Asymmetrical Information

The left’s comments have become so extreme that any normal American will think the left is made up of lunatics.

Since Kerry and other elected Democrats have not condemned these comments, they are in real danger of being considered lunatics also.

It is very possible that the left will become so marginalized in this election that they will have no chance of political power for decades.

I sometimes wonder if those on the left make the association with my pseudonym.

Bush is profoundly evil and infinitely clever. With his diabolical cunning he anticipates events long before anyone else, and makes appropriate arrangements to ensure the outcome he desires. He probably arranged for especially tough ballots to be used in Florida so that the chads would hang properly.

At the same time, he's an idiot, a dupe, a moron without the brain power to light up a lightning bug, someone whose entire intellect is occupied in just digesting food.

So which is it? In keeping with my pseudonym, let's adopt the hypothesis that requires the fewest postulates, namely, that Bush is just a man, not a demon. He's not infinitely clever, but he's not a fool, either. In fact, he's outmaneuvered many who think they're much more clever than he is, while at the same time he's made mistakes.

It's OK to disagree with his positions, but many on the left seem to resort to circular reasoning, viz., everything Bush does is bad, Bush did X, therefore X is bad, and since X is bad, that proves Bush does bad things.

My five year old guffaws at that kind of reasoning, which doesn't befit a serious political party. Every party has its lunatic fringe (e.g., the Vince Foster conspiracy aficionados during the Clinton Administration), but I don't recall ever seeing (from either party) such silly positions espoused by "serious" commentators.

Well done, Mindles.

To support your point that there's a lot of lunacy and wild generalization on both ends of the spectrum you post some over-the-top comments by famous Democratic luminary Lloyd Williams (who?), and induce instant comments from Jake and OB about what morons all liberals are, Kerry's duty to denounce the eminent Mr. Williams, etc.

Point proved.

So...you disavow his position? You would characterize his "election fixing" point as the ravings of a lunatic also?

If so, my apologies. It'd be great to find some common ground.

He takes a lot of positions. It's a little hard to separate the rhetoric from the substance.

On your specific question, I don't think Bush "fixed" the election. I'm not in love with either side's behavior in Florida in 2000, and I'm not in love with the Supreme Court's rulings (note plural) either.

I also think the notion that Bush is going to try to cancel the elections or something is paranoid. The "junta" business is clearly overboard.

Don't know if that's common ground or not. I hope you are as scornful of Limbaugh and the like (as Mindles seems to be) as of this guy. And do you agree with Jake's first paragraph?

Why does my state suck so much?

Bernard,

We're pretty close. I've got no time for Limbaugh, and never have had.

My take on the 2000 election (in which I voted for Gore) is that Gore showed a shocking lack of statesmanship in challenging the result of the election (contrast Nixon in 1960, who unusually for him evinced statesmanship by refusing to demand a recount because it would damage the country), which was a statistical dead heat. We could as well have flipped a coin. Once Gore challenged the result, the two candidates basically engaged in a food fight. Gore wanted only those precincts that favored him recounted (and military absentee ballots excluded), Bush didn't, eventually the Supreme Court stopped the whole thing. No honors for anyone there.

If you take "the left" as meaning Democrats generally, I don't agree with Jake's characterization. If you take "the left" as the left wing of the Democratic party (i.e., those who go in for the Republican conspiracy theories), then I do.

Just to clarify, while we may be identifying some common ground, I'm a little uncomfortable with the characterization of Lloyd Williams as taking a lot of positions that make it hard to separate rhetoric from substance. I trust that that was just extending a courtesy to Williams, and not an equivocation; for my money, he's a whackjob across the board.

I think it is time we admit that Bush is, in fact, Schrodinger's President, for he is in a permanent quantum state, i.e. both stupid and a genius, both cunning and a hapless bumbler.

The problem, my dear Mindles, is that you are hopelessly caught in a Newtonian world where there are such black-and-white things as "facts." (Believe it or not I actually had a crypto-fascist moonbat lay that line on me recently before I banned him.)

Well, Williams may be something less than well-known, but he has published other articles. I suppose he is as prominent as most bloggers.

Most importantly, I opened up the Metro on the train and there he was. Blogs are first person adventures.

I had it saved up from earlier this week and only decided to post it when the 'proportional representation' command came out in a comment on a prior post. I hate being told what to do. I've got a Randi Rhodes post ready for next time.

P.S., I can only criticize Limbaugh indirectly, I've never actually heard him. I've read a few Coulter articles and quickly developed a picture.

The crazy accusations that the Iraq war was just to enrich Halliburton is absolutely moronic. If Cheney and Bush really wanted to help Halliburton, they'd get tort reform passed. That would have an orders of magnitude larger impact on Halliburton, due to their huge asbestos liabilities. And a hell of a lot easier to pull off than a war.

Occam's Beard-

I actually don't have as harsh a view of Gore's behavior in the election as you do. The candidates campaigns both contested the result to the extent of their abilities - as you would expect them to.

When the decision was final his concession was gracious. I credit the man.

I also got rid of the double post and brought Adam's comment over here. Apologies.

"P.S., I can only criticize Limbaugh indirectly, I've never actually heard him. I've read a few Coulter articles and quickly developed a picture."

Don't you think it's a little unfair to disavow him based on assumptions? The Left has made Limbaugh into this bogeyman, a catch-all excuse used to justify any awful behavoior of their own. If they, or you, actually took the time to listen to a show or two, then you might be surprised to find that while it is intentionally provocative, it is not vitriolic and is often thoughtful. Far from inflaming people, Rush usually tries to calm his callers down, get them to laugh a little, to take things less seriously. For example, here's a transcript from the other day: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/weekend_sites/062804_070204/content/democrats_find_keynote_convention_speaker.guest.html

Mindles:

I fear I cannot concur with your appraisal of Gore's handling of the concession. The final concession itself was fine, yes. But to have first called to concede, and then called back to retract the concession?

Few seem to have made much of it at the time. Yet the formal concession is a vital part of American election ritual, so much so that a subsequent retraction should have been unthinkable -- just as it is in everything from chess to declining a job offer.

Some may attempt to excuse Gore by pointing out that his concession was based upon flawed data. But part of being an adult -- and certainly, an essential part of running any large enterprise -- is making decisions and sticking to them despite having to rely on imperfect information.

He shouldn't have conceded, and he might have handled the retraction better.

But isn't it clear that everyone was operating in a high degree of uncertainty at that time? I bet he had all sorts of misinformation coming at him from people with only partisan motives. A mistake, yes, wholly character-condemning? I don't think so.

My own view of the Florida mess is that it was clear that it was going to end in a legal fight with negative repercussions regardless of which way the coin fell.

Perhaps idealistically, I would have liked to see the candidates agree, immediately, to a state-wide hand recount to determine the result. One of the problems in the actual situation was that strange deadlines kept popping up to prevent this or that procedure from finishing.

Could this have happened? I think so. If either candidate had made such a proposal, saying in effect, let's skip the preliminaries, I don't see how the other could have refused.

Gore shouldn't have conceded, but once he had, he really should have stuck with it. As this TCS article put it:

To concede to an opponent is to make a promise to him -- the promise that, on my word of honor, I will do nothing to challenge your position as the winner. It is not to make a prediction, such as, "It looks like you will get more electoral votes than I." After all, Gov. Bush could have figured this out quite easily on his own, and did not need a call from Gore to see what any fool could see by watching TV. But what no TV could have declared to Bush is that Al Gore had, after suitable deliberation and reflection, conceded the election to him, thereby bringing to a formal and even ritualistic conclusion yet another American election.
You cannot unconcede an election, just as you cannot take back your marriage vows, or unmake a promise. These are all acts that, once performed, create a wholly novel state-of-affairs, one in which Do-overs are no longer possible -- at least not for grown ups.
This accounts for Gov. Bush's shock at Gore's second phone call -- what Gore, in his ethical oblivion, referred to as Bush's "getting snippy" with him. From Bush's point of view, Gore's retraction was simply unthinkable -- it was a violation of the gentleman's code that he quite naturally assumed must have been instilled into Gore.
It was like hearing a recently married friend say, "You know, I was so rash to make my vow. I really regret doing it now." Well, yes, you may well feel this way now, but the fact is that you did make that vow, and if you made it rashly, then whose judgment does that reflect upon? If a man declares that he is not competent to make a promise or give a pledge or take a vow, then what trust can we repose in his general mental competency?
And that is the same question that must be asked of Gore. If he did not deliberate sufficiently before making his concession, then he should have simply admit this to himself, and stuck by his concession. But to acknowledge that you failed to think through the giving of a pledge can never be an excuse to retract that pledge -- unless, of course, you are willing to admit that you are simply not the kind of man that anyone should take seriously in the first place: a high price to pay, indeed.

Sorry, I think that TCS excerpt is nonsense. There's a media ritual of concession phone call, loser concession speech, and winner speech; but it's meaningless. The result of an election is a fact, not an argument or a chess game, and this fact was not Gore's to concede in the sense that you mean it. As Mindless replied to you, Gore, like everyone else, was working from incomplete information at that point. Directly -- if the final tally at 6AM Wednesday had had Gore ahead by 50,000 votes, is it your position that Gore should have refused the the Presidency on the grounds that he had conceded at 2AM?

Mindles,

My harsh view of Gore arises from his putting his personal aggrandizement above the good of the country. He should have conceded immediately, in my opinion, as Nixon did when the election of 1960 was literally stolen from him by the well-known (at the time) wholesale voting fraud in Chicago and Texas. Nixon put the country's good before his own interests, and Gore should have done the same.

His failure to do so changed me from a Gore supporter to a committed Gore critic on the spot. I vowed to my wife that I would never vote for him even for rat catcher thereafter, and will work for any opponent he ever faces. The man is not fit to be President - I see that now. His subsequent comportment (e.g., the slightly unbalanced speeches) only strengthens that view.

Blaming Bush for his defeat bespeaks a fundamental character flaw, the failure to accept personal responsibility. The people of his home state voted against him. Surely that's a reflection of his perceived merit as a candidate, Bush notwithstanding. He should accept that as a judgment about himself, and quit blaming others for his failure. As an incumbent, he should have won in a romp. That the election was even close was clearly a crushing repudiation of Gore by the electorate.

Cronaca raises a good point about the concession speech. That didn't figure in my views, but is consistent with them.

Bernard also raises a good point. A statewide hand recount would have been reasonable and fair. (Note that, thanks to the Electoral College, only one state would have to be recounted; in a direct election a dead heat would have necessitated recounting votes from the entire country.)
Cherrypicking precincts to recount based on expected outcomes - as Gore wanted done - clearly was specious, as is the incessant whining now about "selection" rather than "election." Either stand by the original result, or recount the entire state, and in either case, accept the result without whingeing.

I agree with DonBoy completely on the concession issue. The concession is traditional gesture of courtesy, not a binding acceptance of defeat, like resigning a chess game.

It would have clearly been wrong for him to concede if it had turned out he won.

As for Nixon, OB, I think you have accepted a rather whitewashed version of history. Nixon seriously considered legal action in 1960. He didn't do it because he concluded he wouldn't win. Apparently the Republicans stole as many votes downstate as the Democrats did in Chicago, among other things.

I'm a little uncomfortable with the characterization of Lloyd Williams as taking a lot of positions that make it hard to separate rhetoric from substance.

Let me clarify what I meant here a bit. I think that rhetoric of this sort obscures important issues, and actually damages the liberal point of view.

Take Halliburton as an example. I think there are legitimate questions to be raised about contract awards, about costs, about whether their operations are being properly supervised. But when the argument begins with the absurd claim that Cheney started the war to get Halliburton reconstruction business it's hard to go very far.

I could comment in the same vein on number of other matters, but my main point is that these sorts of diatribes make legitimate questions look ridiculous.

The assertion that

Recently, when challenged about the obvious conflicts-of- interest by Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, the vice president contemptuously cut him off with, “Go [expletive] yourself!” I call it a crisis when you have a regime in control that feels this comfortable hurling obscenities right on the floor of the Capitol at a duly elected representative making a legitimate inquiry about an apparent scam.

I read that Sen. Leahy impugend the Vice President's character on a Sunday morning talk show and then acted like a best friend on Tuesday; it is this two faced attitude that elicited the vulgar tirade.

CNN supports neither account:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Typically a break from partisan warfare, this year's Senate class photo turned smiles into snarls as Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly used profanity toward one senior Democrat, sources said.

Perhaps idealistically, I would have liked to see the candidates agree, immediately, to a state-wide hand recount to determine the result. One of the problems in the actual situation was that strange deadlines kept popping up to prevent this or that procedure from finishing.

Bernard, I can sympathize with your take on this, but the state of Florida is not bound by decisions made by candidates. Florida had a system in place (obviously, one with flaws) to handle recounts. It included "strange deadlines", but my feeling is that they were only strange deadlines because the media treated them as such.

It does seem a bit odd that Bush's Florida campaign co-chair (Katherine Harris) was expected to certify the results, but presumably the Florida legislature knew what it was doing when it set up a system that had the Secretary of State handle this chore. (A little-remembered fact is that Gore's Florida campaign chair was Bob Butterworth, then the state Attorney General.)

I don't know what changes Florida has made in its election laws over the last four years... and I hope I won't find out in this coming election.

Bernard,

> strange deadlines kept popping

Indeed. How strange, how very, very strange and suspicious, that a state should have laws dealing with contested elections.

Sarcasm aside, it is in the very nature of a deadline to be arbitrary. Non-arbitrary things don't tend to get legislated, since they happen regardless of our attention or lack thereof.

PJ and Kirk,

No. The state is not bound by agreements made by the candidates. I did say it was an idealistic view.

Maybe it wouldn't have worked, or maybe the campaigns could have agreed to forego the various legal maneuvers and jointly request such a count immediately after the first recount. That, I think, would have been in accord with Florida law. Was there any doubt that whoever lost the first recount was going to ask for a hand recount?

As for strange deadlines, Kirk, please note that I didn't say there was anything suspicious about them, or that states shouldn't have such laws. I did think, at the time, that Florida's laws were silly because there didn't seem to be enough time for the procedures prescribed, at least not with all the legal games being played. That's really all I meant. Yes, deadlines are arbitrary once set, but they ought not be set so as to make them impossible to meet.

Gore in Florida is one of my pet peeves. I didn't vote for Bush, but the Democratic party's actions in Florida will probably have me doing so this year.

Lest anyone forget, there was a statewide recount. It happened within a day or so of the election. It was mandated by state law. It gave the same result that the initial count did. (And the same result that all of the unofficial recounts did). Gore, depsite his concession, called for recounts in 4 democratic majority couties. These didn't change the results either, and deadlines were approaching, so Al went to court to have the deadlines set aside and to claim new ballot interpretations. Party officials should be tasked with determining "voter intent"? That was the attempt to steal the election. Party officials interpreting overvotes, undervotes and dimpled chads? That would be an open and transparent process?

Any legal way you count the ballots, Al lost.

And an aside: Yes, the retracted concession is relevant. A "concession" means you "concede" that the other person has won. I wouldn't have expected Gore to decline if a mandated recount put him in the lead, but to bring legal challenges after conceding means you haven't conceded. You're still trying to win. Completely shameless and dishonorable behavior. Gore lied, democracy died.

I don't think it was wrong for Gore to retract his concession during the early hours when there was confusion. "I thought I lost... oh wait, I didn't?" Honestly there's nothing wrong with that.

There was nothing wrong with calling for the standard statewide recounts either.

His eventual concession speech was also a good speech.

Everthing else, though, I agree--Gore should have shown the class of Nixon, and that he didn't speaks poorly to him. As it was also incredibly manipulative to demand special status recounts in only cherry-picked areas.

It would have all seemed more legitimate in my eyes if they hadn't done that.

More to the point, by playing these games, the nation was clearly harmed. This is a genuine shame. It really bothers me to this day.

If Al wanted to reserve the right to challenge the election, he shouldn't have conceded. Nobody (well me, anyways) would have held it against him if he had issued a statement in the wee hours to the effect of "With the vote so close, the only responsible thing to do is to let Florida election law hold its mandatory recount, and wait until then to know who the winner is".

BTW, my recollection is the call for the statewide recount was only after having been slapped down by the Supreme Court, i.e., it was a moot by that point. His concession speech was gracious, however.

The real problem is that precedent has now been set. I fear that every close election from now on will be contested in the court and half the population will believe that an unaccountable judiciary, not the governed, actually decided the election. It does not bode well for the future.

SG: The "statewide recount" you mentioned was just feeding the punch cards through the machine again. It didn't change who won, but it did change the totals - and it would never have matched no matter how many times it was repeated, because the manufacturer of the card readers themselves concedes that the machine will randomly misread 2% of the cards. An accurate count required a statewide count by hand. But neither candidate ever wanted that...

Of course, now the same people that considered it OK to use a voting method that was known to be 2% inaccurate for 30 years, are now horrified at the possibility that the new touchscreen machines might not be perfect.

The comments on the 2000 US Presidential Election in Florida above are interesting. However, they don't seem exactly relevant to the original topic (and yes, I've been guilty recently too).

Hondo,

Hey, it's Independence Day weekend; of course the comments are independent!

To make this comment relevant, tho, let me point out that the "BA" in the conversation Mindles posted is Baldrick, not Black Adder. "EB" is Edmund Blackadder. I don't think we know Baldrick's last name, so I guess the A in "BA" is just the second letter of his first name. (Tho in one episode, Baldrick tells a judge he thinks his full name is "Drop Dead Baldrick", because that's what people say when they see him...)

Hondo,

I think that what is at work here is the principle that there are some topics that should never be mentioned in a comments sections, however tangentially, because they invariably send it off the rails.

Florida 2000 is an example, as is gay marriage, as is Paul Krugman (I think that if someone mentioned, in connection with a post on baseball, that the Yankees have a promising AA pitcher who happens to be named Paul Krugman, that would set off the usual flame war). This list is far from exhaustive. Others can easily add to it.

This is unfortunate, but seems difficult to prevent.

markm:

I agree that the machine count isn't neccessarily perfect, but its errors are impartial. Would you care to hazard a guess as to the accuracy of a person with a vested interest in the outcome interpreting ambiguous ballots?

Any method of counting the votes has the potential to introduce errors. As long as the errors are low enough (a debatable level) and unbiased, it should be good enough for government work. Striving for perfection is good, but insisting on it is counterproductive. I do think electronic voting machines should leave a paper trail, however.

Bernard,

I' pretty sure we're poles apart politically - but I think your last post is absolutely right (no pun intended - aw, hell, yes it was . . . )(grin).

Bernard, that was a wonderful post! Nobody here could have said it better, and we wish to acknowledge that. On behalf of the Institute for Logical Reasoning and by the approval Dr. Rita Rational, it is my distinct pleasure to confer upon you an honorary degree in Logical Reasoning.

(The certificate is 7x9" and matches rather well to most darker greens and browns, should you wish to place an advance order with your preferred framing shop.)

And, of course, the way to unilateraly terminate a thread is to mention Hitler.

Thanks for the kind words and award, Hondo and LRF.

because the manufacturer of the card readers themselves concedes that the machine will randomly misread 2% of the cards.

Then it's astonishing that the recount yielded the same result as the original count, eh? If that is indeed the case. I mean, if there's a (say) 3-sigma margin of error of 2%, you'd expect the difference in result of a recount to be rather more than a few hundred votes. Not that it has to be, mind you. Remember, in Florida, two percent is over a hundred thousand voters.

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