I'm not sore. I am, however, contemptuous of Mr. Gore's actions, and the disingenuous double-speak used to disguise them. Mr. Gore seeks a more accurate count that will favor him, but hides this under the banner of "full, fair, and accurate", even while he knows it's too late for the Reps to ask for recounts of their own, at least in Florida. It's the sort of cynical ends-justify-the-means tactic I expect from them.
Having said that, I still stand by the opinion that we need to let Florida go through its election process without engaging in legal trickery, and accept their result. Look, there are going to be extreme elements in both parties that will never accept the result whichever way it goes. The main thing for both men is that they need to win in a manner that the 50 million people who didn't vote their way can accept. I'm out here in the middle of lefty country, and most people I know are prepared to accept Mr. Bush as the legitimate president based on the electoral system, provided there's no appearance that legal trickery was used to secure victory. If Gore were to win because of some ridiculous re-vote of the Mr. Magoo ballots, or Bush were to win by blocking legal hand counting, then that's a recipe for the majority of the losers to believe the new president is illegitimate. That's a road the US doesn't need to travel. |
