This article in the New York Times contradicts the first part of the review you quoted:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html?ex=1124596800&en=326abd73ff909a28&ei=5070

"Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court."

I find it hard to believe that the NYT would lie in order to protect Bush.

While it might be comforting to play "what if?" games until the end of time - with the help of authors tapping onto the rich US-governmental-conspiracy market - it makes more sense to play the "what now?" game instead.

Here is the report from the Federal agency responsible for determining what happened.

No Gore supporters want to think about this question: How can the incumbent Vice President of the "most moral Administration in history" even be approachable in an election?

I suggest it's because dishonesty clung to him. He couldn't remember his own voting record (something that helped sink Mr. Kerry), he couldn't point to a real difference in intellect (strike two), and those military people who served with him couldn't endorse him.

We just can't seem to field candidates worth a damn, but we sure have people willing to cling to them as if they were heroes!

I haven't read the book, but I know Andrew Gumbel and trust his reporting.

I'm afraid that stuff like this is only going to lead the Dems further into the political wilderness, no matter who they wind up nominating - they're always fighting the last election, rather than planning for the future.

Let's suppose Nixon had launched a formal protest into the election he lost to Kennedy, something most of his advisors strongly recommended. He knew that even if he had won in the courts, the resulting divisiveness would have torn the country apart, and severely weakened the authority of whomever held the White House.

Everlasting bitterness is all the Dems seem to have these days - they offer nothing positive in response to this administration's plans and objectives, only bile and recriminations - and our country is all the worse for it.

Do-over!!

Democrats have lost 7 of the last 10 presidential elections through no fault of anybody but themselves. The incessant whining about 2000 does not make them credible, it makes them look pathetic.

nash writes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html?ex=1124596800&en=326abd73ff909a28&ei=5070

"Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court."

You're missing the point of the book and there is no contradiction between the NYT and the findings of Mr. Gumbel. The SC ordered recount could have changed nothing, because this was already following the Harris-directed purge of thousands of legitimate votes.

And this did indeed happen. Moreover, the Democrats do indeed have Harris, Rove and the entire amoral zoo crew to blame for their loss of the 2000 election.

But this should come as no surprise to anyone. This administration is, by far, the most mendacious out of all of them, during my lifetime (and that would include Richard Nixon). It's actually pretty frightening when you consider how low these people will go.

Or you can stick your head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich and ignore the warnings. But if that's the case, when this country goes down the tubes, you will have no one to blame but yourself.

Quite frankly, it sounds a bit like a bad Geico commercial.

"I've got great news! Thousands of our finest citizens are being killed in Iraq, but Halliburton's making a mint in government contracts!"

Or perhaps this one...

"I've got the most incredibly good news! The environmental regulations have been cut back so far that people are being literally stunk out of their own homes, thousands of hog farmers are being forced out of work by CAFOs, which are poisoning our waters and infecting our people with pfisteria, but I've just saved a bunch of money on my tax break!"

Come up with your own Geico commercial!

...there is no contradiction between the NYT and the findings of Mr. Gumbel.

Actually there's a big contradiction between the findings of the two vote-counting consortia and Krugman's version of what Gumbel says about them.

The consortia found that the election was so close that the final winner in Florida depended on how you scrutinized the ballots: under some scenarios Bush wins, and under some Gore wins.

Unfortunately for Gore, he went to court and demanded the state use the scenarios under which he lost, so he was hoist by his own mother-fucking petard.

Now here's the problem with Gumbel and Krugman: they attribute Gore's losing the election by failing to seek the right kind of recount to the Republicans, Katharine Harris, fraud, and mendacity.

Sorry, that dog don't hunt: Gore did it to himself.

And of course the whole Florida deal wouldn't have mattered a bit if Gore had won his home state, Tennessee.

So don't come whining about fraud and oppression and mendacity when the truth is you ran an incompetant candidate who completely blew an election that should have been a cakewalk.

Hate to barge into your little discussion but, er, getting the distinct feeling you are opining on my book without actually having read the damn thing.

In brief (for the long version you'll have to read the book), there is no contradiction between my conclusion that Gore should have won the 2000 election and the point that the Dems spend far too much time refighting old elections and forgetting to fight the ones that count -- the ones right in front of their nose. I happen to agree on both points. Point one is a question of arithmetic and dirty electioneering. Point two is a question of political strategy. Why does one have to contradict the other?

Re the media consortia recounts, yes, they suggested the outcome was inconclusive IF RESTRICTED TO THE FOUR SOUTHERN FLORIDA COUNTIES THE GORE CAMPAIGN WANTED RECOUNTED. Had the whole state been recounted, Gore would have won by any standard. (The fact that he didn't push for a statewide recount, as he should have done, merely served to create the political hell in which he is now condemned to rot for the rest of his days.) Again, read the frigging book before you started attacking it.

Oh, and, for the record, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not even American. So there.

Gumbel claims: Had the whole state been recounted, Gore would have won by any standard.

Not to put too fine a point on it, that's a bald-faced lie. The reports in both the New York Times (cited above) and in USA Today (on the other consortium) flatly contradict it:

USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder newspapers hired the national accounting firm BDO Seidman to examine undervote ballots in Florida's 67 counties. The accountants provided a report on what they found on each of the ballots.

The newspapers then applied the accounting firm's findings to four standards used in Florida and elsewhere to determine when an undervote ballot becomes a legal vote. By three of the standards, Bush holds the lead. The fourth standard gives Gore a razor-thin win.

The results reveal a stunning irony. The way Gore wanted the ballots recounted helped Bush, and the standard that Gore felt offered him the least hope may have given him an extremely narrow victory. The vote totals vary depending on the standard used:

Source: USA Today.

Now why would I want to read your book?

Er, I wasn't attacking the book, I was commenting on the column.

Mr Bennett,

You'll notice the article you cite refers only to undervotes. The Miami Herald and co later counted the overvotes too, including those where voter intent (the standard under Florida law) was clear, and found that Gore would have taken the lead.

Not a bald-faced lie: it's called simple arithmetic.

I know Andrew Gumbel, as a person, and as a reporter, and I sure wouldn't be foolish enough to impugn Andrew Gumbel as a reporter, certainly not before even reading his book! Then again, it's my goal in life not to look like a total idiot, whenever possible. Others' mileage may vary. Richard's, for example.

PS Even Krugman, who's not one to throw around compliments, in my memory, compliments Gumbel's reporting twice.

Wait, is this what you're talking about?

The Miami Herald and co later counted the overvotes too, including those where voter intent (the standard under Florida law) was clear, and found that Gore would have taken the lead.

As all the published material on Florida by both the Herald and Times consortia contradict your claim, we're going to need some sort of a citation, preferably to an on-line source. Aunt Amy may be willing to take your claims on faith, but the rest of us aren't. "Because I say so" isn't evidence.

Mr Bennett,

Read the full NORC Florida Ballots Project report at

http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp.

Since I get the feeling you're not much of a reader, you could rely instead on Professor Rick Hasen of the Loyola Law School, one of the country's leading election law experts, who wrote on his blog yesterday, quote: "It is true that the NORC study found that had all the state's undervotes and overvotes been counted, Al Gore would have come out ahead of George Bush." Check it out at http://electionlawblog.org/.

Mr Bennett,

Read the full NORC Florida Ballots Project report at

http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp.

Since I get the feeling you're not much of a reader, you could rely instead on Professor Rick Hasen of the Loyola Law School, one of the country's leading election law experts, who wrote on his blog yesterday, quote: "It is true that the NORC study found that had all the state's undervotes and overvotes been counted, Al Gore would have come out ahead of George Bush." Check it out at http://electionlawblog.org/.

On the Miami Herald stuff, see "Overvotes Leaned To Gore," (Miami Herald, May 11, 2001) which demonstrates, again, that the overvotes and undervotes together would have put Al Gore in the White House.

Hello, Mr. Gumbel. May I say what a pleasure it is to find your own comments on this blog, especially since you're defending your own work so ably. I haven't read it either, but I will, and I'm looking forward to it.

You'll have to excuse some of your detractors. Apparently, presenting the facts to some is "whining" and Al Gore lost because he was incompetent. Al Gore, to the best of my knowledge has never been an incompetent anything. His record as a defender of the environment is unmatched, and thanks to Gore's visionary funding of the internet, we're actually ABLE to argue our points on this forum. Incompetent??? Mr. Bennett, be so good as to tell us what you've accomplished with your life, please. I'll be happy to compare them with Gore's accomplishments and see which one of you is the more incompetent.

Bush, on the other hand... well, a mediocre student, a coward of a soldier, a poor to fair governor, drunk driver, absent father, failure as a businessman, serial liar as a president... I mean, what HAS Bush done right?

Thanks for visiting. If you have a blog of your own, I'd be happy to visit it.

I see Gumbel is sticking to his lie.

Here's what the Washington Post said about their consortium's recount including both undervotes and overvotes (Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush):

But this is one case where disagreements among the reviewers affected the outcome. Gore won under this scenario when two of the reviewers agree on the markings. Under a standard in which all three were required to agree, Bush won by 219 votes.

So as I said, the outcome of the recount is ambiguous, depending on the standard used for evaluating rejected ballots. This is true for both overvotes and undervotes, and Mr. Gumbel's assertion that only the undervotes were ambiguous is a bald-faced, shameless lie.

There are many other things that could be said about the recounts, but my purpose here is simply to show that Gumbel's primary claim is false, which it obviously is.

This is my last word on all of this, at least in this space. Go to the Washington Post link provided by Bennett and read the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH after the out-of-context comment he cites:

"The overvotes that could have provided the margin for Gore were on ballots where voters tried to be extra-clear in their choice and ended up nullifying the vote. They filled in the oval next to a candidate and then filled in the oval for "write-in" and wrote the same candidate's name again."

The piece goes on to explain that these votes were rejected by the machines and only partially retrieved by county election officials, depending on the county. Under a variety of scenarios considered by the WashPost piece for reconsidering them -- most notably, recreating the county-by-county standards actually used in Florida at the time -- Gore comes out ahead.

Richard, apparently, you were never taught proper manners. It's rude to call people liars, and Andrew Gumbel is anything but. See his comment above, noting the piece you omitted. Moreover, you might learn something from Andrew Gumbel, first by reading his book before you spout off about something you don't know too much about, and second, by noting the difference in the way he addresses you and you address him. You call him a liar; he calls you "Mr. Bennett" -- refraining from use of any more trenchant terms that probably come to mind.

I see you're changing your story, Gumbel, so bully for you. First you said Gore would have won under any recount standard, and now you admit that the truth is decidedly more ambiguous: "Under a variety of scenarios ... Gore comes out ahead."

This is what I've been saying all along (some scenarios favored Gore, but not all of them), and it's what you've been arguing against. Changing your story is a good move, but admitting you overplayed your hand is a better one.

Unless, that is, your publisher already has books in print with the unambiguous slam at the wicked Americans that you're hoping to move to whichever group of skinheads, Galloway supporters, and football hooligans (oops, redundancy) buy this baloney in your country.

(PS: Many people can lecture me about manners; Amy Alkon isn't among them.)

It may be rude to call someone a liar, but not half as rude as lying. The election was close, and there's plenty of room to say, "Gore would have won, if ...", then come up with a scenario under which Gore's votes would have come out ahead.

Instead, Gumbel said this: "Had the whole state been recounted, Gore would have won by any standard."

Having looked at the study in question years ago, that's flatly wrong. The study specifically listed several different standards of counting and found that under all but a couple, Bush won.

Worse, the standards by which Gore could have won were still very hypothetical, since those standards were highly subjective, and the people conducting this study were not the same people who would have actually been counting votes.

That is, this study did not prove anything, it just predicted the most likely outcome under their different scenarios.

Nothing wrong with that, until someone gets prediction and fact mixed up and says, "Had the whole state been recounted, Gore would have won by any standard."

Gumbel seems to know better. Elsewhere, he states, "Under a variety of scenarios ... Gore comes out ahead." Big contrast with, "Gore would have won by any standard."

BTW, saying Bennett "must not be much for reading" and is "spout[ing] off about something you don't know too much about" doesn't do your argument any good. His comments frankly seemed more to the point than the professional journalist's did.

No, I haven't read Gumbel's book, and don't intend to. Three reasons:
1) already caught him in an untruth
2) These consortia studies were a waste of time. The election was over. It really didn't matter under what circumstances the outcome would have been different. The one count that mattered showed that Bush won.
3) Anyone can play the "what if" game. What if the networks hadn't called Florida for Gore before the polls in the panhandle had closed, which was estimated to cost Bush up to 10000 votes? What if the Florida Supreme Court had refused to change election laws and vote-counting standards to suit the Gore campaign? What if the Gore campaign hadn't succeeded in illegally suppressing absentee military votes that were mailed in w/o a postmark?
4) Truthfully, Bush won the election after the first automatic recount was done. You can't change the standards of counting votes AFTER people had voted. If Gore had been certified as the winner after rigging the election like that, the Florida state legislature probably would have invalidated the result and sent the Bush electors to Washington -- and they would have been right to do it.

Was the election stolen? No, because Gore failed to get away with it.

Give up the sour grapes. It was close, but Gore lost.

Well, one things for sure. The questionable legitimacy of the Bush presidency (which is no question in my mind, since the Harris-directed purge of thousands of legitimate votes is the only thing that secured the victory for Bush) is a hot topic for a lot of people. And apparently, a very bitter one. Here is an intelligent and well-researched journalist presenting the findings as presented to him, whether through other sources or his own investigation. He chooses to believe what he hears and presents it himself, yet he's called a liar and other offensive terms.

Obviously, the legitimacy of the Bush win isn't so certain in the minds of some posters here, otherwise there would be no need to get so ugly about it.

Needless to say, I remain firmly convinced that Bush did not win the 2000 election and that victory was stolen from Gore. Ah, well. Nothing I can do about it now. The history books will have an interesting time with this one.

Regardless of the legitimacy of the election results, Bush is and remains, by far, the worst president in my lifetime (Johnson was prez when I was born). Apparently, contrary to what Radwaste implies, you don't need a candidate "worth a damn" to get placed in the White House. Just a support base that is willing to sink lower than whale shit.

It turns out this Andrew Gumbel character is a rather well-known left wing conspiracy theorist best know for his wild ideas about the Oklahoma City bombing and the theory that the US liberation of Iraq was "military Keynesianism," a favorite notion of Al Jazeera's. You can see some his work at this link and here at Al Jazeera.

It's doubtful he's ever written a true story about anything pertaining the US, as he caters to a certain British sensibility that wants to see us as an errant colony run by a gang of blood-thirsty thugs.

Richard Bennett writes:

It's doubtful he's ever written a true story about anything pertaining the US, as he caters to a certain British sensibility that wants to see us as an errant colony run by a gang of blood-thirsty thugs.

It's a great world you live in, when everyone who disagrees with you obviously has something wrong with them and has the most transparent and superficial motives. Hmmm... maybe I'll give that a try.

I regret we didn't try to hear our guest out for a while, but of course, King Bush must be protected at all costs, and there is no treatment sufficiently vicious for those who malign him, or even question his actions.

Richard, that's pretty disgusting. For your information, the way I met Andrew Gumbel was when he did a story on me and my anti-SUV campaign years back. So, I have firsthand knowledge on the accuracy of his reporting -- and the way he quotes people, which is stone-cold accurately, from my experience -- which is, again, in my experience, all-too-rare.

What's Gumbel's motivation? Perhaps this article will help give you a clue: Failing the Electoral Standards
Andrew Gumbel | Democracy's future depends on electoral reform in the US.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=gumbel

Not only are you wrong, and not only has Andrew Gumbel shown that repeatedly in this forum, while you blather on about a book you haven't read, you are most rude to him, which says everything about your tiny little character.

No, Amy, I'm not wrong and Gumbel himself admitted as much by backing down from his original claim that Gore won the recount under any standard. I provided specific links to support my argument and quoted specific paragraphs. Gumbel, on the other hand, merely provided a couple of non-specific web site refereneces and said "go there and look around."

Whatever your personal experience with Gumbel may have been, or how you remember it today, the fact remains that he's published a large body of highly questionable work; he's widely regarded as a crackpot, having claimed that Al Qaeda set the bombs in OK City, for example.

(PS: If you're trying to establish somebody's bona fides as a quality investigator, articles published in The Nation aren't a good start.)

Richard Bennett writes:

Whatever your personal experience with Gumbel may have been, or how you remember it today, the fact remains that he's published a large body of highly questionable work; he's widely regarded as a crackpot, having claimed that Al Qaeda set the bombs in OK City, for example.

I've been searching the web for where you might have gotten this idea, and not only did I not find anything to support this statement, I found a number of references that contradict it.

For instance:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/022236

But more than six years after one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in American history, the question of whether McVeigh and Terry Nichols acted alone still lingers. Journalist Andrew Gumbel has raised these questions again in a groundbreaking series in the London-based Independent, in which he argues that Timothy McVeigh acted as part of a larger conspiracy with the far-right Aryan Republican Army to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing, but that the FBI deliberately squelched investigations into the possibility of a wider conspiracy to increase their chances of convicting McVeigh.

Somehow I don't see racial purists like the Aryans acting hand in hand with al Qaeda...

If you're going to smear someone, try not to make it quite so easily exposed.

While I am pleased to note that no one has claimed (erroneously) that the popular vote elects a President, I also note that no one apparently read the report from USCCR.

I wonder why it is that so few are willing to acknowledge that the US Supreme Court stopped a state from violating its own laws. I wondered that about New Jersey, too; apparently it's OK for Democrats to do that.

So your argument goes along the lines that Al Qaeda would never cooperate with somebody like, oh, Saddam Hussein for example, because he was secular?

I think that's already been dispatched. Gumbel suggested that Al Qaeda may have furnished the bomb used in OK City (somewhere, I don't have the link just now, sorry.)

In a related note, today's Krugman article on his now-debunked claims about Florida 2000 makes no mention of Gumbel. Even Krugman realizes he's not credible.

About the Murrah Federal Building event: there has been recurrent talk about the explosive device, with many claiming that the damage done indicated a more sophisticated device than the fertilizer-plus-fuel bomb Tim McVeigh built. I know a fellow in Edgefield County, SC, who has every explosive license the Feds can issue short of nuclear devices, and he was disappointed that nobody asked him. It apparently should have done more damage than it did, not less; he builds improvised explosive devices for police training on a regular basis, and thinks it wasn't fused, and thus detonated, correctly for optimum output.

But conspiracy people thrive.

"Gumbel suggested that Al Qaeda may have furnished the bomb used in OK City (somewhere, I don't have the link just now, sorry.)"

Was that when his head popped off his body, turned into a wheel of Camembert, and was carried away by crows?

You don't have the link right now? Not a surprise, since Andrew Gumbel never wrote that.

Are you sure about that?

Yes, I am.

Well, considering Amy obviously has contact with Mr. Gumbel, I can't imagine it would be too difficult for her to find this out.

And I don't mind adding that it's pretty despicable to call someone a "crackpot" and use some fantastic "conspiracy theorist" lie to support your argument. In your zeal to defend the besmirched president, you violated about every tenet of fairness in your "debate" with Mr. Gumbel.

And calling it a "debate" was generous. You were not objecting batting ideas about. You made it personal.

Yes, Amy, you have a point here, and I wasn't as precise in my language as I should have been. Mr. Gumbel wrote that OK City was done by a vast, Al Qaeda-like network of terrorists operating throughtout the USA who planned to launch coordinated attacks against the government in hopes of bringing about a revolution. He calls this network the Aryan Republican Army, and claims they financed their operations by robbing banks in the Midwest.

It's really just super-embarassing that I demeaned Mr. Gumbel's dignity as a journalist by by imprecise writing, and I live in constant fear of a lawsuit.

MORE NEOCON LIES!!!

What, Richard, about this reporting on OK City -- printed on a conservative site -- sounds flawed and inexplicable to you?

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3afb3e5253f6.htm

If you have evidence of "imprecise writing" -- do provide it. Otherwise, do your raving in your shower.