Election Delay Blame

(01 December 2000)

It will be interesting to see who the American public blames for the delay.

The choices:

1. Local politicians everywhere, but most publicly in FL, tolerating obsolete voting practices.

2. Gore for not conceding when the elected Sec'y of State acts within her prerogative to proclaim a Bush victory when the count is obviously deficient.

3. Bush for accepting a less than clean outcome and for running a series of successful delaying tactics...in a state his brother runs.

4. Both of them for not winning decisively, esp. Gore for whom it should have been a cake walk.

5. The press for magnifying the story to the point of nausea.

6. Clinton for giving back Elian and thereby making the Miami Cubans angry.

7. Ourselves for not demanding better candidates and demanding better leadership from the ones we've got.

8. The system of a two year election cycle which wears down the psyche of any candidate who survives to the finish.

9. Ourselves for an outcome that set up the possibility of mediocre appointments for whomever's administration...hard enough to get good people to sit through a partisan Senate grilling, and harder still to get good people to agree to serve in an administration, either one, most likely doomed to be flawed and angry.

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