re: who is representing the interests of the people?
Successful politicians assemble a collection of interest groups (tree-huggers, RightToLifers, Latinos, etc, etc), enough to make a majority, and then represent the interests of those groups. No one represents the entire People (except in theory); you can't be all things to all people.
If this goes on much longer, we are going to start rapidly sliding down the slippery slope, with chaos at the bottom. We have already reached a point where whoever wins, will have his legitimacy questioned for the next 4 years, severely hampering his ability to function as President. With every passing day, with every legal maneuver and press conference, the value of the Presidency to the winner, for the next 4 years, is steadily diminishing. I just hope the country can glide on autopilot for the next 4 years, because we are not going to have effective leadership in the White House.
It is a sure thing, that if the manual recounts in Democratic counties ends up giving the win to Gore, then we'll end up manually recounting all 6 million votes in the entire State. The Republicans will insist on it. They aren't asking for that yet, because they hope to stop the endless recounting while they are ahead.
And it doesn't end there. A half dozen states have razor-thin pluralities for Gore or Bush, and they may all be challenged. This may go on and on and on. |
