Serious question

[malaise]

Would this planet be in this mess if Al Gore and the Democratic party stood up to the goons during the stolen elections in 2000?

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Hard to imagine how things could be any worse than they are now...

[MineralMan]

2. Hard to say, but a few thousand votes cast for Gore in Florida,

instead of for a third-party candidate, and we might have found out. It's hard to predict what might have happened if history didn't go as it did. I wish we had found out, though.

[hlthe2b]

3. I was pondering this the other day...

It is almost too painful to contemplate, IMO, how very different things would be today. Had we stood up then, I don't think we would be so readily "rolled over" today.

[tavalon]

6. Actually, Al Gore, the environmentalist is a much better person

than Al Gore the President would likely have been. Remember how wooden he tended to be during the election. He was carrying out his father's legacy. Now, he's got his own and it suits him better. That said, no way to know.

[mstinamotorcity]

4. Well Malaise

They never gave us the chance. It was rigged from the start.The people wanted the fight. The Billionaires Boys Club wanted the loot. We know who won. It went to the Supreme Court and look what it got us today, Citizens United. I believe Citizens United was ahead of us already when it came to the Supreme Court and the decision on the 2000 elections.Especially when the fate of an election is decided in a state where one of the Presidential Nominee's brother is Governor and over the Secretary of State who certifies the results. And the win was only a little more than a five hundred vote difference. Plus the suppression of votes. Just makes me puke:puke: :puke: :puke:

[malaise]

5. So why haven't Democrats had the balls to call

a coup a coup?

[mstinamotorcity]

9. Because the

profit only went to a few. And why would they ever admit to fucking Americans with no vaseline. When it is clear to them Americans like it rough.

[lunatica]

7. Absolutely not

Al Gore would have taken the other road in the fork from almost everything Bush did.

He would have listened to Clark about the dangers of Al Qaeda and would have had a team in place dedicated to Bin Laden and his activities. He wouldn't have ignored all the warnings.

He would have started a massive Climate Change Mitigation Program and the United States would be the world's leader in renewable and sustainable eco-friendly alternate energy industry which would have created millions of jobs.

We would have never gone to war with Iraq.

If Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group had managed to bring down the WTO Towers we may have gone to war with Afghanistan, although I tend to believe Gore would have used Special Ops to find Bin Laden clandestinely and he would have used the courts like Clinton did with the perpetrators of the first attack on the Towers.

The 21st Century would look like it's supposed to. Not like a re-run of Leave it to Beaver.

[RZM]

8. Probably true

I don't agree with the warnings and Bin Laden stuff though. I think 9/11 would have turned out the same and the initial phase of the Afghan War would have probably still failed to net Bin Laden. But there would be much tougher action on climate change and no war with Iraq. But I do think that Bin Laden/Saddam would have been twin talking points for the Republicans the whole time and they might have run hard against Gore on security in the midterms and in 2004. It's possible that would have cost him the WH too. Alas, we can never know, I guess.

[Hepburn]

10. Hardly....

...btw...Hiya, Malaise...:hi:

[ProSense]

11. Gore = Bush

At least that's what some say.

[Overseas]

12. It would be in much less of a mess. We would be less far behind

in the global market for green technologies.

But it certainly seems like the whole Democratic team that could have been standing up together to tell the truth about GOP failures and push for stronger change, even as President Obama talked about bipartisanship, is equally, if not more intimidated, than the Democratic team that didn't rise up to oppose the Bush coup and challenge those election results more thoroughly and courageously.

If my Democrats had stood together against that corruption and held fast for Al Gore, we probably would not have ended up with right wing judicial activists on our Supreme Court. He would not have appointed judicial activists who longed to use the first possible case to give corporations the same free speech rights as individual natural persons.

My Democrats were intimidated by the challenge of sticking together to do the right thing way back then. They pretended that the public preferred the idiotic Beer Guy to the Dorky Al Gore. Washington pundits loved to criticize awkward Al Gore but figured The Beer Guy's many faults didn't matter in the face of his apparent charm. My Democrats took shelter in the rules of the Senate and House. They pretended it would not be civil to challenge those apparent results.

My Democrats allowed the election of a war monger president and war monger VP to stand, rather than courageously challenge those tainted results. And our co-opted corporate-dominated media was continuing to roll out the "why the Democrats failed" stories and "the country can't take the insecurity of undecided results" stories to strengthen the coup.

Even after that bitter experience led to disaster, I've still been surprised that more of my Democratic majorities didn't hang together during President Obama's first two years to demand single payer remain on the table, demand a massive infrastructure-repair jobs program like the WPA after the Bush Crash, financed by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts proven to have failed to create jobs. The GOP way had failed. Democratic legislators could have been bipartisan in showing that Democratic policies are fiscally responsible as the GOP has said it wanted to be, because infrastructure jobs put cash into the hands of workers who will spend it, not millionaires who will hoard it as they have been doing.

But my Democratic majorities didn't dare do that as a block. They pretended they had to compromise and give up the most effective Democratic policies. That gave the Professional Right the chance to push their Tough Guys Win ideology on the public. Facts don't matter; toughness does. You are scared. You need tough guys. Let's make the Dems compromise over and over again so they look like wimps. Then let's stir up some frightened super right wingers into teabag groups so we can show that the GOP has to move even further right to accommodate that noisy flank.

I had hoped that Truth & Reconciliation proceedings, or allowing the Spanish court to prosecute the Bush team for war crimes, would have shaken up "business as usual" and pushed the country in a new, more compassionate direction. That could have inspired more soul searching, including a review of our brutal outdated military policies-- shock & awe just creates more enemies for our country.

Sigh...

And even now, with the Tough Guys Win election behind us, with millions of 2008 voters staying home because their Democrats didn't stand as a block and refuse to concede to the party that crashed our economy, we have more concessions.

I have been reminded recently that many multinational corporations have a larger GDP than many countries in the world. I guess that is why they could buy themselves the power to dominate the US supreme court and get them to pretend that giant corporations deserve the private free speech rights of individual US citizens.

[tjwash]

13. You can't change the past, no matter how much DUers like to project their fantasies...

....of some magical mystery utopian-style society that has never existed on this planet, and never will, on whoever the political flavor of the month is.

[OnyxCollie]

14. With Joe Lieberman as VP?

I imagine things would turn out the same, with President Gore suffering some unexpected fate.

[Still a Democrat]

15. Talk to Ralph Nader

He still doesn't get it.

[malaise]

17. Ralph has been fighting for ordinary folks for decades

What exactly doesn't he get?
Most of what he writes is 100% correct.

[Still a Democrat]

18. If Nader didn't run, President Gore would have been a reality - undeniable

There were other events made decisive by the close race, but they never would have come into play were it not for Ralph's ego.

[Swamp Rat]

16. The fall of the American Empire would have been a bit easier and slower.

We're going to hit the ground real fucking hard now.

SPLAT!

[Uncle Joe]

19. 1. I don't believe the attack of 9/11 would have successfully occurred.

2. If 9/11 had occurred, I don't believe we would have invaded Iraq.

3. The economy would be much stronger.

4. We wouldn't be torturing people.

5. We would be much further along in developing green sustainable energy sources and a smart grid.

6. The safety of Net Neutrality would not be in question.

All of that is assuming Gore actually became President.

As for Gore standing up to them, the writing was on the wall even if the Supreme Court hadn't ruled against him, Florida under Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris and Republican controlled state legislature would have sent a different set of electors and the Republican controlled Congress would have approved them giving the Presidency to Bush.

Having said all that, what the Supreme Court did in stopping the recount was unConstitutional.

Thanks for the thread, malaise.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. They did but after the USSC the only choice left

was the ammo box