Anyone listen to Mark Crispin Miller on Morning Sedition???

[whometense]

Yowza. They had Mark Crispin Miller on and he was recounting a conversation he had with JK last week, in which JK said he believes the election was stolen. It was somewhat ELECRIFYING. Miller said Kerry never said the conversation was off the record, so...

I wasn't sure if I should post it, though, as Miller also made some inflammatory comments about JK conceding a second later. I feel a new wave of retroactive gnashing of teeth, etc. Miller put most of the blame on Kerry's consultants, but still got in some digs at Kerry himself. If anyone wants to hear it on podcast, it was in the last 15 minutes before the end of the second hour of the show.

Here's Miller's new book:

[TayTay]

1. It probably was stolen.

Most elections in this country prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were exclusionary and, to some extent, 'fixed.' That is a simple fact. I have no doubt that this past election had enough problems in it that it could be considered as stolen.

So was the election of 1876. So was 2000. (So were so many more.) The problem with this is two-fold.

1. There was NO huge popular outcry against this. Without a strong grassroots effort that demands accountability and fairness, the beat goes on. There was no popular outcry in 2004. There were grumbles, to be sure, but no uprisings, no mass marches and no demands from substantial numbers of citizens for recounts. Sad, but true!

2. The media is not doing their job. In order for the grassroots and for ordinary Americans to get mad and demand a fair election they have to be informed. The press completely fell down on this. They caved. (Nothing to see here, move along.)

The mechanisms for preventing fraud and abuse are not in place. The oversight that a free press is supposed to provide to demand oversight and fairness are not in place. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it happen? Wake up media, we need you!

[fedupinBushcountry]

2. Right on

Very well put. :thumbsup:

[sandnsea]

3. It was too complicated

"Hey, there's ballot boxes floating in the Cuyahoga!!!" People get that. The complexities of how elections might get stolen today, well it's complex. There were a flurry of possibilities reported, not one pattern. Then there is big hype about something that turns out to be false, like the Florida Dems who aren't Dems at all, and people tune out. In the GAO report there's some precincts that are claimed to have an unusual amount of votes for 3rd parties, but it only amounts to 700 votes. Not enough to swing an election, no pattern, it's not logical to claim fraud based on that. There has to be some sort of pattern that people can grasp and something that wouldn't take a conspiracy with thieves in every precinct. There were exit poll peculiarities all over the place, look at NH. Recount didn't show anything. Somebody would talk, they just would. This needs to be nailed down to a pattern of 3-5 practices that can swing enough of the vote to make a difference. And perhaps that these practices are being sold to Republicans as necessary to protect voting, because that's really what they do.

Oh, but I'm glad JK acknowledges that things are screwy with voting, because that is true. :)

[Mass]

4. Of course the attacks are beginning on GD and GDP.

The surprise is that they started with a 24 hour delay.

[TayTay]

5. Yeah, I went to the archives to get more ammo and found

a phenomenally great piece of writing from:

Black Scholar, Vol. 35, Issue. 1, p 16 04-01-2005
By Bob Wing

An excerpt:

Alan Abramowitz points out, "Between 2000 and 2004, President Bush's largest gains occurred among less religious voters, not among more religious voters." Among those who attend church weekly or more, his gain was only 1 point. But among those attending services a few times a month he gained four points. From those attending a few times a year, he increased his share by 3 points and from those who never attend services he racked up a four-point gain.

The emphasis on the evangelical vote is a smokescreen motivated by the attempt by Republicans (and conservative Democrats) to move the country rightwards. Meanwhile, most pundits, left and right, refuse to squarely face the white elephant in the room: race.

THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY turned almost exclusively on increasing its share of the white vote. In 2000 Bush won the white vote by 12 points, 54 to 42; in 2004 he increased this to a 17-point margin, 58 to 41. That increase translates into about a 4 million vote gain for Bush, the same number by which Bush turned his 500,000 vote loss in 2000 into a 3.5 million vote victory this time around.

This increase came mainly from white women. Bush carried white men by 24 points in 2000 (60 to 36) and increased that margin by only one point in 2004 (62 to 37). But he increased his margin of victory among white women from only 1 point in 2000 (49 to 48) to 11 points in 2004 (55 to 44). This accounts for a 4 million plus vote swing for Bush. (Women of color favored Kerry by 75 to 24.)

Another overlooked exit poll result is that Kerry actually increased the Democrats' share of the vote among rural and small town voters and held steady among suburbanites. However, his share of the vote in cities fell considerably. In cities of 500,000 or more Kerry won 60 percent of the vote, compared to 71 percent for Gore. Bush increased his big city vote by 13 points, from 26 percent in 2000 to 39 percent in 2004. We are apparently looking at a significant rightward motion among white women in big cities, a real blow to progressive strategy.

Unbelievably gret article that goes through the real votes from last fall and the initial media spin put on those votes. Big discrepency, btw, as we all know. I can't post more because it's a fairly long article and DU rules prevent this. (PM me.)

BTW, screw that thread. I posted once, then went looking for backup and tehn found this info and then said to myself, screw this, it must be Bile Friday. Some threads are beyond redemption.

[karynnj]

6. There actually some good on that thread (GD-P)

there are a lot of people who are not us usual suspects defending Kerry. The main antagonists ARE mostly the same old group. One who from his name offered EVE an apple and now dwells in high places is clearly baiting (as he was on the Iraq thread) - but is not getting response.

Your list of what Kerry has done was great. The right wing, which goes crazy every time he mentions anything, is more aware of his activities than the left. I also don't even see MCM's comment as that much of a shift - what Kerry will say on anything before a crowd or over a microphone will be nore measured and precise than what he thinks or might say informally.