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WORST JOB IN THE WORLD Which circle of Hell would this be, exactly? For one's sins, one spends eternity as a Democratic spokesman with the duty of finding a rationale for why everything is terrible: According to one Democratic operative, the Dow's record close is "not an achievement but a failure." Robert Weiner, a Democratic strategist and former member of the Clinton administration, said people should remember it's taken nearly seven years for the Dow to break its previous record close, which happened on Jan. 14, 2000 - near the end of Bill Clinton's presidency... He said Tuesday's stock market...

If there's one thing Donovan Riley apparently learned during his time in Chicago, it was "Vote early and often." Riley, 69, the former CEO of the University of Illinois Medical Center and a former law professor at Loyola University, is running for a state senate seat in Milwaukee. On Nov. 7, 2000, the day of the big election between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Riley appeared at the polling place in Oconomowac, Wis., where he had registered to vote just the day before, voting records show. His ex-wife owned a home there. "Then he drove...

Single-issue people. They're out there... on every thread. No matter what the topic, they try to link it to their pet issue in some way, shape, or form. They are... The Thread Hijackersâ„¢. While little can be done to stop them, and it is probably best to ignore them, I find it much, much more fun to mock them. Sure, being passionate about an issue you care about is a good thing, but thread hijacking is annoying and, to be honest, turns off people who might otherwise agree with you. So, on to the mocking. I'd like to coin the...

Five years after the controversial 2000 presidential election, ex-President Jimmy Carter now says he's certain Al Gore defeated George W. Bush. "Well I would say that in the year 2000, the country failed abysmally in the presidential election process," Carter told a panel Monday at American University in Washington, D.C. "There's no doubt in my mind that Al Gore was elected president."

The 2000 election is still an open sore on the body politic. That was clear from the outraged reaction to my mention last week of what would have happened with a full statewide manual recount of Florida. This reaction seems to confuse three questions. One is what would have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't intervened; the answer is that unless the judge overseeing the recount had revised his order (which is a possibility), George W. Bush would still have been declared the winner. The second is what would have happened if there had been a full, statewide manual...

Thoughtful Democrats — the rarest birds on the endangered species list — might want to ponder this: "Another hanging chad has dropped. His name is John G. Roberts Jr., and he undoubtedly will turn out to be opposed to abortion rights, affirmative action, an expansive view of federal powers and a reading of the Constitution that takes a properly suspicious view of the state's embrace of religion. You hang enough chads, and you get to change the Supreme Court." That's not moveon.org, or the wilder shores of the Internet. That's Richard Cohen, big-time columnist in that bastion of mainstream media,...

<p>We know Bush won again because eight major news organizations pooled their resources to find out what would have happened if the Supreme Court had not intervened and stopped an ill-conceived statewide recount of presidential votes in Florida last December. I say ill-conceived because the Florida Supreme Court ordered the recount, while inviting abuse and discord by refusing to set counting criteria -- even after Palm Beach County election officials had changed their definition of a valid vote three times.</p>

Dateline, Election 2000 "Pre-season" WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Political analysts inside the Beltway remain unimpressed with a potential presidential run by Texas Governor George W. Bush. The younger Bush, son of former President George Bush, remains popular in Texas but is seen as unlikely to maintain a serious, larger campaign throughout the country. A potential race by Governor Bush against Vice President Al Gore is seen as a severe mismatch. Gore's strengths lie in the domestic issues that are the primary concern of American voters. "The Vice President carries all of the policy strengths of Bill Clinton, but none of the...

Someone with better access to Florida's election data that I am can now settle a question leftover from the 2000 Election. As you'll recall, the tv networks called Florida for Gore before the polls had even closed in the Central Time Zone part of the state, depressing the amount of votes Bush likely would have received. Now that the 2004 Election is over, it's possible to extrapolate how much that early call may have cost Bush. 1. Take the Florida counties that are in the Central Time Zone. Count the total number of votes cast in the presidential elections in...

Sometimes a decision made in the heat of partisan battle has reverberations for years to come. One such decision was the one of Al Gore's campaign to selectively challenge the results of the 2000 election in Florida by demanding hand counts of votes cast in three counties -- Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. The latter two produce huge majorities for Democratic candidates, and the election officials in charge of the hand counts were Democrats. In other words, Gore sought new counts only in areas where he was likely to gain votes and would not take the risk of a statewide...

The most famous woman in Palm Beach County drives a big, fancy 2004 Lincoln Town Car. But not because she's flashy. In almost every way, Theresa LePore is the opposite of flashy. She speaks softly, deliberately, and rarely about herself. She never wears red. She dutifully works, works, works, in a job that's about as glamorous as an old Honda, for 100-plus hours a week, seven days a week. Her demeanor, her wardrobe, her shy smile — all those outward signs say: Don't notice me. But, of course, people do notice her. All around the world, people know her face....

Anti-American attitudes are a daily fact of life in Great White NorthBy NORA JACOBSON I moved to Canada after the 2000 election. Although I did it mainly for career reasons — I got a job whose description read as though it had been written precisely for my rather quirky background and interests — at the time I found it gratifying to joke that I was leaving the United States because of George W. Bush. It felt fine to think of myself as someone who was actually going to make good on the standard election-year threat to leave the country. Also,...

Sam Rayburn, the great 20th-century Democratic speaker of the House, was noted for a line he used on the more obtuse members of his party who failed to learn the lesson of a political setback. "There's no education in the second kick of a mule," he would say. Wise as that advice might have been for individual legislators, the opposite is true when it comes to Mr. Rayburn's party. Democrats begin to learn their lessons only after they have been beaten twice.

Every election year we are told that this is the most important election in our lifetime. Usually this can be laughed off as political hyperbole, but sometimes it is true. The election of 1860 certainly comes to mind as an election of monumental impact on this Nation. The election of Woodrow Wilson saw the end of American isolationism, while the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 brought the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Now we are facing an election of unprecedented importance; the future of the United States as a world leader and the survival of Western...

John F. Kerry has a long history of opposing the use of American military force to defend our vital interests. But the presidential campaign has so far virtually ignored his shameful behavior in the 1980s, when President Reagan was defeating Communism not only in Europe, but also much closer to home. President Reagan took office in January, 1981. The release of the American hostages by Iran resolved only one of the many problems he inherited from the Carter Administration. Soviet troops had invaded Afghanistan. Marxist rebels had seized the nation of Angola in Africa. In Central America, Marxist guerrillas were...

Bush Wins Election--If Kerry Doesn't Cheat Written by Isaiah Sterrett Thursday, October 28, 2004 Next Tuesday, when millions of Americans make a choice that will forever affect America and the world, George W. Bush will be reelected--assuming that Sen. Kerry and his thugs don’t attempt to rip off the people by cheating. This is not the worry of an alarmist partisan looking for excuses; this is the worry of someone who was alive four years ago. The Supreme Court can be a pretty loopy bunch, especially since Clinton added Ginsburg. But in 2000, the justices broke precedent and did their...

ALBERT GORE III and John Forbes Kerry, two of America’s most blue-blooded and buttoned-up white politicians, swayed awkwardly to gospel music and preached a message of black revenge in churches across Florida yesterday, imploring African-Americans to turn out in their droves on election day and defeat President Bush. Mr Gore, returning to the state that destroyed his presidential hopes four years ago after its bitterly disputed 36-day recount drama, delivered a gospel of civil rights and anger, acutely aware that without a massive turnout from African-American voters on November 2, Mr Kerry has virtually no chance of defeating President Bush....

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — He was introduced as the president-elect, or more simply the president. He sat stoically as he was described as the man who would be in the White House today had the Republicans not "spit on the graves'' of African American civil rights leaders. But in a potential hothouse of anger, Al Gore yesterday stood before the congregation at the Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church and told angry black voters to channel their frustration constructively so they will never be disenfranchised again. "Love thy neighbour,'' said Gore, during a highly symbolic swing through Florida nine days before the...

At the very end of some of those wonderful old Sci-fi films of the fifties, just when you expected to read "The End" on the screen, the words "The Beginning" would eerily appear instead and you'd get the distinct impression that the scary nightmare you'd been watching for the last ninety minutes was not yet over. Well, our presidential elections are sort of like that now. You think it's almost over, you think it's the end .. But it's only the beginning. Ooooo!

A sharp-eyed Kerry Spot reader notices that MSNBC is stating the polls close in Florida at 7 pm, EST. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. The polls in eastern Florida close then. The polls in the panhandle are open another hour. Of course, GOP officials say this is what cost Bush a big lead in Florida in 2000. West Florida Kerry Spot readers, you must, must, must do everything possible to make sure your friends and neighbors, no matter who they are voting for, know when the polls actually close. I have no faith in the "good intentions" of the networks....