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The true legacies of the 2000 election are:

1. African-Americans finally discovered that literacy, or rather the lack of it, has consequences at the voting booth. Naturally, the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton chose not to highlight this embarassing, and tragic situation: they were too busy threatening riots if they did not get their way (i.e. Gore in the White House).

2. The issue of vote fraud was finally moved from the darkened, smokey back rooms of politics and was exposed to the clear light of day. Examples:
- The City of Philadelphia reported (with a straight face) 103% voter turnout.
- Missouri Democrats reversed a long-standing tradition and got live people to vote for a dead man. SOmehow, his wife got his job, leading me to try to remember just where it is stated in the Constitution that one could inherit a Senate seat.
- Illegal aliens all over the country were hastily supplied with flimsy paper notices from the then Commander-in-crotch...errr...cheif, suddenly bestowing upon them the right to vote. Amazingly, most of these showed up in Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Chicago.
- Creditable stories of people being offered money and goods for their vote were a dime a dozen at the time. From the homeless in Milwaukee being given food asnd cigarettes to vote for Al Gore, to the tales of vote buying on Indian Reservations in North Dakota.

3. Certain subsets of Americans finally proved that Western Civilization is the greatest invention on the planet, that allows the feeble and the feebleminded to not only survive, yet prosper, regardless of your inability to poke a hole through a piece of cardboard with a sharp piece of metal, count, or read signs directing you to help with your ballot pasted on every vertical surface every 4 inches, or even be aware of just what the heck you're doinig in a voting booth.

4. The judicial system was finally exposed for what it truly is: a bunch of people in black robes, faking dignity and accountability, and making up the law as they go. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Florida, where the state supreme court refused to enforce the very election laws they are sworn to uphold.

5. America was finally given the opportunity to the see the REAL Democratic Party in action, using every means available to make a naked grab for power.

6. We saw Al Gore for what he really is: a spoiled brat, who throws a tantrum when he doesn't get his way.

7. We learned that the intensive media coverage of elections, more to fill airtime than anything else, has consequences at the voting booth --- the early call for Gore in Florida may have hurt Bush (the state straddles two time zones). The media has no business projecting winners, since it has the power to manipulate the results, and should wait until the tallies are in before making such announcements.

8. We were introduced to the lovely, and gutsy, Catherine Harris.

Oh I forgot one other thing:

9. We witnessed the process of attempted theft of an election,live and in color, on our television screens, as people argued over whether a dent, scrape, nick, etc. on a punchcard, rather than a clearly punched-through hole, constituted a vote.

10. We also witnessed folks attempting to "divine" a voter's intention, like Nostradamus, on ballots that were clearly not valid, and in some cases, not even marked in the appropriate spot.

11. We learned that in today's high-tech world, ,our government apparatus is still operating on 19th century technology. To our shame.

Wombat

Great analysis,

Some of my thoughts:

Up to 3 days before the election Rasmussen and Portrait of America had GWB up to 9 points ahead. After the Maine DWI fiasco it shrank, but this is interesting. PoA (or Rasmussen) went back and re-sampled there pool after the election and came out 46 44 for Bush. Think about it, in a race of 100 million votes, a percentage point is a million votes, so how did they scam 2 million plus?

In terms of other irregularities do not forget the Students in Wisconsin, and the "Snowbird" double voters in FLA that also voted in NY, NJ, etc. Also living in Metro Detroit area, Detroit had a 95% turn out hmmmm... way above the national average.

Mary Matalin on Imus a few days after the election I think tipped GWB's Teams Hat and NO ONE CAUGHT IT, BUT I DID, she said they planned for an Electoral win. Now I do not want to read to much spin into that or put on a tinfoil hat, but did they suspect they were going to try to skunk them and they planned for it?

In the grand scheme of things, cheaters never prosper, they (Gore and Company) blew it by 600 votes. Post 9-11, I can't help but wonder if GWB's victory wasn't somehow helped via the "Almighty". My gosh were would we be with AL Gore now?

Post 9-11 I hope and I remain optimistic that no irregularities will occur for the ballots cast by our brave men and women in uniform for 2004, we cannot have what happened to them in 2000 repeated.