What Makes The Bush Haters So Mad?

It's called 'projection'.

Angry Democrats: Florida and Beyond
Why is the left so mad?

BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY
Monday, September 15, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT

Rep. Dick Gephardt castigates President Bush as "a miserable failure," and Sen. John Kerry calls for "regime change" in the White House. Even while distancing himself from the rest of the dwarves over Iraq, Sen. Joe Lieberman calls George Bush a "cowboy," echoing Sen. Mark Hanna's description of that miserable failure Theodore Roosevelt.

Howard Dean tapped a vein of anger to vault to a primary-contest lead, and other candidates feel impelled to follow his example. Why is the Democratic core so upset? I suppose you have to start, letting fairness outweigh judgment, with why they say they're angry.

Mr. Dean joined Gov. Gray Davis the other day to change the subject, instructing California voters that their recall contest "is really not about Gray's record." Rather, it's evidence that the governor's critics "do not accept the legitimacy of our elections." Not only in California but across the nation, he continued, "the right wing of the Republican Party" has conspired "to remove democracy from America."

The usual litany of GOP depredations against democracy starts with the impeachment vote led by GOP House members, proceeds through the 2000 Florida vote recount, then goes on to the redistricting controversy in Texas and finally to the Davis recall. Interestingly, Mr. Dean dropped impeachment, apparently preferring the company of Gray Davis to that of Bill Clinton. Perhaps he recognizes that if President Clinton had in fact been removed he would have been succeeded by Al Gore, who then would likely have gone on to win the 2000 election to the great benefit of the Democratic Party.

Mr. Dean did round the "remove democracy" litany back up to its usual four counts by throwing in Colorado redistricting in addition to Texas. Gerrymandering of congressional districts is in fact about the ugliest wart on the American political system, but Democrats have been past champions. In Texas, court-mandated districts have basically perpetuated historic Democratic gerrymandering, so that in the last election they controlled the House delegation by 17-15 with only 44% of the statewide vote.

Democrats have famously been boycotting the legislature to keep Republicans from redrawing these districts, but a new special session starts today. The same basic issues arise in Colorado, where new GOP-drawn districts are now being challenged in court. But the issues aren't about overturning elections. To the contrary, they arise because of the 2002 elections, when Republicans won control of both legislative houses in both states.

Now, Howard Dean has seen elections overturned. In the 2000 elections in his home state, voters who pulled a Republican lever found their votes being counted for Democratic control of the U.S. Senate. Democrats did not consult the voters when they persuaded Republican Jim Jeffords to give them the crucial 51st vote in organizing the Senate.
Remember, too, that Democrats also bent the rules to keep their U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey, booting scandal-singed Robert Torricelli when he fell behind in the polls. Their funeral service/election rally for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, however, did not succeed in holding his seat in Minnesota. And just recently, of course, they hounded Miguel Estrada out of a seat on the D.C. Court of Appeals, for the first time using the filibuster to stop an appellate court nominee who clearly would have been confirmed if the Senate had been allowed to vote.

Not much justification for anger so far. What about Florida?

What happened in Florida was that George Bush won every official recount, a result confirmed by the press-sponsored unofficial recounts. Also, Mr. Bush didn't start the lawsuits; Al Gore fired the first writ.

In the same election, John Ashcroft declined to go to court after he lost his Senate seat because votes for the dead man listed on the ballot were counted for his widow instead. Even Richard Nixon persuaded reporter Earl Mazo to abandon the story that John F. Kennedy's forces stole the 1960 election in Illinois and Texas.

By contrast Mr. Gore went to court, asking for additional recounts in specified Democratic counties where 2-1 votes of election boards could find new Gore votes in "dimpled chads." He ordered up a smear campaign against Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and pursued his litigation until even the activist Florida Supreme Court split 4-3, with a blistering dissent from its chief judge.

The Supreme Court stepped in to stop the chaos, ruling by a 7-2 majority that what the Florida court had chartered was unconstitutional. Two of the seven had their own ideas about the proper rules, but the five-member majority closed recounts summarily and let Ms. Harris certify a 537-vote victory for George Bush.

The media recounts found that Mr. Bush won by 493 votes. Mr. Bush also won, this tally determined, under an honest recount of votes in the counties the Gore lawsuits had selected. It did construct a Gore victory scenario if you counted spoiled ballots. But if you entertain "what if" scenarios, you have to remember that many Republican voters were dissuaded from voting when the television networks called the election for Gore before the polls had closed in the western panhandle counties. While the Florida election was excruciatingly close, it is simply not true that the Supreme Court let Mr. Bush steal it.

Angry Democrats may have convinced themselves otherwise, but again, why? The Democratic anger must have deeper roots, fit for speculation in a future column. When Democrats assert that the Republicans will do anything to win, their complaint is relevant only in terms of what psychologists call "projection," finding your own faults in others.

BrandX

I like the concluding sentence of your article:

When Democrats assert that the Republicans will do anything to win, their complaint is relevant only in terms of what psychologists call "projection," finding your own faults in others.

Now if you replace "Democrats" with "Liberals" and "Republicans" with "Conservatives", you have a perfect description of the MO (modus operandi) of the most vociferous Liberals on this forum

It's difficult to take any of this whining seriously. The Republicans had just spent eight years calling the Clintons everything from liars to thieves to murderers -- and they still can't let go of their burning, unquenchable hatred of the Clintons. Yet we get articles wondering why there are any "Bush-haters" out there? Really, it's simply too ironic.

The sad fact is that both parties are responsible for the miserable level of civic discourse in this country. And, because we keep electing politicians from those two parties who perpetuate this grisly spectacle, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We truly, richly deserve the government that we get.

As for some of the specific claims mentioned in this essay:


A nice bit of sleight-of-hand argumentation here. Somehow, we are to believe that "redistricting" and "winning elections" are equivalent: that redrawing electoral boundaries in the wake of an election, far from "overturning an election," is actually sanctifying an election result. But, contrary to Mr. Bartley's suggestion, redistricting isn't the same thing as an election. Conflating the two, making it appear that redistricting is just another type of election, is the problem here.


Surprisingly, I am in complete agreement with Mr. Bartley here. Any elected official who changes party affiliation while in office should immediately resign from office and run in a special election under the new party label. That should have been the case with Jeffords. And, needless to say, that should have also been the case with Senator Ben Nighthorse-Campbell (Dem.-then-Rep. Colorado) and Senator Richard Shelby (Dem.-then-Rep. Alabama).


Saying that the filibuster is unprecedented is exalting form over substance. In the past, senators have been able to use other means (e.g. the infamous "blue slip") to block judicial nominees without ever resorting to an all-out filibuster. Is a filibuster worse than what the senate judiciary committee did during Clinton's second term -- where nominations were simply never called for a vote? I'll leave that to others to decide.


Speaking for myself, I have never questioned the result of the Florida vote count. I have some serious questions about the Supreme Court's idiotic "equal protection" argument that validated those results, but that's another issue entirely.

Almost -- but not quite!

Campbell and Shelby changed parties. Jeffords abandoned his party and became an Independent.

I agree with you that Campbell and Shelby should have had to run in a special election (I do not agree with the "resigning" thought) -- but I think the move from Republican to Independent is different -- and I do not think Jefford should have had to run in a special election.


I agree with almost all of the other points you made regarding the "sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"; redistricting vs. winning elections; judiciary nominations handling; and the Florida/Supreme Court fiasco.

If ya gotta ask, ya don't really want to know.