Quote o' the Day

Jesse Walker | April 3, 2009

John Cole on the Alaska Republicans' call for a do-over election:

I sometimes wish these guys would man up and look at their Sore/Loserman t-shirts from 2000 and think for a minute.

Comments

Naga Sadow|4.3.09 @ 2:14PM|#

Great quote but not surprising.

"Nothing that is expedient is inconsistent"

|4.3.09 @ 2:22PM|#

Isn't there a tiered voting system that allows you to rank your preferences? I strongly favor the idea that we can vote for the best candidate and then cast a second choice for lesser of # evils, and then put our most hated Turd Sandwich in last. A Gore victory in 2000 while certainly not great would have spared us from the Iraq War and Obama presidency (cuz ain't no way anyone would vote for a Dem in 08 if Gore had two terms. Even if he had only 1, chances are the incumbent who won in 04 would be re-elected in 08).

|4.3.09 @ 2:29PM|#

Isn't there a tiered voting system that allows you to rank your preferences?

IRV -- Instant Run-off voting...The Green party has been calling for this for a while. It essentially allows one to vote for a 3rd party candidate without feeling like "throwing your vote away" because your second choices would count as votes once your first choices is mathematically elminated.

It isn't perfect. It's a more complicated system that at times has odd results. i have seen analyses of it that showed some of the complexities years ago,

|4.3.09 @ 2:35PM|#

Does it count your second vote as a first vote when your first vote is determined to finish out of the top two, or does it count them as a ranking, like if there are 5 candidate, your top vote gets 5 points, your second vote gets 4 points, and your last vote gets 1 point? And if that's the case, what if you only selected 2 out of 5? How then, does the computer award places to 3rd to 5th?

|4.3.09 @ 2:43PM|#

A Gore victory in 2000 while certainly not great would have spared us from the Iraq War...

Ya think?

The only thing I'm sure a Gore victory in 2000 would have given us was a bailout for Enron.

|4.3.09 @ 2:48PM|#

IRV -- Instant Run-off voting...

Australia uses it to elect the members of the Federal House of Representatives.

Kid Blast|4.3.09 @ 2:50PM|#

"The only thing I'm sure a Gore victory in 2000 would have given us was a bailout for Enron."

And all this bullshit global warming legislation 8 years sooner.

|4.3.09 @ 2:55PM|#

"The only thing I'm sure a Gore victory in 2000 would have given us was a bailout for Enron."

Stupidest comment I've read all week. Well done.

|4.3.09 @ 3:04PM|#

Wasn't Gore advocating for the invasion of Iraq before everyone?

I thought that Rumsfeld and Cheney were just followers in that regard.

|4.3.09 @ 3:06PM|#

The only good thing I can think of that would have come from an Al Gore victory, would be final abatement of the threat of ManBearPig.

|4.3.09 @ 3:07PM|#

Mike D

It was Bob Rubin who lobbied the Bush Treasury Dept for a bailout.

I'm certain he would have gotten a more sympathetic hearing at a Gore Treasury Dept.

Also Enron was considered important in "clean energy" being heavily invested natural gas and hydro. They already had important connections in the Clinton Admin.

The only mystery to me was why Ken Lay gave so much money to Bush when his real ally was Gore.

Naturally the bailout would have been to save the jobs and 401(k) plans of Enron's enployees not for the fatcat shareholders.

|4.3.09 @ 3:07PM|#

Gore wouldn't have gotten any global warming legislation through with the GOP congress. Maybe he would have sucked at going after al Qaeda but that's just par for the course anyway.

|4.3.09 @ 3:08PM|#

Also, while the foregoing is essentilly accurate i was (partly) kiiding.

|4.3.09 @ 3:21PM|#

The only good thing I can think of that would have come from an Al Gore victory, would be final abatement of the threat of ManBearPig.

Nobody takes you serial, kwais.

matt|4.3.09 @ 3:36PM|#

"The only thing I'm sure a Gore victory in 2000 would have given us was a bailout for Enron."

You make the classic mistake of thinking that politicians care most about the issues they talk most about. The global warming issue was Gore's strategy to make the left wing of the Democratic Party forget that he was a southern moderate and recently retired culture warrior.

It worked, but his campaign didn't, so now he's sort of stuck with it since he's done politically and it's the only way he can get attention.

|4.3.09 @ 3:39PM|#

I meant to quote the line below, not the one I italicized above. My bad.

And all this bullshit global warming legislation 8 years sooner.

|4.3.09 @ 4:14PM|#

This is really problematic. I don't care that Stevens is a bad guy and was a bad Senator. He was. But just because he was a bad guy doesn't excuse prosecutorial misconduct. Think about what happened here. DOJ engaged in prosecutorial misconduct to get a conviction against a sitting Senator right before the election, a conviction which is now so tainted with misconduct even DOJ is refusing to defend it on appeal. That is disturbing as hell.

|4.3.09 @ 6:58PM|#

Bush's DOJ playing politics? No.

I don't know, but I have a idea that this has to do with who is the most connected to bring the bacon back to AK. A Jr. Senator will not have the clout or connections that a senior Senator has. Stevens will be able to get more pork projects than the new guy. Palin knows it, she admited that part of her job is to get federal money.

D.R.M.|4.3.09 @ 7:42PM|#

IRV? Oh, sure. Because, who needs monotonicity and Condorcet conformance?

IRV had some justification when nobody had come up with anything better, but we now have Schulze.

|4.3.09 @ 8:15PM|#

Can someone send those shirts to Norm Coleman.

|4.4.09 @ 12:03AM|#

The justice dept. successfully interfered with a federal election.

It's very telling that so few people seem to mind that at all.

|4.4.09 @ 11:13AM|#

DOJ engaged in prosecutorial misconduct to get a conviction against a sitting Senator right before the election, a conviction which is now so tainted with misconduct even DOJ is refusing to defend it on appeal. That is disturbing as hell.

A GOP DOJ persecuted a GOP senator with filibuster numbers in doubt? That seems very unlikely on it's face. It also seems to be true.

Oh well, I've never accused either of the major parties of competence in politicking or governing.

|4.4.09 @ 5:10PM|#

J Sub D,

the career lawyers at DOJ are liberal as hell. What seems to have happened is a liberal hack at DOJ went after a Republican and a Republican AG was unable to stop him without looking like he was playing politics.

|4.4.09 @ 7:02PM|#

Several Republicans may have won close Senate races in 2002 because the Bush administration led the American people to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Should the Democrats have called for all Republicans who arguably won because of such representations to face a re-vote once it became clear after the invasion of Iraq that the representations were false?

(Come to think of it, if the extent of the corruption in Governor Taft's administration in Ohio had been known in November 2004, John Kerry might have won that state and therefore the presidency. Re-vote of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, anyone?)

Unless Begich himself was involved in misconduct, I see no moral, let alone legal, reason for him to step down and agree to a re-vote.

|4.4.09 @ 11:55PM|#

There is an election every couple years, if he really wants to get back into congress he can run in 2010.