Collusion: The Day Before the 2000 Election

A Publius Essay | 18 December 2003 | Publius

[Publius]

The following is a work of fiction, although I suspect there is far too much fact in it for comfort.

It is the day before the presidential election of 2000. The place is a conference room in an office building in New York City. Present are representatives of the Democratic National Committee and the various network representatives with the old Voters News Service. To protect the guilty, identities will be stated by organization, not name.

DNC: Good morning, gentlemen. You’re probably wondering why we asked that this meeting be held in a building not connected with your parent organizations. A neutral site, as it were.

CNN: Not me. You’ve got something up your sleeve.

DNC: Gentlemen, we’re in a difficult situation. Our polling indicates that this election will be the closest since 1960. And that means we’re going to have to duplicate our success of that year.

CBS: Sam Giancana’s dead. That dog won’t hunt.

DNC: Our means are different, even if our end is the same. We have too much riding on this election. The fate of the country. The fate of liberalism. The fate of everything you and your corporate ancestors have worked for since the end of World War II. This one is going to be too close, and we’re going to have to guide the voters to the correct decision. (pauses) We believe the key is Florida.

NBC: The old chalkboard doesn’t lie.

DNC: No, sir, it doesn’t. Florida is an unusual state. It’s split between two time zones with a single time for the closing of the polls. That means that the polls in Florida close twice, once for each time zone. The Eastern time zone is dominated by Democratic votes in South Florida, and the Central time zone by Republican votes in redneck country. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, the networks call Florida for Gore when the polls in the Eastern time zone shut down.

CNN: You just skated off the edge. That’s illegal!

DNC: It’s a violation of administrative law, not criminal law. The fine is chump change.

NBC: And then the FCC investigates and takes away the licenses of our TV stations.

DNC: I can guarantee you the Gore Administration will make sure the investigation exonerates your organizations of any and all illegalities.

NBC: You know, if Clinton had packed it in before impeachment, we wouldn’t be here. You’d be sitting on a Gore landslide tomorrow.

DNC: When we suggested resignation to the president, he threw us out of his office. You were all quite helpful in digging up the dirt on Thurmond and Lott—

CBS: And Byrd and Hyde and Burton and Livingston—

ABC: And Jefferson—

(general laughter)

DNC: Your country and cause need you today, gentlemen.

ABC: My country doesn’t have your problems with Radical Right buffoons.

DNC: Present company excepted. (pauses) We believe that an early call of Florida will suppress enough Republican turnout to hand the state to Gore. (pauses for effect) And as many as three to eleven other states.

CBS: This isn’t a pile of Texas-size BS you’re shoveling, son?

DNC: No, sir, it’s real. We have an opportunity to change history and keep this country on the right track. We can prevent a catastrophe.

NBC: I want to hear the legal technicalities you plan to skirt. We’re talking election fraud here. Jack Welch would can the entire news division if he knew what we were doing.

DNC: Technically, it’s not fraud. The Constitution states that federal elections are to be held on the same day. There is no legal possibility of a revote. Individual votes can be challenged as fraudulent, but not an entire election. Let’s take a worst case scenario.

CBS: The Republicans scream collusion.

DNC: You just say it was a bureaucratic snafu. An innocent little mistake. Somebody forgot that Florida has two closing times. (pauses) There’s no possibility of a court declaring a revote. There will be challenges to individual ballots only and in a few jurisdictions, but not enough to make a difference. The Republicans will scream, but even if they could prove we threw the election – which they can’t – they won’t have any legal recourse. They’ll fold like Nixon. And then Gore takes the heat off after the election. The worst that can happen is a fine from the FCC, and that’s unlikely because we can control that.

CBS: But what about our journalistic integrity?

(general laughter)

CBS: Aw c’mon, guys!

The rest of this story is known to everyone.

• Florida was called early. The Republican vote in Central time Florida was reduced by the announcement. Florida was put in play.
• New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin went Democratic by paper-thin margins. Vote fraud was rampant in Milwaukee and Madison.
• The Establishment Media went to the wall to spin every event for the Democrats.
• The US Supreme Court had to end it on the eve of the Electoral College vote.

But the story doesn’t really end there.

On the morning of the 2002 congressional elections, every single VNS satellite uplink failed. A few months later, VNS was shut down and liquidated. I can imagine an emergency meeting held on election day afternoon in the same conference room.

CBS: They know! They found out we were going to do it again!

DNC: Let’s not panic, everyone. I got up here on the train as fast as I could. It could just be sunspots.

CNN: Sunspots?! Every single f***ing uplink?!

NBC: No. Somebody ordered the NSA to shut us down. Bush.

ABC: No. Bush would need deniability. I bet Cheney made the call.

DNC: Gentlemen, this is only about a congressional election. The stakes are high, but not like two years ago. There’s nothing to worry about. What’s our backup plan?

NBC: Listen, pal, there’s this thing called the Patriot Act. One phone call from DC and any one of us could disappear. Suppose Ashcroft construes election fraud as treason! I don’t know about you, but when they pour that white-hot lead up my ass, I’ll give them name, rank, serial number – and the identity of every girl, boy and sheep you guys have banged over the past twenty years!

DNC: You’re being paranoid.

CNN: How do we know they haven’t got this room wired?

CBS: How do we know one of us isn’t wired?

(long silence)

ABC: Grab him!

(sounds of scuffle)

CBS: Rip his pants off! Find the wire!

DNC: Ouch, you’re hurting me!!

[Chad Fairbanks]

Yeah. THey have people to do all those voices and stuff!

[HaveGunWillTravel]

I'm quite certain that you are mistaken about fox calling the election for Gore. I was watching at the time at my Democrat brother in law's house. Naturally, he had the tv tuned in to some left wing network. When they started calling it for Gore, he laughed and I insisted that we change the channel to Fox. Fox was calling it for Bush and never looked back. I insisted that we keep the channel on Fox.

[Publius]

Paladin, my memory gets a bit befuddled thinking about that night. (It was not a pleasant evening after NBC handed it to Gore.) But I think you're right. I remember something about a Bush cousin keeping Fox News from falling for the Big Lie.

[Publius]

Somebody needs to get the URL for this article to Limbaugh. If nothing else, he'd get a good laugh.

[hosepipe]

LOL... good post.... if only...

[SW6906]

Well done, sir, well done!!

[Darksheare]

LOL!
I love it!

[teeman8r]

i concur, fox was unabashedly for bush... i stopped watching cbs news coverage when someone said "we lost florida" after having said for hours that gore won florida...

teeman

[Publius]

The open bias at the networks was frightening. It was obvious they thought they had it in the bag.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[bigfootbob]

Excellent read. The early call has really bugged me since it happened. I was in my precinct on my way to pick up several elderly and several registered voters I knew who would not vote unless taken to the polls when the call came out about Florida. I couldn't get a one to go vote.

[Publius]

That was the plan. An insidious way to throw the election without getting caught. It was a case where perception could be fashioned into reality.

[Recovering_Democrat]

ping for later read.

[Publius]

Ping. My first Publius Essay in two years. What do you think about the premise?

[Congressman Billybob]

Good evening,

I read your essay before I left for Tennessee for Christmas things. While the logic is there, I tend not to find intent and malice where simple incompetence is sufficient to explain the events.

I know that Democrats cheat in elections, especially in big cities. However, I don't think the networks are out to cheat. On the otehr hand, they are not out to do their job competently. A competent director would know that states like Florida and Indiana have multiple time zones, and therefore a chance of multiple poll closing times.

IMHO.

John / Billybob

[ThePythonicCow]

no the Elian debacle was a scam

Would you be so kind as to answer the rhetorical questions you ask? I have insufficient memory of the event to make head or tails of what point you are making, and what evidence you are enlisting.

I googled about a bit, and found such as the following, at South Coast Today , but I am still unable to connect your implied dots:

Child rescued after days at sea

By Terry Spencer, Associated Press writer

MIAMI -- Sam Ciancio and Donato Dalrymple planned to spend the early part of their Thanksgiving hoping to hook dolphin fish off the Florida coast.
Then they saw the inner tube.
Clinging to the inflated ring was 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez, one of three survivors from a boat carrying 14 Cubans that sank two days earlier in the Atlantic Ocean.

Ciancio said the child was appealing for help even as he pulled him to safety and cradled him in his arms about 2 miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale.
"If there's anybody who doesn't believe there's a God alive, today they do, on Thanksgiving," Ciancio said.

[cars for sale]

sent ya a private detailed freeper mail

[ThePythonicCow]

Why do you not post publically what you freeped me in private? I saw nothing private in it.

[cars for sale]

because I've posted it 5 times in the last 4 months to no avail