L.A. TIMES REPORTS LEFTIST VIEW OF 2000 ELECTION AS FACT
The 2000 presidential election continues to polarize the country. Luckily, the staff of the L.A. Times is not divided in its view of that election, but rather holds a uniform opinion of what really happened. Not surprisingly, the paper’s view is the leftist view.
There are two partisan ways to characterize the Supreme Court’s decision ending the dispute in the 2000 election.
Right-wingers say that Bush was duly elected, won several recounts, and was certified as the winner pursuant to law. The recount was a blatant attempt to rewrite the rules in the middle of the game to manufacture votes for Al Gore. All the Supreme Court did was halt a partisan travesty of a recount designed to undo the certification of Bush as the winner.
The left, by contrast, claims that the Supreme Court simply stepped in and anointed George Bush the victor.
Today’s Los Angeles Times leaves no doubt as to which view is held by the paper’s editors. In today’s edition, a story about the beginning of the Bush and Kerry campaigns contains the following quote:
Kerry’s first stop Wednesday was in Florida, site of the disputed 2000 presidential election, which hung in the balance for weeks until the U.S. Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, stepped in to make Bush the winner.
Note that, according to the Times, the voters didn’t make Bush the winner; the Supreme Court did. And this is reported as fact, in a straight news story.
Nope, no taking sides there. “What Liberal Media?” indeed!
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I’d almost subscribe to that rag and buy a dog just so I could watch the dog pee on that article.
Comment by McGehee — 3/6/2004 @ 5:52 am
Personally, I believe that ever time one of the media brings up Florida 2000, they should also bring up the results of the unoffical recount. You remember the one that McCauliffe, the ragin cajun Carville, the NY Times and others said that with Florida’s sunshine laws would prove beyond doubt that Bush stole the election.
What, you mean those recounts also showed Bush winning.
Oh well.
Comment by Wayne — 3/6/2004 @ 12:39 pm
The presidential election in 2000 in Florida was essentially a tie (thanks to Theresa LePore). The post-election brouhaha was an unedifying spectacle of each side trying to maneuver a victory, with some questionable, but occasionally entertaining, moves by all. The stakes were high, and they were all politicians, so I was willing to forgive and forget a fair amount of bad behavior. The five justices of the Supreme Court in the majority in Bush v. Gore don’t get off so easily. The Supreme Court had no business stepping in to make sure that Gore would lose (it’s possible or even likely that Gore would have lost anyway, but there is no question in my mind that their purpose was to make Bush the winner). Based on everything I thought I knew about the Supreme Court and the judicial system, I had trusted them not to get involved because (i)the issues were ones of state law, and (ii) it was a political question. They proved me wrong in their eagerness to get their candidate elected (can you actually see them reaching the same result if the positions of Bush and Gore had been reversed?). Those five Supreme Court justices — with whom I otherwise find myself in agreement from time to time — did as much to throw our judicial system into disrepute as any number of left-liberal judges who seem to think it is their job to find non-existent rights in the Constitution.
I really dislike bad judges and bad judging.
Comment by Jackie — 3/6/2004 @ 4:00 pm
(i) Equal protection, which Bush v. Gore was based on, trumps state law. That’s how Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas were shoved down states’ throats.
(ii) No it wasn’t, under the standard enumerated by lefty Justice Brennan in Baker v. Carr. His famous passage on the matter follows, and can be found at 369 U.S. 186, 217 (1962):
“Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court’s undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question.”
While you might be able to invent some argument that elections fall under such a standard, remember that in Baker the Court specifically involved itself in electoral disputes (in that case, apportionment of seats IN A STATE LEGISLATURE, where there wasn’t even a federal concern implicated as there is in a presidential race). Nor will the “textually committed” part help you. Reading Article II section 1 alone might, but the additional rules imposed in the 12th Amendment can, arguably, remove that textual commitment.
Comment by The Angry Clam — 3/6/2004 @ 5:06 pm
I should also note that Laurence Tribe tried to play the “political question” angle, and got torn to shreds by other legal scholars in a series of articles in Constitutional Commentary (where you can find Tribe’s original article and the responses. See also his article Erog .v Hsub in the Harvard Law Review if you want to see stretching of the doctrine as never before).
Another attempt at arguing for a political question in the case that admits that modern Court jurisprudence leans heavily against it is Rachel Barkow’s article “More Supreme than Court? The Fall of the Political Question Doctrine and the Rise of Judicial Supremacy,” 102 Columbia Law Review 237 (2002). Barkow is more convincing than Tribe, but, as with most legal scholarship, is highly normative rather than positive.
Comment by The Angry Clam — 3/6/2004 @ 5:12 pm
It wouldn’t have ended up in the US Supreme Court if the Florida Supremes hadn’t previously screwed the pooch in such a ridiculously partisan manner — but nobody seems to remember that phase of the fiasco.
It would certainly help if people actually read through the US opinion — it’s not like it’s classified top secret or anything — and the dissenting opinions as well. While Bush and Gore had their names on the case, the decision wasn’t about them — it was about the state of Florida’s abuse of process. The 5-4 ruling was over the question of whether the “recounters” were partisan hacks (who should give up trying to undo what had been done) or incompetent idiots (who should be given another chance to get it right). The only reason there was a split in the case is because the option of “both” was not available.
Comment by cthulhu — 3/6/2004 @ 9:05 pm
Um, the vote was 7-2 to send the case back to florida’s supreme court. So the vote was no 5-4, but 7-2, what was 5-4 was the decision to say no recount could be done on time. There were 7 judges, and you can recount them if you want, that said that the recounts in florida were a joke.
look bottom line, the people who voted in florida were dumber than dumb - how do you fill a bubble for a candidate on an OCR form and write in the name too? WHo the hell does not push the stylus thru to punch the chad? ANd dont even get me started on butterfly ballots. It is how the cookie crumbles. Live with it.
Comment by jannol — 3/7/2004 @ 12:11 am
Yes, the five justices found new and fascinating uses for the equal protection clause, which they never had before and which they explicitly told potential litigants never to invoke again. Regardless of whether the Florida Supreme Court applied Florida precedent correctly or incorrectly, it is not the role of the federal courts to correct mistakes by the states in applying state law. The five justices violated what they claimed to be their own principles, for the purpose of getting their candidate elected. Is it possible to imagine that they would have reached the same result if the positions of Gore and Bush had been reversed? I am not particularly concerned when the local yahoos in Florida act like political hacks. I am concerned when justices of the U.S. Supreme Court make themselves the biggest political hacks of all. These principles should not change simply because one happened to prefer the Republican candidate over the Democratic candidate (which I did, at least in retrospect).
Comment by Jackie — 3/7/2004 @ 7:24 am
Jackie,
Even though the comment immediately preceding yours reminded you that seven justices believed there was a federal equal protection violation, you continue to complain about the “five justices.”
To the extent that your argument rests on your view of who the individual justices wanted to be president, I think it is a losing argument as regards the equal protection issue. Clearly, the two non-conservative justices who found an equal protection violation had no vested interest in making Bush president. The contrary cannot be said of the only two justices, both quite liberal, who rejected the equal protection argument.
I might find your argument more persuasive if you accepted the equal protection violation and simply complained about the decision to stop the recount — a decision that was far more debatable (though, I think, arguably defensible on practical grounds, as Richard Posner has argued).
Of course, this all has little to do with my original point, which related to the L.A. Times’s acceptance of the leftist view of the election — hook, line, and sinker.
Comment by Patterico — 3/7/2004 @ 3:08 pm