Campaign chairman Bill Daley to Al Gore during the Florida recount: Making the case for surrender

[seafan]

Via Digby:

This passage from Jeffrey Toobin's book about the 2000 recount, in which Daley served as campaign chairman, probably illustrates how Daley will be advising the president better than anything else could:

Even though the automatic recount had cut Bush's lead dramatically in the previous three days, Christopher and Daley offered little hope that the margin could be eliminated completely. "Look you got screwed," said Daley, "but people get screwed every day. They don't have a remedy. Black people get screwed all the time. They don't have a remedy. Sometimes there's no remedy. There's nothing you can do about it...

Lieberman did not share the advisers' reluctance to push forward on all fronts. This became a recurring theme of the post-election period. The Connecticut senator always sounded like a warrior --- in private settings. (Much to the frustration of the Hawks on Gore's team he sounded much different before the cameras.)

Gore too railed against the prophesies of hopelessness he was hearing from Daley. He drew a series of concentric circles on the butcher paper to illustrate what he saw as his responsibilities.Inside the smallest circles were Gore and Lieberman; their closest supporters were in the next circle, then Democrats generally, finally the country as a whole. Gore said his actions had to serve all those groups not just those closest to him. An immediate surrender would be a violation of his obligations to all those who supported him, he said ---- all the people in the circles...

In the end Gore thought they shouldn't make "any momentous decisions." But it was clear that Daley and Christopher felt any victory for Gore was impossible even though more people had gone to the polls there intending to vote for the Vice President than for Bush. Gore and Lieberman couldn't wage the battle alone, of course, and their two principle deputies were telling them, in effect, to give up.

This Saturday had begun with Bush and Gore locked in a closer contest than earlier in the week.Indeed, the Vice President had made gains over the past three days. But the day ended with James Baker leading the attack --- and Bill Daley and Warren Christopher making the case for surrender.

We may no longer recognize our country at the end of two more years of surrender to the far right.



Meanwhile, just clap more loudly, fellow liberals.

[xchrom]

1. 00 still haunting us. I suspect it will for some time yet. Nt

[molly77]

32. The clintons are running this country.

Bill gave US

Three strikes and you are out.

NAFTA

Repeal of Glass-Stegall

Welfare reform

Enabled a few corporations to own MSM. Forgot the term.

WE did not vote for another 4 years of clintons. Best buds with bushes. Between the two, clinton and bush , our two party system in the US is broken.

[molly77]

33. And having Howard Dean give Daly his vote of confidence

does not make Daly look better. It makes Dean look worse.

Under Daly's father ,as mayor of Chicago, black people were routinely arrested and tortured whether guilty of anything or not. As young as 13. I heard a black woman describing it. "They were never the same..never the same."

This is not Obama's pick.The clintons are rubbing his nose in it.

I still have confidence in Obama. But the bushes and clintons are enemies of the state.

[WinkyDink]

35. Did Clinton invade Iraq? Did he not leave us with a surplus?

Nice try.

[cui bono]

36. Those are your only two criteria? What about the things mentioned in the post

you responded to?

Nice try.

[molly77]

37. No

But he did give us NAFTA

Welfare reform with no jobs for welfare moms to go to. Welfare dads getting millions instead of a couple of hundred.

Repeal of Glass-Stegall which led us to the bankruptcy of this country. I don't have to try.

[swilton]

38. He also gave us the wars in the Balkans

Make the Serbs the scapegoats so we can establish a military base in Bosnia and neutralize and independent thinking country. War is actually a misnomer because the conflict which was not sanctioned by the UN pitted NATO against victim.

[AzDar]

2. Jeebus wept.

[patrice]

3. k, so the guy OWES us, BIG time. nt

[Truth2Tell]

21. I think you mean OWNS. Sad to say. nt

[somone]

4. "Black people get screwed all the time. There's nothing you can do about it."

A real fighter!

[soryang]

5. There were two cases pending appeal in Leon County FL...

...after the SCOTUS Bush v. Gore decision. The Leon county circuit cases concerning poll results in two other Florida counties were both adverse to Gore. Had Gore appealed the cases he would have won the election. He chose not to appeal. There was a threat coming out of the Florida legisture at the time that if court decisions ended up changing the outcome they would not certify the Gore electors but would change the rules in the middle of the game and certify the Bush elector slate anyway. I viewed this as a hollow threat but many did not, seeing it as a political meltdown that might result in the loss of legitimacy for the election. The legitimacy was lost anyway. People just forgot about it after 911.

[BeFree]

10. Before 9/11

http://archive.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=249

Link to Sept 11 Withholding of 2000 Election count


The Media Consortium was ready to publish their results the week after Sept. 11, but they postponed publication in order to avoid raising questions about Bush's legitimacy at a moment when the nation truly needed to unite.

[BzaDem]

19. "Had Gore appealed the cases he would have won the election."

Um, no. The Florida Supreme Court was not about to rule for Gore in any of these cases, after it was shot down by the USSC. And even if it did, the USSC probably would have issued a one paragraph summary reversal. The Bush v. Gore decision was such a poorly reasoned decision that it was clear by then that the justices wanted a result and they were damn well going to get it. Further cases would not have changed this.

[soryang]

23. Um, no...

You are just wrong on this point. Art from Ark has the correct historical reason in his post. The two counties votes that were still in contention had nothing to do with the prior SCOTUS case, it concerned illegal absentee ballots that were void under state law. There was no federal issue at all.

[Art_from_Ark]

20. However, the head of the Florida state legislature had vowed to award

the state's electoral votes to bu$h, regardless of the legal outcome or vote count.

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/nov/23/news/mn-56410

[soryang]

22. A state statute and case law that made this option unlawful

Because it changes the methods of choosing electors after the polls were opened. In other words the proposed certification of electors ignorinng the method of election specified by state statute at the time the polls were opened was unlawful. (on edit: I think there is a federal election statute that specifies this election principle as well but I don't have time to research it now.)

[seafan]

24. We must never stop reporting this truth. Thanks, Art_from_Ark.

GOP in Legislature Seeks Way to Give Bush Electoral Votes

November 23, 2000|RONALD BROWNSTEIN | TIMES POLITICAL WRITER

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Republican leaders in the GOP-controlled state Legislature are aggressively exploring options to award Florida's 25 electoral votes to George W. Bush, even if Al Gore takes the lead after the manual recounts authorized by Tuesday night's state Supreme Court decision.

Incensed by the ruling, Republicans are considering a special legislative session--probably as soon as next week--to seat a set of electoral college members who favor Bush, regardless of the vote's outcome.

.....

The incoming Republican speaker of the House, Rep. Tom Feeney, has readied a two-page legal analysis arguing that the Legislature could appoint its own slate of electors if it appears that the voting dispute will not be resolved by Dec. 12--the federal cutoff date for states to appoint their representatives to the electoral college.

.....

Ah, yes. Tom Feeney. Jeb Bush's former running mate when Governor Lawton "he-coon" Chiles beat the dirt out of them in 1994. Just another Bush criminal.

.....

But even the prospect of Republican elected officials moving to overturn a possible Gore victory--in a state where George W. Bush's brother sits in the governor's mansion--undoubtedly would provoke a firestorm of public controversy.

.....

In his combative statement denouncing the court decision Tuesday night, Bush advisor James A. Baker III, a former secretary of State, repeatedly invited the Legislature to intervene. On Wednesday, several GOP leaders signaled that they were ready to accept his offer.

But they spent more time denouncing the state Supreme Court decision--which mandated that Secretary of State Katherine Harris include the results of manual recounts in the state's final tally--than outlining their own plans.

In private, however, legal strategists have begun developing a detailed game-plan strategy for reversing the result if the recounts give Gore the lead--and the 25 electoral votes from the state he would need to become president.

.....

Because the Florida Supreme Court ordered the counting of legally cast votes, the Bush Machine ran to their buddies on the US Supreme Court to stop the recounts.

The Machine's entire game plan was to create enough gridlock and confusion in delaying/stopping the vote counting process, to run out the clock on the date for naming electors by December 12, then "justifying" the legislature's move, led by Jeb Bush's right-hand man Tom Feeney, to name electors for Bush, no matter the actual outcome of the recount.

For Bush to win, the votes must not be counted. And the rest is history.



If you lived in Florida when all of that was going down, you knew the Bush Machine would continue the assault until they stole it outright.


What has followed is ongoing catastrophe. And one from which this country may never recover.



Jeb Bush is hoping we will forget all of this in time for his imperial reign in the White House.

[gratuitous]

6. I couldn't finish Toobin's book

It's still on the shelf, gathering dust. The pain of going through it all again was just too much to take. I don't know that I'll ever pick it up again. I still hope to be pleasantly surprised by the second half of Obama's term, but I count that possibility as smaller and smaller.

[seafan]

25. I will never forget this travesty. As a country, we are still in shock.

And that is how these enemies of democracy have taken so much from us since.


Peace and strength, gratuitous.

[leftstreet]

7. K&R

Wow. Just wow

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. We really needed better lawyers for that one. Sorry.

[girl gone mad]

9. I bet he blames Nader.

How they sleep at night.

[swilton]

39. Nader is a convenient scapegoat

Had the Gore team not folded and/or had Gore taken his own state of Tennessee, we wouldn't be where we are today.

[DCKit]

11. Thanks for the refresher.

And here I was thinking that Rham was the worst possible choice for the job.

DLC! DLC! DLC! DLC! DLC! DLC! DLC!

[Rex]

12. No problem, that is what primaries are for.

Don't like the guy, vote his ass out. I'm sure someone will rise up to challenge a very watered down Obama administration.

[Swamp Rat]

13. k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r k&r

:think:

[Ramulux]

14. The more I read about this guy

The more depressed I get. You got to be a real piece of shit to be on the wrong side of an issue while Joe Lieberman is on the right side.

[Bluebear]

15. kick kick kick

[Raine]

16. THANKS for this reminder nt

[PBS Poll-435]

17. Wasn't Daley the one that told an aide of Gore's to convince Gore not to give

The Nashville concession speech?

[KoKo]

27. That was in another article I read over at Huff Po or somewhere....

recounting that Daley was the one in the Limo as Gore drove to give the concession speech that he should hold off. That might be true and that it was later on that Daley tried to convince Gore to give up when he saw the pushback from the Repugs.

But, that said, the election was stolen and not by Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan. It was stolen by the Bush Machine/James Baker.

I will never get over it either...just like the one's who are posting here about what Bush did to this country for 8 long years and his shadow is still there when Poppy, Chimp and Clinton fly around together.

[BzaDem]

18. Daley was wrong, but I don't think this is evidence that he didn't want Gore to win.

He was the chairman of Gore's campaign! He was not a mole to sabotage Gore's campaign if Florida became close.

And your excerpt sounds like it came immediately after the automatic recount. At that time, it was very unclear how Gore was going to overcome a 2,000 vote gap. While I could be wrong, I think Daley probably changed his tune once he learned more information about problems with voting machines causing ballots not to be read by machine (but where intent could easily be read by hand).

[avaistheone1]

26. K&R

Thanks seafan. Much to digest here.

[KoKo]

28. K&R...

[Horse with no Name]

29. Gore was surrounded by idiots.

Who was REALLY paying Daley?

[Octafish]

30. Chicago

General Dynamics, Crown Dynasty & Obama

[hay rick]

31. Thanks for the link.

For those who might want to read the article- it documents the early support of Chicago's Crown family for Barack Obama.

The last two paragraphs:

From its investments in Pentagon war contractors like General Dynamics and U.S. real estate, the Crown family has accumulated a family fortune of $3.6 billion, according to a 2004 Forbes magazine estimate. The Jerusalem Post also noted in its February 27, 2005 issue that “the Crown family of Chicago ” is also “well-known for its support of sectarian Jewish causes.” In addition, long-time General Dynamics board member Lester Crown was also a member of the Advisory board of Medis Technologies, a joint venture business partner of Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. in recent years.

Yet, ironically, the 2008 presidential candidate who apparently is being financially backed by the next generation of the Crown Dynasty seems to be marketing himself these days as "the next generation's anti-war candidate."

[Octafish]

34. You aer most welcome. It was written by a DUer.

David Swanson brought it up on DU, way back when.