New Mark Crispin Miller Interview - 2/15/2006

[reprehensor]

Fooled Again?

If you asked everyone in the U.S. whom they thought won Florida in 2000, half the country (or more) would most likely tell you Al Gore, including Al Gore. But pose the question, who won Ohio in November 2004? and it’s an entirely different story. For most Americans, George Bush earned a commanding mandate on November 2, 2004. The race in Ohio, officially decided by 118,000 votes, was close, but was no Florida. There were no hanging chads or Jews for Buchanan. Democracy worked and the guy with the most votes won. But for a small contingent of left-wing activists and progressive Democrats, Ohio was Florida Redux – a ruthless Republican coup orchestrated under the absent gaze of the lapdog media. In GNN’s new documentary American Blackout, we detail some of the more egregious examples of voter suppression. As the Conyers Report documents, there is substantial evidence that heavily Democratic (and African-American) precincts in Ohio didn’t have enough voting machines, voters were intimidated and valid votes were discarded. Yet for most on the left, it’s still an open question whether Republican shenanigans actually added up to a Kerry win. What does Kerry think? In his new book, American Vertigo, Bernard-Henri Lévy writes he met up with a “haggard, ghostly” Kerry a few weeks after his loss. According to Lévy, the defeated candidate faintly whispered in his ear, “If you hear anything about those 50,000 votes in Ohio, let me know.”

GNN: In your book, you argue that Kerry won the 2004 presidential election. On what basis to you draw that conclusion?

Miller: I’d put that very question to all those who keep asserting that Bush/Cheney won the race legitimately: “On what basis do you draw that conclusion?” Aside from the official numbers, there’s no evidence that Bush won the election as advertised. We’re told that he got at least 11.5 million more votes than he got against Al Gore four years before. We’re also told that Bush prevailed because of vast outpouring of first-time evangelical voters.

Both claims are preposterous. By Election Day Bush had the highest disapproval ratings of any incumbent facing reelection – higher than LBJ’s in 1968, higher than Jimmy Carter’s in 1980. The Democrats, moreover, were more unified than they had been in decades; Ralph Nader got only 400,000+ votes nationwide. The turnout was very high – over 60% – and all the evidence suggests that the Democrats did far better than the Bush Republicans at registering new voters, especially in the swing states of Ohio and Florida. And, finally, Bush’s party was divided, with many eminent party members (Bob Barr, John Eisenhower, Paul Craig Roberts, Francis Fukuyama, Tony McPeak, Lee Iacocca) calling publicly for people not to vote for him. Sixty dailies that had endorsed Bush in 2000 now refused to do it again.

Continued at link...

[MountainLaurel]

1. Good stuff!

Thank you for bringing our attention to this,

[reprehensor]

2. You're welcome.

To me, it looks like 2004 was another stolen election, just like the first coup.