Rented "American Blackout" from Netflix...Why didn't John Kerry Count the Votes?

[KoKo]

Watching this makes me wonder why Kerry (who promised to "count every vote") ends up looking so bad. I know that many folks in the Black Caucus were upset that Al Gore didn't PROTEST THE SUPREME COURT when he was the "tie-breaker in Senate" after "Selection 2000" and that Michael Moore's Film, "Farenheit 9/11" portrayed Gore as "caving".....but wasn't "Election 2004" the time for Dems like Kerry/Edwards to STAND UP AND FIGHT?

Why didn't they? I've not heard a good argument about "Election 2004" that I could understand as to why they ignored "Ohio" and Kerry caved and declared the Election to BUSH II.

I have to say...at least Gore at the "last minute" DID call Bush Campaign and ask them to HOLD the Annointment...because "something was fishy in FLA."

It took alot of courage for Gore to go against the MSM and call Bush (after Rove's people called election for Bush) to come back and say: (paraphrase) "Hey, WAIT A MINUTE HERE! THIS ELECTION ISN'T OVER, YET!

But...back to 2004...WHY DID KERRY/EDWARDS CAVE...when we now know OHIO was TOTALLY CORRUPT? :shrug:

[still_one]

1. Is the movie any good? /nt

[KoKo]

9. It's an interesting Movie...done from the perspective of Civil Rights

and how the legacy of "Voting Rights" is in danger of "going down."

It's a retrospective of Georgia Rep Cynthis McKinney's FIGHT to hold onto her Georgia Congressional Seat against all odds when Repugs threw everything at her...because she questioned Bush's handling of "9/11" when she asked "WHERE WERE THEY...that THIS HAPPENED!" and she protested the Iraq Invasion.

She paid a price and the film with comment from Journalist Greg Palast walks through what she was up against. There's great footage of Civil Rights leaders from the 60's who are talking about how HARD IT WAS to WIN THE RIGHT TO VOTE...and how it's being denied once again...and retrospectives about that...and what McKinney had to go through Politically for being "EARLY" in outing the BUSH LIES and how hard it is to be a House Representative when you only have a 2 year term and always have opponents nipping at your heels.

It's an interesting insight into the personality of Cynthia McKinney (who isn't popular on DU) showing more about what she is about...what she stands for...and what it takes to run for Congress when you SPEAK OUT EARLY about a P-Resident that you KNOW was only ELECTED BY THE SUPREME COURT.

It's an interesting view of McKinney, Elections and Politics...whether or not you agree or disagree with McKinney's politics or persona. It's a slice of American Political life that's worth a view about those fighting for FAIR AND FREE ELECTIONS...with some great Historical Footage about VOTING RIGHTS and the fight to win them by those disenfranchised.

I'd give it an "A." :shrug: for what it's worth.

[still_one]

11. Thanks, it sounds interesting. I am not a fan of McKinney, but I think I will rent it

I just started Netflix, and couldn't be happier with their service

Thanks again for the review

[KoKo]

15. I've been amazed at Netflix's Ease of Use and Response and love their

Documentaries (Dem Favorable) that one on a budget can afford to "rent" rather than buy...even though I try to support Buzzflash which offers the Documentaries for sale to support their MUCHO Worthy Site.

If you can't afford to buy all those great Indie Documentaries...Netflix is the way to go.

The McKinney one was done by "Guerilla News Network" which did a great job...very professional.

In this world of Corporations who don't respond until one has faxed or called them numerous times Netflix has got the "Consumer" thing...and is very responsive ...even telling you when a movie wasn't delivered on time ..WHY and WHERE the movie is and you are not left calling or e-mailing to haggle with them about why your movie didn't arrive. Love being able to choose movies and have them waiting when I go to mailbox and being able to just slip them in their "re-mailable" package and put in mail box when I'm finished.

I got it as a GIFT from relatives for Christmas and I'm a hard customer to please and I've loved it...plus their reviews and their ability to suggest movies you might like that you've never thought of based on their views of what you order from them.

I'm a "PRIVACY FREAK" and know they are monitoring my choice of movies...so this was hard for me to deal with...but they also asked me what "genre" of movies I might like when I signed up for my "gift subscription" so maybe they weren't just giving me a "cookie" to monitor me...they actually gave me movies I might enjoy from my "sign up requests."

Anyhow...I do like them because of their SERVICE, ACCOUNTABILITY and the access to Progressive Documentaries that I've really enjoyed...along with the other stuff I like that arrives in a quick fashion (usually a day or two) after I've returned the ones I've viewed.

[still_one]

32. Two THUMBS UP /nt

[Robbien]

2. Heard it was on the advise of DLC consultants

You know the ones they are still using today.

[AshevilleGuy]

3. Good question - I wonder how many top Dems would have stood with them,

had they insisted on fighting on? We know that Gore was being pressured to concede, after all.

[stillcool]

4. what I remember...

contesting the election in Ohio would not result in enough votes to win...no proof of electoral fraud...and, the National Democratic Party had no interest in any recounts.

[AshevilleGuy]

7. OH had 20 electoral votes.

Had OH been switched to Kerry, he would have had 271, to bush's 266.

Proof could have come out soon, for all they knew then. Exit polling (the most reliable polling there is) had Kerry up by 2 or 3 points.

[stillcool]

10. yeah well...we're still waiting...

no proof yet, and not for a lack of trying. I never got how the voters of any particular state thought that John Kerry should be held personally responsible for counting people's votes...as if he owned the votes. Who's votes are they? Three years later, and five years after the catastrophic "Help America Vote Act" our collective electoral system is a piece of shit. Does this mean that the next candidate that faces the same shenanigans will be/should be abused in the same way?

[AshevilleGuy]

13. I don't hold Kerry responsible for any of it.

I think the DNC should have fought like DEMONS, however, both in 2004 and in 2000 for Kerry and Gore, until there was no longer any doubt what happened each time. The RNC would have, given the same situations.

[politicasista]

14. Thank you

The blame and accountability should be at the ENTIRE Democratic Party. They failed BOTH Gore and Kerry by not protecting the 2000 and 2004 vote. And they still continue to poo-poo any talk of election fraud.


How come no one is holding McAwful or other silent Democrats accountable? Why are they given free passes? Guess it's much easier to blame the victims.

[KoKo]

23. Our Dems were up against a whole "Crime Family." Maybe that's the answer...

but it's kind of moot since...don't we elect them to protect us from "Mega Crime Families?" :shrug:

[KoKo]

19. I know...it's a hard question to have an answer for. It lies with our Dems

to see if we have one more stolen National Election. They might just still be feeling good about us squeaking through in '06 and ignore the whole thing as a "blip." :shrug:

[stillcool]

26. If nothing changes...nothing changes.. n/t

[karynnj]

28. Kerry was down over 100,000 votes

with far fewer outstanding provisional ballots outstanding. You can not appeal based on exit polls. One explanation of the descrepancy was the caterpillar ballot, which like the butterfly ballot in 2000 in FL, led to people in some inner city areas voting for 3rd party candidates (like the constitution party) when they intended to vote for Kerry.

Kerry and other Democrats looked into what they could - but there was nothing that was found in November or December 2004. In FL, Gore was down 537 and there were ballots that were misread - Kerry did not have something like that. Remember that Gore could NOT challange the Palm Beach votes that people in Jewish retirement communities cast for Buchanan - when they thought they were voting for Gore.

[brentspeak]

5. What evidence did Kerry have in hand at that time to claim 'Foul'?

[KoKo]

16. We on the "Internets" who had been working since 2000 on Exposing

the Fraud of Bush's "ChoicePoint" Texas outfit throwing off Florida Voters who were listed as FELONS!

The movie shows and elderly, genteel Southern White Woman whose name came up on ChoicPoint's Felon Roles whose vote was NOT COUNTED in "Selection 2000" in Florida.

We warned Kerry. Dems put a "thousand lawyers" in (according to what they said) for 2004. But, according to a Yale Lawyer who posted about this..."we weren't told to look at the DRE machines mandated by HAVA ACT...we were told to look for voters trying to vote in the wrong polling places) paraphrase.

The lawyers were not told what to look for and isn't the Kerry Campaign accountable for this since WE TOLD THEM...and they already KNEW about what happened in SELECTION 2000!

Were they CLUELESS? DID THEY NOT HEAR? Remember WE LOST IN 2000 Mid-Terms...it's not like they didn't KNOW! TWO ELECTIONS!!!!!!

[politicasista]

18. Did you warn McAwufulife too?

Since he was DNC chairman in 2000 and 2004.

[KoKo]

21. He had his ears plugged it seemed....lol's ...n/t

[sandnsea]

27. Voter purging

and voter disenfranchisement was the problem in 2000. The complaint was the poor neighborhoods got crappy punch cards - and that is why HAVA directed everyone to go to computer voting. Not having DRE's was seen as the discrimination in 2000. Have you forgotten that?

How can you complain about DRE's and not learning the lesson of 2000 when DRE's had nothing to do with 2000.

In addition, if you really look at Ohio closely - it was voter disenfranchisement there too. Most of Ohio's machines were punch cards to start with. The complaints filed, humidity, marks, stickers - there was generally only 4-5 cards in a precinct or county affected. Law suits were filed, the campaign joined some of them. But League v. Blackwell sums it up pretty well - "The number of voters unable to meet the burden – literally by the end of the day – of proving their identity is likely to be very small."

Insert any voting scenario. Legally, a judge will ikely conclude that the burden... is "likely to be very small." Unfortunately, small is all it takes to swing an election.

After all this time, if there were a conspiracy, somebody would have talked. All the leaks from the Bush Administration ought to make that crystal clear to you. There's no way there was a national DRE conspiracy, with people all over the country reprogramming machines. Somebody would have talked by now.

They steal elections the way they always have, voter disenfranchisement. And they do it by just enough of a margin to make it legally insignificant, "likely to be very small."

[karynnj]

29. You are someone no one would call a troll

One thought is whether this has been sent to Dean. There are many many things the candidate is responsible for in the election. Part of the problem is that whoever wins the nomination has to build a huge organization almost overnight. To assign to them the responsibility to insure that every state's election is run fairly and efficiently would require that they duplicate the state parties. Gore and Kerry were victims of a Democratic party that had lost sight of doing their basic jobs in the states. They did the hard part. They probably motivated enought people to come out to vote for them, if all the state parties had done as good a job President Gore would be in his second term. (Kerry would never have run.)

[brentspeak]

31. What specific evidence could Kerry have cited to the public in the day after the election?

He had nothing substantial, and there was nothing he could do.

[ProSense]

6. You might find some answers

here, here and here.

[KoKo]

24. Thanks for the links....good reads there...

I read most of them at the time...but after watching that Documentary...I still had questions that made me wonder about what Kerry was really thinking and if he really understood the problem.

We can blame "bad advice" on Campaign Ops and the rest...but doesn't it really come down to the CANDIDATE and what THEY BELIEVE as to whether they toss off their principles and questions to their OPS?

That's what the documentary spoke to me about. ACCOUNTABILITY.

:shrug:

BTW...I worked for Kerry as Precinct Co-Chair in my State...so I'm not a troll about this. I still have questions even with all I've read and my angst and despair when Kerry/Edwards lost against that Idiot and his Crime family ONCE AGAIN...even with all we KNEW ...and THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOW.

But, whatever...it's a good Documentary to watch. I wish Kerry/Edwards would watch it....I wish all our Dems would watch all the great Indie Docu's out there where we are TRYING to SPEAK TO THEM!!!

[leftofthedial]

8. class loyalty

:shrug:

[rox63]

12. Kerry did want to contest the vote

Until Carville's pillow-talk to Matalin (who called the WH, who called Ken Blackwell) made over half of the contestable ballots disappear. It's all in Woodward's book.

[Deja Q]

17. I recall the election even down to the debates...

I think Kerry wanted to fail. The guy is astute, polished, articulate. He could have wiped the proverbial floor with Bush's questions - instead he acts like a moron in response to very specific questions (usually the flip-flop accusations, which he could have answered instantly and even throw the identical question back to Bush. He didn't. Even I, who hadn't been paying a lot of attention to every detail, noted Kerry was tapdancing around issues. Ones that would have scored him big points.)

Then comes the quick and eyebrow-raising concession, and I still see no reason to give him an hour to talk. Those debates alone were pretty damning, but the rapid "I give up" speech took the cake. I've got to wonder... :tinfoilhat: But I won't. It's pointless to think about anyway; the future seems more relevant than the past. Apart from noting what happened and then not repeating it. Kerry's gone and he has no right to return.

[AtomicKitten]

25. Kerry promised to fight

... and then abandoned America like a prom date thrown out of a moving car with her gown hiked up over her head. Monies had been raised to fight and Democrats had their game face on, only to be met with a precipitous concession speech the next day advocating kumbaya and an eye on another go in 2008.

A more poignant and relevant discussion would be ensuring clean elections in 2008.

[karynnj]

30. kerry won all three debates - because he was astute, polished and articulate

Kerry gained substantially with the debates and - in spite of the worse smear campaign in decades which the MSM actually abetted and the Bush administration manipulating terror alerts.

[sandnsea]

20. That hasn't been answered 10,000 times??

Or at least one of the other 1,000 times you personally asked it. :eyes:

[KoKo]

22. Well...the Documentary is a Good Watch even if we will never get an answer that satisfies

many of us who worked hard for Kerry. Maybe he just didn't get "Selection 2000" or what the Internet Grass Roots was all about.

Maybe that's the "truth of it." :shrug:

[The Count]

33. And why aren't Kerry or Edwards telling us the truth about who won in 2004?

When I see people like Krugman talking about the "aberration" that 2004 was I hit the ceiling. The truth needs to be out!!!!!

[LittleClarkie]

34. I think we've been there, done that, and have the t-shirt on this subject on DU

I would think that a search of the archives would reveal several discussions.