Newsflash: elections matter

[dsc]

Tonight we have the announcement of a new Supreme Court Nominee, barring something just awful in his backround which hasn't appeared yet, he will be Justice Roberts. The right not to have a Justice Roberts and instead have a Justice Cuomo or someone of similar mind was lost on Nov 7, 2004.

Two groups of people who are at least largly pro choice and pro gay rights share a great deal of the blame for where we are now. We had a nearly historic stroke of luck when Bush went 4 years without a vacancy (only Carter was simlilarly unlucky) and thanks to two groups of people we blew it.

One of those groups is the 33% of pro choicers and 25% of LGBT voters who voted for Bush in 2004. Polyannaesque theories to the contrary Bush made it abundantly clear, as clear as humanly possible that he would name conservative Justices. He has now done exactly as he said he would. Gee, who would have thunk it. If in 2025 there are anti sodomy laws or laws banning abortion in places like Alabama and Mississippi those people need to look in a mirror when they seek to place blame. Bush would have been sent back to Crawford had these people voted for Kerry instead of Bush. The choice was clear, it was honestly and starkly presented. They chose Bush and thus Roberts. It is as clear as that.

The second group, who bears less responsibility but still bears some, is the "there is no difference" crowd. Like the other people they make claims as to what Bush really believes or assume that the Senate will somehow rescue us from our stupidity. So they went all around in 2000 and some of them again in 2004 saying loudly and longly there is no difference. I said bullshit then, and now so do events. Justice Roberts is a steaming pile of bullshit on the theory that there is no difference.

The simple fact is, that just like we won the right to name the likes of Breyer and Ginsburg in the election of 1992, Bush won the right to name the likes of Roberts in 2004. Elections matter. Presidents, especially ones with a Senate of the same party, generally get their choices for the Supreme Court confirmed. It was a totally unrealistic expectation that the Senate would filibuster any and all Supreme Court nominees after a clearly won election ( I think there might well have been a filibuster of O'Connor's replacement had she retired before he won in 2004 but not now). If the above people really cared about these issues the time to do something was in November of 2004. The boat has sailed.

One can only hope that the pro choicers and LGBT voters who voted for Bush have learned their lesson. Maybe pro choicers such as Chaffee, Snowe, and Collins will actually save us. I wouldn't hold my breath. Elections matter. Both parties here did their jobs. We articulated clear differences on the role of the Supreme Court and the existence of individual rights. The people who messed up are the pro choicers and LGBT voters who evidently simply didn't believe that elections matter in this regard. Surprise, they do.

[Nite Owl]

1. Nice post

here we are, this was the worse that we expected, a right wing SCOTUS nominee. Our fears, they happened.

[BlueWolff]

2. I use to have gay friends who voted for Bush

They are no longer my friends. Being gay myself, how could I even look at myself in the mirror if I associate with anyone who could be so self hating and hate me so much that they could vote for someone who would frankly be happy if I ddidn't exist. Hell that is what Reagan wanted, and so does the chimp!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. Hmmm... Do these people have any buyer's remorse I wonder.

What, did they just do it for the tax cut?

[BlueWolff]

6. I don't know

I realized that they had to be self hating , what else could it be? Maybe they liked the Chimps mind? LMAO. They were long time friends, but I couldn't even look at them anymore, no less be a friend!

[Tesha]

21. Don't forget guns. (NT)

[dsc]

5. same here

They kept telling me he wouldn't do this, he was just appeasing his Christian base, etc. yeah, sure he was.

[NoPasaran]

3. DSC my friend, you have hit the nail square on the head

nominated

[dsc]

7. thanks

I really wish the Pollyannas had been right but sadly they weren't.

[liberalpragmatist]

8. Great post

Filibuster talk is completely irrelevant. If we controlled the Senate, maybe it'd be a different ballgame (although even then most presidential nominees get confirmed). But we deal with the cards we have, not the cards we wish we had.

This man is by no means a liberal or even a moderate. But he is a smart, mainstream conservative. That means he's going to disagree with us quite a bit. I expect no less. Like you said, there are consequences to elections. Frankly, I'm just relieved it's not Brown, Jones, Clement, Gonzales, or Alito (although McConnell or Wilkinson would have been better).

I also find the argument that not fighting this will make Democrats look spineless to be, well, ridiculous. The Republicans let both Breyer and Ginsberg sail through. It didn't hurt them ONE BIT in the '94 midterms. We have a host of great issues to hammer them with, including the Rove scandal, and let's not overplay our hand with a SC fight that's going to be impossible to win and will distract from battles that we CAN win.

[Taylor Mason Powell]

15. Great Comment!

Thank you for injecting some common sense in the midst of all the hysteria. Some people here at DU are acting like they expected Bush to nominate someone pro-choice!

This is indeed a dark day for progressive values and for America, but it's one that we all saw coming at least since November. This is not a surprise at all, and to anyone who professes to be outraged or shocked I would simply say, "what rock have you been living under for the last five years?!" We should be thankful it's not much much worse. We got another Rehnquist, basically. Could have been a Scalia, or a Thomas. Or an Ashcroft or a Moore or any number of horribles.

We were just starting to really get some serious traction on this Rove thing. I think it would be a shame to divert our energies to the Supreme Court fight and lose momentum on Rove. Hopefully those who say we can "walk and chew gum at the same time" will prove correct. But I fear if we make too big a fuss over it then that's where the media's focus is going to be, and the Bushies will be loving every minute of it.

[linazelle]

16. Well said. Judging by the insanity today , BushCo should

be shouting "Mission Accomplished" again over toasts for their success in taking heat off themselves and putting it here--between us common folk.

[Lex]

9. When I was working my butt off to keep Bush from having a 2nd term

it was because of the Supreme Court nominations that I'd knew he'd get in his second term.

They will adversely affect this country for 30 years at least.

[dsc]

10. I moved to NC in July

and thus didn't work for Kerry much (I worked for him in May and June in Ohio). I did work for Bowles and would have worked for Kerry had he been working here. Only after finding out that his campaign wasn't going door to door did I instead work for Bowles. For me, Justices were a huge issue as well.

[wli]

11. this vote brought to you by Diebold

It's not who votes, but who counts the votes.

[linazelle]

14. So true. The fingerpointing is in the wrong direction. It's not

the individuals that are deciding elections any more, but voting machine companies.

Yes, some did vote for **--but not enough to skew exit polls and pre-election polls which put ** at the lowest ever levels for and incumbent to retake an elected presidency (and I do mean 'take'against a groundswell of voters who were disenfranchised by crooked regressives in Ohio and elsewhere.

Of course you know this, I'm preaching to the choir.

Elections ARE critical. But blaming voters who really aren't responsible on either side, is not the key to improving the situation.

[dsc]

17. That is total crap

In 2000, we could and rightfully did, cry theft. This time we lost, plain and simple. Bush won by over 3 million votes. In Ohio, the only state we can honestly say may have been stolen there are virtually none of those machines. There the stole it the old fashioned way by making it hard for people to vote. Even Ohio may well have been a legitimate win for them but they cheated so much it is impossible to know that for sure.

[wli]

19. exit polls say otherwise, the whole thing was a fraud

[dsc]

20. North Carolina is one of the places those exit polls said we were winning

I live here and I can tell you Kerry lost this state legitimately. I have to really wonder about any exit poll that had Kerry ahead here.

[wli]

22. I don't buy it for a minute

The exit polls say what they say. For them to be wrong needs a coincidence to happen. The odds of that coincidence can be calculated, and they are vanishingly small, far beyond worthiness for consideration as having happened.

And then there is the voter suppression and the election observers' reports of poor practices and the evidence of corruption and conflict of interest and so on.

It truly is very clear that these two elections were stolen.

[dsc]

25. I canvased very heavily for Bowles here (Kerry had no canvasers)

Kerry was consistently doing worse than Bowles no matter where I canvased (first time in a slightly Republican place, 2nd time slightly Democratic, 3rd time in a heavily Democratic place). In all three places, there was a significant number of voters who were willing to vote for Bowles but not for Kerry. Kerry finished 6 points behind Bowles.

[eomer]

24. This vote brought to you by Triad

You're right, Diebold didn't steal the election in Ohio - Triad did.

-snip-

Given the ubiquity of the Triad voting systems in Ohio, the allegations that have been leveled against this company strike to the heart of the assumed result of the 2004 election.

Earlier this week, the allegations against triad were first raised by Green Party candidate David Cobb, who testified at a hearing held in Columbus, Ohio by Rep. John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee. In his testimony, Cobb stated:

Mr. Chairman, though our time is limited, I must bring to the committee's attention the most recent and perhaps most troubling incident that was related to my campaign on Sunday, December 12, about a shocking event that occurred last Friday, December 10.

A representative from Triad Systems came into a county board of elections office un-announced. He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the up-coming recount. He then headed into the back room where the Triad supplied Tabulator (a card reader and older PC with custom software) is kept. He told them there was a problem and the system had a bad battery and had "lost all of its data". He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it and another "spare" tower type PC also in the room. He may have had spare parts in his coat as one of the BOE people moved it and remarked as to how very heavy it was. He finally re-assembled everything and said it was working but to not turn it off.

-snip-

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml

[Fly by night]

29. Wake up and smell the nationwide fraud, 'k?

"In Ohio, the only state we can honestly say may have been stolen there are virtually none of those machines." Huh? @!?&$@!??

Earth to dsc, earth to dsc -- it's the reality-based world calling.

Try New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada, Iowa, Colorado, Maryland, Arizona, North Carolina, Wyoming, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Even here in Tennessee, the chimp's "reported" victory margin was twice as high as the most pro-Bush polls immediately before the election, even with massive defections of Republican voters in east Tennessee (a historically strong Repug area) and suburban fringes in all our major cities. But with 70% of our 2004 votes cast here in the Orange State on non-verifiable machines, what should we be surprised.

Also, there have been more than a few threads on DU since the election on the problems with the voting equipment used in Ohio, with evidence for fraud on both DREs and optical scan equipment there (equipment on which the vast majority of votes were cast in Ohio.)

Where have you been for the past nine months?

Work to shit-can non-verifiable voting systems in EVERY state -- that is our ONLY hope. "Framing", learning the secret handshake, holding our mouths just right -- it's all bullshit if the votes aren't counted as cast. Peace out.

[dsc]

31. Get real

We won some of those states so they surely weren't stolen and others Kerry had no earthly shot at. Of what is left only Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, and maybe Colorado are even remotely possible thefts. Iowa is known for clean government (they don't even gerrymander there) I would sooner believe that Martians are living next door. That leaves NM, FL, and CO. Only NM was close and it only had 5 EV.

[tommcintyre]

32. YOU need to "Get real". 89% of DUers "believe Bush stole the 2004 election

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4062106
Poll question: A simple question: Do you believe Bush stole the 2004 election?

Poll result (581 votes)
Yes, Bush stole the election. Based on the exit polls and documented election "incidents", it's clear Kerry won. (515 votes, 89%)

There was fraud (OH, NM, FL, NV, etc.), but not enough to change the results. (49 votes, 8%)

There was no fraud; the vote count is accurate. (17 votes, 3%)

In reality, the DNC (DLC?) had four years to fix it, and they didn't. THAT is why we have this SCOTUS nominee hanging over our heads now.

So please do "Get real". Put the blame where it belongs, and now we either fix it now, or forget it - possibly for all future elections - k?

[Fly by night]

33. If you had read any of the widely available fraud analyses, ...

... you'd know that the issue is not simply who won each state but how discrepant the "reported" votes were from the expected outcomes. The Busies used fraud in both red and blue states (and, I believe, in Tennessee, an Orange State) to create their artificial mandate. (The only real "man-date" Bush has had lately is Jeff Gannon.)

For example, even though Kerry won Pennsylvania, the margin of victory was 80% lower than was predicted by the exit polls there. The odds of this occurring by chance (according to Freeman et al) are less than one in 1,000.

In New Mexico, some heavily Democratic precincts showed Presidential "no votes" for as many as one of every six voters there. (For the Danaher voting equipment in New Mexico, there was an almost 6% "no Presidential vote" total statewide, which was 10 times higher than for most other equipment.)

For Wyoming (where Kerry clearly had no chance), the vote totals released by their Secretary of State after the election (and published in the Casper Star Tribune) had a voter turnout that was 106% of the total registered voters in that state, even though Wyoming was anything but a battleground state.

Even Maryland -- which Kerry won -- has recent analyses showing that the reported Presidential "no vote" in a number of heavily Democratic precincts in Baltimore was 6% or higher.

Recent analyses in Georgia also show a widespread 5%+ "no Presidential vote" in Democratic precincts there, even though their Secretary of State (who regularly takes it up the ass from Diebold and then says "Please sir, I want more") has hidden this figure by calling it something else.

All of this evidence (which is only a small taste of what we know) documents widespread and systematic fraud. Where have you been all these months? The volume of evidence for widespread election fraud is everywhere. But it has most decidedly been here on DU for the past nine months.

Since it appears that you've done very little reading on the subject, I would recommend Freeman et al; Fitrakis et al; R.H. Phillips' Ohio research; the archived analyses of TruthIsAll and (for analyses of systematic fraud and disenfranchisement documented by the Election Incident Reporting System and Common Cause databases) berniew1; the Conyers report; the New Mexico analyses of Judy Alter, Warren Stewart, Ellen Thiesen and others; the Arizona analysis of David Griscom; and the audio from the National Election Reform Conference (Nashville, April) and the Election Assessment Hearing (Houston, June). I would also recommend that you read Cliff Arnebeck's rebuttal of the Brazile report (sic) when it is released (which should be soon).

Once you've reviewed that evidence, get back to me, won't you. I'll then give you another list to review.

"Get real", eh? Read the above research and then talk to me about reality-based views of the 2004 election theft. Even one in every eight Republicans believes the election was stolen (40%+ of Independents and 50%+ of Democrats believe the same thing), based on the last surveys I've seen.

As my daddy used to say, "You can lead a skeptic to evidence, but you can't make him think."
Or, it appears, even read.

[Lecky]

12. Very well said!

I'm a pro-choice woman and I'm not particularly fond of Roberts but I agree that Bush had every right to pick him.

He's not as bad as Scalia and Thomas (if that's any comfort to anyone).

Maybe people will think differently next time they vote. I know my republican pro-choice friends will...

[dsc]

18. I sincerely hope so

but I really have to wonder. Only a complete moron would have thought Bush would do any differently in this regard but they voted for him anyway.

[Lecky]

13. Nominated

I hope many people read this.

[Bassic]

23. So is Roe v. Wade going to be overturned?

Is that going to cause social unrest you think? Or are Americans too used to drinking the kool-aid by now?

[dsc]

26. More likely nibbled at

Things like partial birth abortion and parental notification being upheld. But who knows for sure. Roe had 6 votes, not 5, so it should survive.

[Bassic]

27. Let's hope so anyway

I'm not a big fan of abortion as a means of contraception (for people too lazy to protect themselves for example), but I still think women have a right io it. Neo-con mentality is something I just don't get.

[ananda]

28. "We"??

"I" didn't vote for Bush.

Sue

[dsc]

30. It is clear from my post that we doesn't refer to Bush voters

In some cases it refers to all people and in others to Democrats.

[NoSheep]

34. Yes. Elections do matter, but not when they are rigged.