QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“George Bush says he’s for election reform. Reform this: I say, park the state police cars, take down the roadblocks, stop asking people of color for multiple forms of ID, print readable ballots, open the polling places, count all the votes, and start practicing democracy in America again. President Bush, will you join me in calling for those reforms? … If Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Jim Baker and the Supreme Court hadn’t tampered with the results, Al Gore would be president, George Bush would be back in Austin and John Ashcroft would be home reading Southern Partisan magazine.” – Terry McAuliffe, new DNC chairman, and FOB. As a quotation, it’s almost a perfect example of what’s wrong with some Democrats right now. First off, it’s malicious. Rather than talking about the need to reform bad voting machinery and improving access to polls, McAuliffe subtly implies that George W. Bush was deliberately behind a campaign to disenfranchise black voters in Florida. There’s simply no evidence for it. It’s worth remembering that black turn-out in Florida was up 70 percent on 1996, and went 93 percent for Gore, and that no Republican candidate ever tried so hard for black votes than W. In a perfect world, with no confusing ballots (designed by a Democrat), no misleading instructions, like ‘vote on every page’ (given by Democrats), or bad machinery (in precincts controlled mainly by Democrats) that would have been a 72 percent increase, and probably enough to hand Gore the election. But the world wasn’t perfect – a regrettable fact, and one that could not be fairly rectified after the election without severe risk of fraud, distortion and chaos. So what do the Dems do? Insinuate that it was all a plot, play up racial paranoia and resentment, and use words like “tamper” to suggest illegal ballot-stuffing or fraud, for which there is no evidence. The truth is we have never stopped practicing democracy. It’s just that democracy isn’t perfect. And it sure isn’t improved by vicious, ad hominem, pandering rhetoric like McAuliffe’s.