Comment by dctoedt
15 days ago
> If you say the word “concede” but then spend the next four years saying “the election was stolen” and “the president is illegitimate” you’re damaging public trust just as much as if you hadn’t conceded.
False dichotomy.
> Gore exploited a loophole in Florida election law to seek hand recounts only in counties that had gone heavily in his favor.
What you call "exploit[ing] a loophole," others would call "invoking a statutory procedure to exercise a right created for candidates by the legislature." Nothing stopped the Bush campaign from doing the same in counties that went heavily for them — instead, the Bush campaign lawyered up to try to stop the recounts altogether [0]. (And perhaps you've forgotten about the infamous "Brooks Brothers riot" [1] by out-of-state Bush lawyers and staffers.)
And let's not forget: Gore won the popular vote nationwide, which is irrelevant legally but of nontrivial weight morally.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
Gore was a cheater, and the only reason he’s not remembered as such is because Americans are bad at math. What he did was as bad as Google exploiting tax law loopholes to make it seem like all their income is earned in Ireland. Except election law is even less of a proper place for creative lawyering than tax law.
But to circle back to my point above, this is why Trump was inevitable and necessary. Republicans must use the Gore standard for litigating elections, the Hilary Clinton standard for talking about elections they lost, and the Alvin Bragg standard for political prosecutions. If Republican presidents aren’t appointing judges who will look for constitutional standards hidden inside “penumbras,” they are committing political malpractice.
(And the “popular vote” has zero weight morally. It tells us nothing, because candidates would campaign differently if the popular vote actually mattered. If field goals counted for 7 points in football, teams would play the game differently.)