John Hayward Profile picture
11 Nov, 11 tweets, 2 min read
Al Gore conceded on Dec 13, 2000. The media treated him as a hero, a great statesman doing one last service for the country he loved so much by gracefully accepting that his challenges would not succeed.

Golly gee, I wonder if they'd give Trump the same coverage on Dec 13 2020.
You young'uns who weren't around for 2000 are probably getting a hilariously cooked and slanted media perspective on what actually happened. Gore, his lawyers, his party, and DNC Media fought bitterly to steal Florida. It was scorched earth.
The media was doing emergency crisis news shows, interviewing people who tearfully swore they meant to vote for Gore, pinky swear, but their poor little heads were twisted all around by those confusing (Democrat-designed) ballots. They were treated like martyrs by the media.
For months after Bush was sworn in - I think it was actually YEARS afterward - the media kept requesting ballots and frantically trying to recount them under rules that would manufacture a Gore "victory", so they could tarnish the legitimacy of Bush's election.
These efforts were never successful, even under fabricated rules more generous to Gore than anything that could ever have been used in real life. They still kept writing stories about how Gore might have been the "real winner" if not for accursed conservative judges.
Democrats and the media were absolutely savage to everyone involved in the process seen as "against Gore." Try Googling the name "Katherine Harris," kids - and prepare to be triggered by rampant misogyny!
A cottage industry of left-wing campfire ghost stories about Bush stealing Florida with all kinds of improbable schemes emerged. Some of those bleak fairy tales are repeated and believed to this very day. The Dem political/media apparatus NEVER fully accepted Bush as president.
They constantly insisted he was sort of half-a-president, with no "mandate" to govern because his election wasn't really legitimate. Bush Republicans swallowed far too much of that swamp water and worked out "power sharing" arrangements that were invariably twisted to screw them.
So spare me the hysterical shrieking about Trump supposedly threatening the safety of the republic by taking time to work through legal processes that have VASTLY more credible evidence to justify his challenges than Al Gore ever did.
Gore's people were actually staring at paper ballots and trying to magically divine who they "really voted for" if the president vote wasn't punched out, or was punched out incompletely, or even if it was punched for someone else after the voter favored Dems down-ballot.
I'm glad to say Florida learned some hard lessons from that debacle and tightened its procedures greatly over the ensuing 20 years. I only wish every other state had followed suit. We should INSIST they do now, after THIS. /end

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with John Hayward

John Hayward Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Doc_0

12 Nov
I remember warning at the outset that on a long enough timeline, every crisis becomes a religion. The Church of Covid is fully up and running, complete with heaven-and-hell mythology, devotional practices, and papal indulgences for elites and events with the correct politics.
Beneath all the politics and myth-making lies the simple idea that masks probably help a little, and if they help a little - plus giving people a little psychological comfort in a time of great crisis - they're worth using. If it ended there, we'd be having a rational discussion.
But masks were politicized in the worst possible way, and reason went out the window as a political-religious movement formed around the Wuhan coronavirus. It's easy to see why people fell for it. They desperately wanted to believe they could do SOMETHING to gain control.
Read 16 tweets
11 Nov
Leaving aside the question of how many might be fraudulent - there's no way ALL of them are - the number of Biden-only ballots combined with huge GOP success downballot makes it pretty clear this election was a thumbs-down referendum on Trump, just as the Democrats wanted.
There's no other way to interpret such a clear signal from voters, and it's not terribly surprising. The coronavirus was a crisis that could take down even the strongest incumbent. It's remarkable Trump did as well as he did - another signal that should not be overlooked.
Mail-in balloting made it incredibly easy for people to take out their anger against the incumbent by filling in a bubble and dropping an envelope in the mail. They were coached and harvested to do so. The outcome is only surprising in that Trump came as close as he did.
Read 24 tweets
10 Nov
Every modern effort to crush free speech begins as a crusade against "disinformation." China's massive Internet censorship apparatus was initially justified as an effort to control the spread of false information, and the Chinese state still describes it that way.
Censors begin by claiming that they only want to control the spread of deliberate falsehoods and push back against propaganda campaigns. They always begin by saying their primary concern is disinformation spread by hostile foreign powers. China constantly says that to this day.
The definition of "disinformation" begins to expand as the censors seek more power. Soon they aren't just going after DELIBERATE falsehoods pushed by malevolent conspiracies - they're suppressing everything from honest mistakes to predictions and "wrong" opinions.
Read 17 tweets
10 Nov
The double standard for coronavirus restrictions - dancing in the streets for Biden is fine but you can't have a funeral for your mom, the elite can get haircuts and attend speeches - is an important expression of the totalitarian ideal that even strict rules are not universal.
Universally-applied rules are a severe impediment to centralized power. The elite CANNOT be made to live under the rules they force the rest of us to follow. If they were, they would be less eager to write elaborate rules. Exemptions and favors are key elements of REAL power.
It's important for the general public to accept and internalize the idea that the elites are special and "deserve" exemptions from the rules - even the rules that are supposedly matters of life and death. The elites are too important and virtuous to follow the rules they write.
Read 10 tweets
6 Nov
Questioning suspicious numbers is appropriate and necessary, but also keep in mind that between mail-in balloting, the coronavirus, and Trump's unique style, it's not unbelievable to see a lot of ticket-splitting, or ballots that checked off Biden for president and nothing else.
For starters, mail-in ballot was a perfect weapon against Trump, even without any shenanigans. It looped in a huge number of people who wouldn't have bothered to vote otherwise, people with no strong opinion or position other than disliking Donald Trump.
The marginal effect of mail-in balloting could easily have been huge, given the coronavirus and its effect on everything else. It obliterated everything else that might have made indifferent voters think the incumbent did a decent enough job on bread-and-butter issues.
Read 15 tweets
5 Nov
Suppose Trump pulls out the win after these days of agonizing drama. Would Democrat voters - not political operatives, just regular folks who vote Dem - be willing to join hands with Republicans and insist on voter ID rules that prevent this from ever happening again?
It shouldn't matter who ultimately wins in 2020 - it sure as heck doesn't matter to me - but it seems like Repub voters are pretty disgusted with our Third World voting system no matter what, and Dems will be hopping mad if Trump ends up winning. Perhaps a bipartisan opening!
We could come together across party lines and resolve that we will never go through anything like this again. And if partisan elected officials arrogantly refuse to heed that bipartisan demand - well, it would tell us a lot about them, wouldn't it?
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!