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The far right has their Intelligent Design, Homosexual Agenda, and the far left has their 2004 stolen election.
They have no basis in fact, reason nor logic and all are demonstrably wrong, yet their adherents are the superglue of conviction, and nothing will prey them off the perch of the true believer.
While I want to believe that the 2004 election was stolen, the problem is rational people require proof. Simply having a conclusion and looking for evidence to support that conclusion is not an argument, it’s a justification and is the method used by Holocaust Deniers, people that believe the lunar landing were faked and that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him.
They type of stolen election being presented isn’t even possible in the manner described, as it requires the assistance of Democratic Party observers. Even inflating vote totals is difficult because the other side is checking, much less transferring votes from one candidate to another.
The type of Republican election fraud that occurs is of the nature of attempting to reduce turnout of Democratic voters. Jamming phone lines, placing signs challenging ability to vote, having police cars patrol near polling places, giving false information on where and when to vote, purging voter rolls, etc. Rarely are these types of activities actually enough to sway even a very close election, and the 2004 election was not one of those rare cases.
While keeping people from voting is repugnant and we should endeavor to fight against such schemes, if we allow ourselves to become convinced that this alone was the reason for the 2004 outcome, then we lose the opportunity to correct our mistakes in time for 2008.
Bush would have won 2004 even if everyone who wanted was allowed to vote, even if Blackwell was not in charge of Ohio voting. I know plenty of otherwise rational people in Ohio that voted for Bush in 2004. We want to ensure these people do not vote Republican in 2008, and cancelling Salon membership because it doesn’t always feed us the palatable information we may desire does not help win in 2008.
