<<So just what are the odds that virtually every voting anomaly everywhere always benefited Bush?>>

Did you not read the article? Discrepancies broke evenly for both sides.

Bush should have been beaten by at least a 10 point margin and it is the fault of the DEMOCRATS that it didn't happen. And stop bellyaching that it means the Democratic Party needs to become more radical. The Democratic Party needs to become merely competent.

-- Anonymous

That's exactly the point. Had so many citizens not been denied the right to vote, perhaps Bush would have been beaten by at least a 10 point margin, but we'll never know because of the tactics of the Republican Party.

Yes, I have seen the maps of the red-blue breakdown from 2000 (and, presumably from 2004). I have seen how the blue areas are relatively small areas that coincide rather remarkably with population maps of the United States. In other words, if you were to fly over the U.S. in the space shuttle at night, the concentration of lights you would see would coincide almost exactly with the areas that have voted Democratic -- BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LIVE. As opposed to the wide open spaces occupied mostly by cattle and corn, whose inhabitants apparently voted for Bush Jr., and think that abortion and gay marriage are greater threats to the republic than lying to start a war and failing to catch the mastermind responsible for 9/11.

Neverthless I admire your respectful discourse.

Bye, Bye, Salon. I can read right-wingnut propaganda plenty of places for free. I don't need to subscribe to it. You can cancel me as of NOW.

Like others here who have made similar statements, I elected to join Salon because it provided something that was missing in the coverage of current events by the corporate-owned media. Having suffered repeated episodes of cognitive dissonance whenever I would read the latest "Our brilliant Commander In Chief swam across the Yangtse this morning, and just look at that package!" hagiographic hogwash that was prevalent among the networks, magazines and major newspapers, I was looking, nay, starving for a media site that would deliver news and opinions relatively untainted by Republican Party talking points. Salon, and its wonderful Internet community, Table Talk, provided that haven of sanity for a long time.

Table Talk remains a great place to discuss current events, but Salon itself has gone downhill. A case in point is this current article by Farhad Manjoo, which is something I'd expect to read over at National Review Online or Townhall.com. Manjoo is a known quantity at Salon, and his apparent biases on this particular issue make him more suited to, say, Fox News than Salon. Assigning him a high-profile piece with the objective of examining Robert Kennedy Jr.'s article in Rolling Stone, then, was an editorial mistake, and that mistake rests squarely on the shoulders of Salon's editor, Joan Walsh.

Will Walsh do the right thing here? How soon can we expect a well-researched article on this issue from a writer not named Farhad Manjoo? I for one don't expect to see it, just as I for one don't expect to see myself continuing to subscribe to a website that seems to be morphing into another hollow neocon-validating parody, yet another formerly liberal voice now echoing the latest Karl Rove-approved talking points. You may find your takers for such a product, Ms. Walsh, but don't ask me to continue to pay for it.

Farhad Manjoo argues his heart out that Bush did not steal the 2004 election.

Well, Mr. Manjoo, happy now with the state of US affairs? Does this make the direction this country has taken more palatable? Hope the thought the 2004 election was not stolen brings you great comfort.

"Had so many citizens not been denied the right to vote, perhaps Bush would have been beaten by at least a 10 point margin"

What pre-election polls did you read which showed Bush being defeated by a 10 point margin? Hmmm?

Zero.

Because it was a close election, that's why. If polls in the weeks before election had shown Bush being soundly defeated by 10 points, any voter fraud in Ohio wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference. He would have lost. The incompetence of the Democratic Party, not voter tinkering in Ohio, is responsible for Kerry's defeat. He was a shitty candidate who ran a shitty campaign. People, start dealing with it. You sound just like Bush with all your blaming the other guy. Was there voter malfeasance? Probably. Was it enough to steal the election? I don't think so. Many Americans went out and voted against Kerry rather than FOR Kerry, just as some went out and voted against Bush, rather than FOR Bush. And they voted against Kerry because they didn't like him. He was stiff, he acted like a jerk, he was not for one minute genuine, he came off as a pompous, phony windbag and worst of all, he let the Swift Boaters walk all over him. If he allowed a bunch of lying Texans to walk all over him, Middle America said, what would he do when he had to deal with Al Qaeda?

Kerry never challenged the Swift Boaters when it mattered. Even today, he is "still looking into it."

Oh please.....

Ignore for a moment Mr. Manjoo's weak arguments and tenuous grasp on the facts. Kennedy is writing in defense of a representative democracy. It is clear to all--even to Mr. Manjoo, if you read between the lines of his opening paragraphs--that the Voting Rights Act was violated in Ohio, and that many citizens of that state were unfairly deprived of their right to cast their vote and/or have their vote counted as required by that law. The Department of Justice under acting White House Counsel Al Gonzales has done nothing to address the voter rights issues which arose in that state. The state of Ohio used the Voting Rights Act violations as an excuse to enact draconian legislation which will only disenfranchise more voters in elections to come. The Department of Justice, which rubber stamped approval of Georgia's Poll Tax/Voter ID is unlikely to bat an eye at Ohio's new laws any more than they objected to Blackwell's arbitrary rulings about which votes would be counted (recall that the standard of federal law is that if voter intent can be determined, it must be counted).

Kennedy took a position, which was that a conspiracy existed to deprive a large number of citizens of their right to vote in order to change the outcome of an election. He then presented evidence to suggest that the conspiracy may have had the intended effect. However, whether a sufficient number of votes were discarded or changed to effect the outcome, the very fact that such a conspiracy existed is grounds for alarm. For, if such efforts are not prevented, eventually elections become meaningless shams, as we in the South know all too well, since such election fraud has been the status quo here since Reconstruction.

When Mr. Manjoo takes the opposite position, he sounds like a high school kid who has been given the thankless job of defending the indefensible in a debate. The fact that he clutches at proofs like Warren Mitofsky's so called "Reluctant Responder Theory" makes his piece even more pitiful. I am hard pressed to understand why so many otherwise sane people can not recognize what happened in Ohio. I am reminded of the decision which Marlowe makes at the end of "Heart of Darkness", to lie to Kurtz's fiancee, and how he thinks that it would be "Too dark" if she were to know the truth. I wonder are people who have not grown up, as southerners have, alienated from governments whose officials often are selected through election fraud and voter intimidation afraid to admit the possibility that the Republican Party may have imported strategies from south of the Maxon-Dixon Line for use in northern elections like the one in Ohio 2004? If so, they need to get over their fear, accept the truth and start acting like grown ups. Being told "everything is alright, hush now, child" by people like Mr. Manjoo or Al Franken or John Kerry is not what our democracy needs.