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Uncle Albert responding to a post of mine in this thread: Most polls showed a pretty easy Bush win in 2000 up until the final weekend when (a) the ancient Bush DUI story was magicaly rediscovered (talk about political dirty tricks and press complicty!) and (b) Gore went on a major campaign swing while Bush got complacent and stopped campaigning.
Let's hold up a mirror to Uncle Albert and untangle this web of deceit. On Election Eve, 2000, the exit polls shows that Al Gore had won Florida and therefore the election. Gore had been closing a small gap for a long time. During the weeks before the election, many states polled were within the margin of error, and the trends were in Gore's favor up to the election.
During the campaign, Bush lied about his drunken driving record. Let me repeat that: Bush lied. The story was discovered (not REdiscovered) when a Fox News reporter was tipped off by a local cop. A reporter at a local affiliate, of course. The Fox News anchors in New York and Washington did their best to dismiss the story. Salon.com's Eric Boehler writes about this at http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/07/23/fox_dui/index.html .
Lastly, as usual, the GOP pulled out all the stops during the last week of the campaign. To say that Bush "got complacent and stopped campaigning" is a lie, pure and simple.
Further, the NAACP sued Florida over voting irregularities for minorities and won (technically, they settled out of court). There's no question that more people in Florida (and much of the rest of the country) wanted to vote for Gore, but either were prevented from doing so or their votes were lost. Exit polling is only a small part of the massive voter fraud perpetrated by and for Republicans and the radical right. The US Constitution guarantees the right to vote for citizens, and we've known for a long time that Republicans don't give a damn about the Constitution. Currently, Bush signs a law and then simply says he doesn't have to follow it. This is an impeachable offense. One among many.
I suppose that's an interesting debate: Can you impeach someone holding the office of the President if they never were legally elected to the position?
