I’m with @futurebird here:
https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/110934294830188426
…and two specific memories come to mind:
The first: NPR reporter Mara Liasson did a private Q&A with MPR employees (where I worked at the time) just after Bush v Gore was decided. I asked her a question to the effect of “Why has the press suddenly pivoted from neutral skepticism to acceptance of the results? Why now? Why not earlier, or later? Why leave earlier parts of the process open to critical scrutiny, but not the SCOTUS decision?”
1/
Her answer was extremely confusing to me at the time, but illuminating in hindsight. It was essentially “Because that’s where the process stops!” There was an invisible line in her mind beyond which the press needed to stop being skeptical. A fence around journalistic inquiry.
2/
In hindsight, it was a harbinger both
(1) of the quasi-religious institutionalism that allowed Trump’s abuse of power to go unchecked for so long, and
(2) of the quasi-religious faith in the integrity of the SCOUTS that puts us in our current situation of 2? 3? 4? justices enjoying what we’d call bribery in most any other context.
3/
(Something that’s a digression and painfully obvious, but still bears mentioning here: the Bush v Gore decision itself was a harbinger of the current SCOTUS’s attitude of “we can just make shit up and nobody can stop us” jurisprudence. It’s as if the right wing realized their own power in 2000, stepped back in shock for ~15 years, then went all in.)
4/
The second memory: there was an independent effort to go ahead and count the Florida ballots under the sort of careful, time-consuming process that Bush v Gore short-circuited.
It found that “if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 60 to 171 votes.”
Remember that? Probably not, because…
5/
…those findings came out in November 2001, and news editors deliberately downplayed them because they were afraid of seeming divisive in the wake of the Sep 11 attacks.
The NYT — which was a far more credible paper at the time — ran its story on those findings under the headline “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.” https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/us/examining-vote-overview-study-disputed-florida-ballots-finds-justices-did-not.html
Compare that headline to the summary in the previous post.
Another harbinger.
6/
In short, we had warning bells in 2000 about:
• SCOTUS discarding jurisprudence to exercise political power
• Misplaced faith in institutions allowing abuse of power
• The press burying inquiry and truth if they’re “divisive”
…every one of which came back to bite us with Trump.
Bush v Gore was a judicial coup. Our society failed to learn from it.
I’ll echo @futurebird’s question to those who said back then that acceptance was necessary: Do •you• see that moment in a new light now?
/end
@inthehands also: Roger Stone pulled the same shit in both. Summon a mob that's on your side to prevent people from ascertaining the truth of the election.
@inthehands
I remember it. I was on the other side then, but I remember going weeks not knowing who the president was. I just wanted it to get resolved, even if Gore won.
@Woodchaz Right, and it ended when the SCOTUS decided. What I’m talking about went public a whole year later, at which point Bush was already president.
@inthehands
I still had faith in SCOTUS back then. I wasn't sure what the real story was, but I trusted them. At this point it couldn't be more obvious that you really can't.