Friday, November 21, 2008

What Is Missing From This Election?

Soap Box Ravings has been wondering what is missing from the election held on 4 November, 2008. After racking his brain for almost three weeks he has realized why.

There is no after election whining from the Democrats.


Lets see, after the 2000 election the news media called the election for the wrong man before the Florida polls closed. Then we had the hanging chads in Florida which resulted in a December 12 7-2 United States Supreme Court decision stating that the Florida Supreme Court's plan for recounting ballots was unconstitutional, as well as a 5-4 United States Supreme Court decision that ended the Florida recounts and allowed Florida to certify its vote.

On January 6, 2001, a joint session of Congress met to certify the electoral vote. Twenty members of the House of Representatives, mostly 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. No senator would co-sponsor these objections, deferring to the Supreme Court's ruling. Therefore, Senator Al Gore, who was presiding in his capacity as President of the Senate, ruled each of these objections out of order.

Bush subsequently became the President-elect after the electoral votes from all 50 states and the District of Columbia were certified by the joint session of Congress. Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001.



Then we had the 2004 election between President Bush and Senator John Kerry. As in the 2000 presidential election, voting controversies and concerns of irregularities emerged during and after the vote.

Meanwhile, Senator John Kerry, who earlier in his career had publicly thrown away his Vietnam medals and associated with Jane Fonda, was accused by the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, who averred that "phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward." The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge. And so, the term "swift boating" was added to the mantra of Democrat whines.

Since the Democrats won this time, they finally beat George Bush, even though he was not in the race.

There are some comments being made about the election, but the Republican comments seem to be mainly against Republicans. The only area of dispute seems to be in the Senate race in Minnesota in which discovered votes for the Democrat runner continue to be found. They will probably continue to be found in the true Democrat tradition until Al Franken is declared the winner.

Yet at this point, almost three weeks after the election, Republican whine compared to Democrat whine in the past is almost non-existent. Who would have thought.