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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (51524)	10/24/2000 1:56:55 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

No one was more surprised by the surpluses than Clinton. Wasn't long ago they were predicting deficits as far as the eye could see.

To: Neocon who wrote (51524)	10/24/2000 2:07:25 PM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Re: "However, if the Congress had not restrained Clinton's spending proposals ..." Nonsense. Clinton was/is a far different Democrat than LBJ, for instance, in terms of federal spending on social programs. Clinton was closer to the Republicans than the Democrats on many issues. He was the fiscal conservative that all good Republican parents raise their children to be. Why did Ross Perot capture more than 20 percent of the vote in '92? Because the country viewed Reagan/Bush as fiscally irresponsible.

To: Neocon who wrote (51524)	10/24/2000 2:12:44 PM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Story: Bush could win popular vote but lose election By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chances are growing that Democrat Al Gore could lose the popular vote to Republican George W. Bush and still win the presidency in the Nov. 7 election, according to political scientists. ``The chances of a candidate, presumably Gore, losing the popular vote and still winning the election are better than at any time since 1976 when it almost happened,'' said Catholic University political scientist Mark Rozell. ``The procedure is clear under the Constitution but a lot of people would be thoroughly confused if it happened. People need to be educated so there is not a sense that the winner comes to office lacking legitimacy,'' Rozell said. U.S. presidential elections consist of 51 separate ballots in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The winner of each state wins all that state's delegates to the Electoral College, which has 538 members -- one for each of the 535 members of Congress, plus three for the District of Columbia. There are two exceptions -- Nebraska and Maine -- where five of these states' nine combined electoral votes are distributed by who wins the congressional districts rather than who wins statewide. Running Neck-And-Neck Right now, Bush, the governor of Texas, and Vice President Gore are close in most electoral college counts as well as in national polls. As many as 15 states remain too close to call. ``I did a back-of-the-envelop calculation at the weekend and found that had the election been held that day and had the polls been correct, Bush would probably have won the popular vote but Gore might have won the Electoral College,'' said John Aldrich, a political scientist at Duke University in North Carolina. The way it would happen would be by Bush piling up lopsided victories in his home state of Texas and a number of southern and Rocky Mountain states. But Gore could still win the election by edging most of the Midwest battleground states where the race is balanced on a razor's edge. There is a theoretical possibility the opposite could happen -- that Gore could pile up big majorities in New York, California and New England but still lose the election by being edged in the Midwest battlegrounds. But most experts interviewed by Reuters see that as much less likely. The last time the Electoral College winner lost the popular vote was in 1888 when Republican Benjamin Harrison became president despite being outvoted by the incumbent Grover Cleveland. Cleveland won huge majorities in several of the 18 states he carried while Harrison took 20 states by narrower margins. Political historian Allan Lichtman of the American University, who has argued that the Harrison-Cleveland scenario was unlikely to recur because regional political loyalties were much stronger 100 years ago than today, now concedes that it is possible this year. ``In a race as tight as this one, the Electoral College starts to loom larger and larger,'' he said. No One Has Magic Number There are varying counts as to where the Electoral College stands right now and they can change from day to day as new polls emerge from battleground states. In seven separate counts by different news organizations, neither candidate reached the magic 270 votes needed for victory. Bush was ahead in six of the seven with one giving a tie. Some of these surveys count states as solid for one candidate or another only if their lead in the most recent polls is outside the statistical margin of error. But others divide up the states based on additional, subjective factors. The seven were: -- Bush 252, Gore 231 -- Hotline political newsletter. -- Bush 205, Gore 204 -- ABC News -- Bush 205, Gore 204 -- CBS News -- Bush 209, Gore 175 -- NBC News -- Bush 205, Gore 175 -- CNN -- Bush 235, Gore 228 -- Fox News -- Bush 205, Gore 187 -- Cook Political Report. In recent weeks, as Gore lost his lead in national polls and Bush took over, several states swung out of the Gore column and into the undecided category, including Illinois, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. But there is usually a time lag of a few days before changes in national polls begin to be reflected in individual state polls. Constitutional scholars are also beginning to consider the even rarer possible outcome of both Bush and Gore winning the same number of votes in the Electoral College -- 269 apiece. That has not happened since the election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson was deadlocked with Aaron Burr under very different political circumstances. Scholars are even now dusting off constitutional textbooks to figure out what happens in that case, when the election would go the House of Representatives where each state delegation would cast a single vote. That's a scenario to whet the appetite of constitutional experts but which most other Americans may view with dread.