Since George Bush knew he didn't get the popular vote in 2000...?

Question

would the stand up thing to do have been stepping aside since the will of the people is supposed to be recognized in a democracy

Answer 1

And since when is Bush a stand-up guy? He filed the lawsuit, Bush v Gore, with the Supreme Court to have them overrule the Florida Supreme Court and prevent a recount, and won.

Answer 2

In the first place, George Bush won the presidency in 2000 legally and honestly. GET OVER IT!!!!
Secondly, Al Gore and the Democrats tried everything possible, including counted votes that were not there, in order to try to make up enough votes to win Florida.
Finally, had Al Gore won two particular states, he would have been elected President, regardless of the outcome in Florida.
Those two states were the home state of his boss at the time, Arkansas, and the state he called home, Tennessee. Al Gore could even win the two states that should have been a lock.
One more thing, I don't agree with everything that the Bush Administration has done since 2000, but I can tell you, this country is a lot better of, than had Al Gore been swore in as President.

Answer 3

There is no "popular vote" - it's an electoral college. And the candidates and their staffs and the voters knew that going into the election.

It's like asking "if they called holding in the Superbowl, would the Pats have beaten the Rams" - - - we don't know that, because we don't know what the Pats would have come up with instead.

We don't know how many pro-Bush or anti-Bush Texans didn't vote because their votes wouldn't count. Same for a lot of states. We don't know how the campaigns would have been run, including the get-the-vote-out efforts.

It's simply inaccurate to say "if the contest had been run by these other rules" and then take what happened and apply those rules - - the two sides ran and the voters voted, or opted not to, based on the rules as they were. It's impossible to predict what would have happened, given the closeness of the race.

Reagan-Mondale, that you could predict no matter WHAT the rules were.

Answer 4

Since Al Gore's home state didn't vote for him could you say the same thing. I don't know about you, but many times my vote that appears to be for someone is really a vote against the other person that is allowed to win. There was an exception to this in 1992 called Perot. Many of his votes came from Bush 1 & it stuck us with Clinton.

Personally I'm wondering when either party is going to offer a person worthy of the position rather than just some one that has worked enough hours for the party? On 2nd thought I'm wondering why someone worthy of the position would even want it?

How many thumbs down will this get without the thumbs down people addressing the issue this brings up?

Answer 5

Al Gore would have won the presidency is the Democrats were smart and initially request a STATE-WIDE recount, rather than insist on recounts only in Democratic-friendly counties.

The Supreme Court decision that told the State of Florida to STOP COUNTING and award the state's electoral votes to Bush was based primarily on an "equal protection" argument that the state could not reasonably complete a recount by the December 12 deadline required by Florida state statute to detmermine the award of Florida's electors.

If the Dems that fought tooth and nail right after the Palm Beach County fiasco for a state-wide recount, that probably would have been granted, and the recount could have been completed in time.

Below is the relavant portion of the Supreme Court opinion that basically said, "Sorry Florida, you're out of time...."

Answer 6

Wow, people still cannot get past 2000. Both The Miami Herald and USA Today said Bush won Florida. Gore didn't win his home state, if he had, he wouldn't have needed Florida. Gore was the first major party presidential candidate to have lost his home state since George McGovern lost South Dakota in 1972.

On January 6, 2001, a joint-session of Congress met to certify the electoral vote. Twenty members of the House of Representatives, most of them Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus, rose one-by-one to file objections to the electoral votes of Florida. However, according to an 1877 law, any such objection had to be sponsored by both a representative and a senator, and no senator would co-sponsor these objections. Therefore, Gore, who was presiding in his capacity as President of the Senate, ruled each of these objections out of order.

Democrats blamed third party candidate Ralph Nader for taking the election away from Gore. Nader received some 97,000 votes in Florida. According to the Washington Post, exit polls there showed that "47 percent of Nader voters would have gone for Gore if it had been a two-man race, and only 21 percent for Bush," which would have given Gore a margin of some 24,000 votes over Bush. Some Democrats claim that had Nader not run, Gore would have won both New Hampshire and Florida and won the election with 296 electoral votes. (He only needed one of the two to win.) Defenders of Nader, including Dan Perkins, argued that the margin in Florida was small enough that Democrats could blame any number of third-party candidates for the defeat, including a "Workers World Party," which received 1,500 votes.

We elect presidents by an electoral college per the constitution.

Bush won in 2004 also.

GET OVER IT!

Answer 7

It's been nearly 7 years, get over it already. Gore lost, Bush won. The investiagtions didn't find any fraud, and Bush got re-elected.

EDIT:
DanC is correct, we are governed by a democratic republic. True democracy is mob rule. Under true democracy, there would be no minority rights .(I'm not refering to ethnic minorities). So be careful what you wish for.

Answer 8

Perhaps so. But I don't believe for a second that any politician would "step aside" once declared the legal winner, regardless of other considerations.

Ok, Washington might have . . .


Edit-- And to those of you who are insisting we are a "republic" and not a "democracy", you're wrong, too. If you want to be completely accurate, we are a Constitutionally-limited Democratic Republic.

Answer 9

No. And make no mistake about it : I CAN'T STAND GEORGE BUSH !! The rules are who ever wins the Electoral College wins the election. Too bad it had to be Bush.

Answer 10

1. Even if he hadn't cheated and worked with operatives in Florida to steal and subvert the election, he would have been coronated in some way. What we're going through now has been in the works for decades.

2. Stand up things are not in his book.

3. They'll tell you (somewhat accurately), it isn't a democracy but a Republic.

4. Join the resistance. There is a lot of work, and probably bloodshed ahead of us and we need every able person.