty that he definitely will not win. Sorry.

More importantly, I would suggest a better way of framing this is to think about scenarios which Gore will win a second term. To do that let's break everything up into three main areas, foreign policy, economic policy and domestic policy.

So let's start with the most controversial, foreign policy, specifically 911. There is no way to know if 911 happens or not but if it does happen it is doubtful that a Democratic president would be able to play it the same way as a Republican. For example, I'd suggest to you that every single day Bill O'Reilly would start his show with "It has been 115 days since 911 and Osama Bin Laden is still not caught" and then go into an explanation for why Democrats are weak on foreign policy and how they cannot keep America safe. And that frame would effect how mainstream media approach the President. Consider how the emails story was a right wing attack and dominated mainstream media's relationship with Clinton in 2016. So I suggest a 911 occurs scenario would actually harm Gore's ability to be re-elected.

In the broader issue of foreign policy, generally Americans care very little about what is happening in the world, and it certainly isn't the single voting issue for a large portion of the population, barring as I said huge events like 911.

Economic policy is easier to analyse because we know that the 2000's recession is going to happen, that's been baked in for a while. The Dotcom bubble will burst regardless of who is in charge and the business cycle continues apace. The Republicans in general are more trusted with the economy and when the recession hits it will be very easy to paint this as a failure of the Democrats economic policy since Clinton, regardless of how unfair or fair that is, simple answers generally are more persuasive. And assuming no 911, I think this will be a major aspect of the discourse leading up to 2004.

So if it is coming, can the Democratic response somehow help them to win some votes. There is a school of thought that says whatever the Democrats do, voters will not care, all they care about is feeling like the economy is back up and running. And unfortunately the problem is that Gore will not be able to do much with a GOP House of Representatives who don't want to give Gore a win. The GOP will demand tax cuts to boost the economy. Gore is committed to a small middle class tax cut but is also committed to a fiscal surplus. And House Democrats will want stimulus spending. So it is plausible that the Federal government is paralysed.

Let's assume a best case scenario. Firstly, the recession is relatively minor. A course correction if you will. Gore and the GOP are able to agree a response which is mostly middle class tax cuts and a bit of spending (this is really hard to see but might be possible) and the economy actually starts to grow again. Let's also assume that without the Bush tax cuts, the budget is in a healthier shape. Debt is lower, if they do go into a budget deficit it is far lower than OTL (though ITL nobody has that comparison so probably we would hear conservatives decry the Democratic Deficit stealing money from future generations). Gore also ran on strengthening the social safety net with retirement savings accounts as a boost to Social Security, whether he could get them passed the GOP house is questionable, but I suspect it would be likely considering these would be popular with upper middle class suburban voters who will have the extra disposable income to save money long term.

Domestic policy will largely be via executive action considering that the GOP House will not be playing ball. Their job will be to deny Gore any wins because they came so close with Bush that they 'know' one more push is all it takes. So we will see some executive actions on things like climate change and energy efficiency and probably some more work on government IT services. The Democrats will try to attack the Republicans as obstructionists to popular measures but there will also be a fear within the Democratic consultancy that the era of big government died with Regan's presidency and therefore they cannot be seen to be too liberal. So things will largely be quite quiet.

This means that there is space for progressive and liberal groups to defect towards the Greens or another 3rd party. Nader isn't discredited in this timeline because Gore actually won. So how the Democratic base responds to a Democratic president basically continuing to cut taxes not pass meaningful legislation will be interesting. It wouldn't surprise me if Gore got a primary challenge in a scenario where the recession was really bad. But in a Gore wins a second term scenario I would suggest Gore needs to take a stand with the GOP on something popular and watch them tear it down and run on that to excite the base. Unfortunately there is not much.

1) Gun control, no go.
2) Welfare, off the table because Democrats don't want to be tied to welfare queens
3) Healthcare, off the table because of Hillarycare
4) Prison reform, again, Democrats are in the era of 'tough on crime'

One option is Education. It is ironic but it is possible that when all is said and done, Gore makes his first term about trying and failing to pass what amounts to No Child Left Behind education reform. Democrats are at this point (and today to be fair) conflicted about school choice but Gore generally was supportive of efforts to put more rigour into the testing of children and improving standards and there is space to work with Republicans on a bipartisan bill. It is amusing to imagine the same GOP legislators pushing Bush's NCLB bill will be riling against Federal government takeovers of education.

Finally, one thing outside of the Democrats control is who the Republicans pick to run against Gore. A Gore wins scenario needs to be someone on the fringe but who cannot connect to the Regan Republicans of the Mid West. I imagine a brutal primary (Gore probably looks weak, 12 years of Democrats is long and everyone remembers papi Bush) with McCain the front runner. We need someone like Pat Buchanan to either win or push the GOP too far to the crazy and also have a crazy VP pick. All totally plausible.

In conclusion, that is where I see a Gore victory. No 911 and a generally stable internation world (lots going on behind the scenes but never actually raising to the point of entering the American public's consciousness). A minor recession with a small federal response that doesn't break the bank and doesn't stop the recession but is enough to suggest the government knows what it is doing and his helping. A budget largely balanced or in surplus or a very minor deficit with success on the Retirement Savings Plus Accounts proposal. An agenda on the executive level around making government IT systems work better and interconnected and Climate and Energy policy. A legislative education agenda similar to OTL NCLB but perhaps with more input from teacher's unions which may or may not pass. And a sufficiently flawed GOP ticket, if for nothing else than to keep the Liberals and Progressives in line (but also to attract those rare but important sweet sweet middle of the road voters).

I'll point out that this scenario will probably result in a far better world than OTL for most people who are on the left wing of politics. Taxes on the rich will be higher. There would be no major wars. There will be far more flexibility in the budget to do big things in the future. Less debt and either a surplus or smaller deficit. The social safety net will be more secure. But actually, left wing voters will be pretty forlorn. Republicans will have controlled the House of Representatives since 1994 to 2008 and despite having a Democratic president for all that time the only legislation passed will be terribly flawed and centrist and neoliberal.

The start of the internet age of politics will probably see left wing websites analogous to Dailykos either deeply angry at the Democratic party or maybe even supporting a new left wing party. And once the Republicans get into power whenever that might be expect the Bush tax cuts to be passed as soon as possible. 2008 to today could be a lot worse for left wingers.
 
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@Bomster So Bush loses in 2000, is it possible he'd run again in 2004? Remember that the Bushes were always very determined, and after losing a race they tended to run again the next cycle. (Bush Sr for the Senate in 1964 and 1970, the presidency in 1980 then 1988. Jeb lost the Governorship in 1994, then came back in 1998). IMO if Dubya lost albiet narrowly - by a margin of only one state that Gore carries by the skin of his teeth - he might run again. However I think McCain would beat him in 2004.
 

I haven't fully absorbed this post of yours. Broadly speaking I will grant it is point by point very plausible, but it relies on separated strands of cause and effect, without allowing much for interactions between them. This is very reasonable since after all everything gets exponentially complicated when one develops events realistically, with everything feeding into everything; the only way to do it really right is to plod from week to week, taking forever, and every single step of the way are plausible arguments why it should go otherwise.

My Zen impression is, Gore would be a pretty good leader for Democrats in the post-Bill Clinton years. He would have the potential to integrate Democratic policy into a more or less coherent ideological package via consistency and logic in his actions, and this can count for something.

Specifically, suppose we don't keep international events and domestic politics separate--we consider them first as independent variables as you have done to be sure, but then reasonably go back to the beginning of our ATL tranche, with election as effective mass POD (obviously requiring some groundwork, and that has consequences) and braid them together.

Discussing 9/11 is a bit of a third rail to be sure, but it was always plausible to me that it was essentially a do-it-yourself al-Qaeda thing; Bin Laden and other al Qaeda types being essentially as OTL, there is no reason to suppose they would attempt anything different than OTL. Now that is not the only variable; much controversy rages OTL about the competency of Western and particularly US counterintelligence and police work. I take it the conventional consensus today is that really, there is so much scary nonsense going on all the time that it is only to be expected that most elements of the plot would go pretty much undetected and what flashing red lights there were observed by agencies were blinking in a sea of other red and yellow lights, and one cannot expect clever police work to simply nip it in the bud. Someone steeped in the minutia of the case might suggest how alternate bear traps would be triggered, red lights of OTL not going off at all but others that were missed OTL being observed, for a somewhat different overall pattern, but the first approximation is, the thing works much as OTL with much the same results on much the same scale. It is known that the late Clinton admin was much more focused on Bin Laden than the pre-9/11 Bush admin was, and presumably policy wonk Gorebot-2000 would carry that over. So objectively speaking the chances of the Gore admin catching it effectively, and pulling the plug enough to jam it up or at least mitigate the impact are quite high, relatively speaking--but are we talking about raising a successful parrying of the attack from one chance in a thousand to one in one hundred, or one chance in ten to near certainty? I certainly would not be competent to answer that! Subjectively I think Bin Laden would have to find another way, but that is just opinion. And persist in looking for one, and eventually having some success, is something that seems almost certain to happen eventually. Only the level of galvanization of the nation we had post-9/11 would shift our priorities and resources over to the level of effort of OTL put into shutting al-Qaeda down, so either the threat remains in background for most of a generation or they succeed in hurting a lot of USAians someday.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence mantra must not be forgotten either. If Gore's policy approach blocked all al-Qaeda attempts successfully, no one would ever know it! Even those prosecuting the policies and catching dangerous people in the act would hardly realize what they had actually accomplished, it would just be another ho-hum day at the office for them. So Gore can never get the credit for much on this front unless he first fails to some degree. Then of course as you noted, he will be crucified for this failure, never mind the magnitude, in a way no Republican ever would be.

But anyway...the recession was cyclic--as always, its specific nature taking flavor from specific recent policy changes but its general character is embedded in the normal workings of capitalism, and a setback of some kind every decade has been beating like a heart for a couple centuries now. It would be absurd to have no recession.

The combination of these events though is an opportunity of sorts. Crucified or not, Gore remains President in September 2001. I feel that the manner in which GWB reacted OTL was highly dysfunctional (and in accordance with a previous agenda for more militarization of US presence in the world, centered on a fixed obsession with invading Iraq but generally characterized by pugnacity in all directions, notably alienating both Russia and China before that tack shifted in the wake of 9/11) but obviously such a massive event would necessitate a very large degree of US reaction of some kind. Is Gore cynically Keynesian enough to reason "we wanted no war" (and I daresay his previous months in office would have been notably less belligerant) "but now we have one. Of course t isn't really a 'war' so much as a global police action."

No "war on Terror" nonsense, and a much more focused and pragmatic target list, perhaps even reaching across to take advantage of Iranian overtures might build a detente there that puts that conflict pretty much to bed--the Iranians were very solicitous after 9/11, and shared regional geopolitical interests with us, especially if we were more willing to crack down on prior ties to Pakistani factional drifts toward Islamic fundamentalism, favoring other factions there and using an improving relationship with Iran as leverage. Of course fundamental conflicts with Iran remain such as US support of Israel, and Gore certainly would not throw Israel under the bus--perhaps an agreement to disagree, US and Iran remaining in essentially a state of detente in the midst of ongoing Cold War, but a rather Nixonian detente. Certainly no random grab bag of convenient recurring Usual Suspect bad guys into one ideological bin, as Bush lumped together Saddam, the Iranians, the North Koreans and Cuba-Gore would rather, I might hope, work on detente with Cuba and Iran, and keeping Iraq and NK contained with a minimum of drama, with eyes on the prize in Afghanistan and a police project in the broader Sunni Islamic world.

I believe Gore, versus Bush's actions, would have been more FDR Fireside Chat with the American people, leveling with them (obviously with Republican leadership and Fox gainsaying everything, but I do believe the truth has some power of outing) and being more nuanced and frank than conventional wisdom says is wise. And I believe a focused, rationally driven program that is not mainly an excuse to implement a bunch of agenda items totally irrelevant to the threat at hand, in the context of the immediate post-9/11 outpouring of world sympathy, could indeed lead to effective network building that much more effectively identifies and isolates the specific lot of al-Qaeda types.

This will in fact involve a massive national effort on a scale matching or exceeding funds spent on War on Terror and Homeland Security OTL. Properly managed, such an effort could and should be used for economic manipulation of a type that patches over market-driven recession and leverages US priorities toward rational self-improvement. Socialism ultra lite if you will, and in the name of national interest and public safety and not ostensibly a matter of class warfare, with a massive coating of pork grease for establishment economic interests. And using the expanding machinery focused on an international police action, a certain administrative latitude for pragmatic bridge building overseas, justified by the argument that al-Qaeda and other extremists draw support from massive public discontents, and a smart US policy must work toward mitigating and relieving these discontents. Some we can't do much about without violating our principles--no backsliding on social policy (yet another Bush admin priority, or at least obligation to feed a portion of his base's fears and prejudices--relative to those one might argue Bush was a hidden progressive, as in his immigration initiatives, but I am not grading on that particular curve but on the broader population and my own concept of basic human rights), even if that is irritating or offensive overseas. But good pragmatic quid pro quos designed to alleviate concerns we recognize as objective and aggravating.

The Republicans, in order to crusade against this, would have to become more explict in their world view antagonistic toward basic human progress and enlightenment, doubling down on reactionary stuff like American exceptionalism, self-interest that could be shown all the more starkly to be that of a relative few richer people, bigotry of various kinds, anti-secular theocratic tendencies, etc. The risk is having a "worse" reactionary regime if the politics backfires, but the upside hope is that basically, while Americans do resemble that very much versus other developed nations, fundamentally we remain a secular, humanistic democratic republic.

Gore being seen to be proactive and technocratically effective, especially in a context of visible Republican obstructionism, could win over quite a lot of the middle, especially if pocketbooks are objectively less hurting due to Keynesian stimulus management in the form of administration of the emergency security mobilization. Again grass is always greener principle must be remembered, these voters will not know if they are better off or worse than OTL, nor should they care...but if objectively they have fewer complaints, they should be more willing to listen to the Democratic message.

It goes against conventional wisdom for Gore to get improved standing in the House and Senate versus OTL, but OTL it is acknowledged Bush got a buffer against midterm losses in 2002, and while Gore cannot expect the sort of all-in support of the corporate media Bush enjoyed, and will be swimming upstream, I think at worst, if he plays it smart as I think he plausibly could, he can avoid the Democrats actually losing ground. Meanwhile the harder the Republicans strive to demonize him the more unreasonable they look. This will only strengthen their position versus their base, but the question is, is there enough of a middle ground for Gore to have traction with?

Instead of tossing Gore into that briar patch then, perhaps the Republicans will be divided, some taking the national unity high road, others arguing for double down insurgency. This gives Gore some bipartisan cover and scope to be an effective technocrat.

I think in these adverse circumstances, Gore could prove to be a comforting and even moderately inspiring leader of all the nation in an Eisenhowerian manner. As such, he can win 2004 against even a strong Republican challenger--certainly GW would be an example--handily, if perhaps by rather thin margins, which are merely normal in modern generations. This could be on either of two tracks, depending on how the Republicans play their cards--if a sufficient number of them play the "high road national unity" card the party splits into radical and moderate wings, the Democrats remain similarly polarized, and the middle ground of moderate Dems and Republicans call the shots while the radicals snarl at each other and we get a fairly conservative outcome comparable to OTL broadly. Or, the Republicans remain in Gingrichite/Reaganesque hardliner mode, and barely are edged out by Democrats, the Overton Window slows in its rightward movement or even drifts a bit left again, and Gore's second term is in a very different global setting in which technocratic globalism with explicit pie-sharing between elite and popular interests in both developed and Third World is more the norm, carbon taxes and serious climate control initiatives are more normalized, detente among world leaders focused on repressing extremism while allieviating perceived root causes by positive means is more consensual. The whole environment of Bush's agenda is removed in favor of a more New Deal/Great Society flavored approach.

Against this of course is sheer partisan fatigue; Gore's first term might seem grudgingly acceptable to Republicans but never a second.

Another variant on the theme then is that choosing the moderated-wing Republican ascendency (possibly known as Schwarzenegger wing, Arnold having run on a vague platform that tried to square the circle between red meat Reaganism and moderate Dem technocracy--I can talk about his dark side which I personally experienced but that is not on topic here) in which a Republican does win, but not one seen as representing the far right in the way Bush was in 2000--perhaps it is not George but Jeb! the "Smart One" who is given the nod?

So we get a 4 year delayed Republican ascendency, possibly in the context of a Democratic recovery of the House and Senate, and ongoing caretaker technocracy that could indeed start veering right, but from a more moderate starting point than OTL 2008.

-----Going back to my offerings on the POD, if Jeb Bush does back off on the purge lists and loses Florida for his brother as a result, the outcome is another handicap for Gore to overcome pessimists and/or Gore haters might play on. Just as I am convinced in the rightness of my calling 2000 stolen by Jeb due to Harris's failure of due diligence in limiting the purge lists to verified felons, in my opinion clearly with malice aforethought but anyway culpable even if only out of stupidity, which so many think is the generous assumption in general, so in the ATL it may seem plain that Gore's win in Florida was due entirely to felon votes that state law outlawed--I don't think it should, but I can hardly dispute it did! The laws under which Harris and Jeb Bush were obliged, regardless of their intentions and opinions, to enact were against just that kind of thing happening, and depending on just how the purge is softened or halted in the ATL, it may reflect very badly on Jeb that he does not do more to stop felons from voting. And badly on the Democrats that perhaps the majority of is ATL victory margin appears to be from illegal voters.

One can play with these matches in all sorts of ways, and it is easier to see how they leave us worse off. Certainly from the point of view of a third TL where Bush wins Florida but is either outvoted somewhere else, like New Hampshire, and so loses the EV, or one where he wins but his victory is so tainted that he loses the House and Senate in 2002 and seriously productive measures against voter repression prevail, such a Gore victory might seem downright dystopian in th elonger run. I'd still argue for Gore persevering and winning out, but obviously that's a long shot.
 

Bomster

Banned
I’m thinking of doing a collaborative TL called Gored! in the same vein as A Kinder, Gentler Nation. Does that sound interesting?
 
@Shevek23 How about this for a POD, some guy with a very similar name to Governor Bush commits a crime and lands himself on the list, inadvertently causing Governor Bush himself to be scrubbed from the voter list. When the county recorder notifies Bush about this in May of 2000, he orders the program to be ended out of embarrassment.
I gave it a Like, it is certainly poetic!

But pragmatically speaking I think Jeb would just quietly fix his own exclusion and roll on. Part of the whole Republican/Modern American Right package is privilege as a virtue, indulgence for me but not thee, for We are the party of God and You are secular Commie scum, part of the masses of rubes one steps on the faces of up the God-given social ladder of privilege and priority. It's what they are all about, a logical mutual reinforcement with market worship and flattery of the rich across the board, except for the scapegoats among them of course. It's why politicians with gay close relatives can be for more repression in the name of traditional values in general, why they can be anti-abortion without worrying about what does to their own wives, daughters, and girlfriends. Moralize against porn and loose morals, have mistresses on the side; rant against evil abortionists and wreckers of traditional families, recruit Pacific Islander young women from Philippines and even the PRC to come to American territories and work at low wages and often become sex workers for profitable Republican donating enterprises that force them to have abortions against their will--the holidays prevent me from having time to provide links right now but I recently found good ones from Ms Magazine in the later '90s, I'm looking at you Jack Abramoff and you, Tom DeLay. Party of Family Values forsooth! If by that we mean a metric of convenience and privilege for well off patriarchs, yes absolutely.

Hypocrisy will not give them a moment of lost sleep. If they can do it without getting caught anyway, and very often after being caught red handed. This too shall pass, especially when the mainstream media owners are part of the same clubs.

None of this is meant as blanket exoneration of Democrats either by the way, though I do think scale and degree of hypocrisy are both less, on a per politician basis there. Assisting in letting these things be politely ignored is a degree of culpability in itself obviously.

(And this is why I believe the Democrats always have the option of going on a righteous populist counterattack, at risk of some collateral damage to themselves of course. The more Democratic culpability one believes there is the more this resembles a nuclear option of course, or to be more Biblical, Sampson pulling down the temple around himself. My belief is that a fair exchange would leave a lot more Dems standing, some wounded, than Republicans, but obviously the Party leadership is less sanguine, with all this live ammo lying around! And even with clear partisan advantage going one or the other, it is not seemly nor deemed in the National Interest because it does mean a time of troubles and weakness).

If it were part of a bigger package and he could keep this part quiet, it makes for an amusing if somewhat anvilicious little poetic moral.
 

Bomster

Banned
@Bomster So Bush loses in 2000, is it possible he'd run again in 2004? Remember that the Bushes were always very determined, and after losing a race they tended to run again the next cycle. (Bush Sr for the Senate in 1964 and 1970, the presidency in 1980 then 1988. Jeb lost the Governorship in 1994, then came back in 1998). IMO if Dubya lost albiet narrowly - by a margin of only one state that Gore carries by the skin of his teeth - he might run again. However I think McCain would beat him in 2004.
Maybe he would run again, I mean he would still have the Texas governorship to fall back on. He could win off of a “Re-Elect Bush” platform to try to undermine the legitimacy of Gore’s election. I don’t know though, I was always under the impression that if he had lost he could have gone to Baseball or something else.
 
Maybe he would run again, I mean he would still have the Texas governorship to fall back on. He could win off of a “Re-Elect Bush” platform to try to undermine the legitimacy of Gore’s election. I don’t know though, I was always under the impression that if he had lost he could have gone to Baseball or something else.

Bush already did that in 1989 when he bought the TX Rangers. 2004 will depend on how Bush's loss is seen by the GOP leadership. Bush was at one point leading by 17%, even a narrow loss will be frowned upon by many Republicans. But even if Dubya runs again in 2004, McCain will be eager for vengeance and with more establishment support and a better ground game I think McCain would upset Bush before defeating Gore in the general.
 
What do you mean by this btw?
I just meant that if Jeb finding his own name on a purge list were just a private subjective aside that did not become publicly known, but meanwhile other stuff making the purge project politically and legally hot water for his administration, an author might portray it as a subjective last straw, though I am cynically contemptuous of these people enough to believe it would not really change his resolution all by itself, not even as a last straw--it would be better to have him resolve to back off and then learn his own name was on the chopping block IMHO. Others have a kinder, gentler view of these people as moral actors of course that might find a personal epiphany plausible but I tend to operate on the theory people pretty much know what they are doing. There are those who believe it is more charitable and realistic to assume a lot of stupidity instead of course.
 
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