The only 2 ways irreparable harm could have occurred in this matter would have been a) Katherine Harris certifying a slate of Gore electors, or b) a Joint Session of Congress overruling Harris and counting the illegally appointed (by the FLA supremes) electors instead of the legally certified ones.
Harris already backed off twice. GOP, the get along to get along party, would have backed over that line if told to by the Floozies.
Given the outright intransigence demonstrated by the four members of the majority of the Florida Supreme Court who accepted all of the legal arguments advanced by Tribe and the Gore legal team (remember, the three judges who dissented on the Florida court warned (and correctly predicted) that the majority opinion would be promptly reversed, in part for reasons very similar to those ultimately adopted by the Bush v. Gore majority), I don't think it's too far-fetched to argue that option a) was a distinct possibility. As Lund has argued:
"Although the Court acted with unprecedented dispatch after the Florida court's December 8, 2000 decision, it was highly improbable that a legally proper recount could be conducted by the December 18 deadline set by federal law. And it was quite impossible for such a recount to meet the December 12 deadline that the Florida court itself had found in Florida law. Contrary to a widespread misconception, the U.S. Supreme Court properly accepted the Florida court's interpretation of state law and provided that court with an opportunity to reconsider its own interpretation of state law. When the clock ran out, it was entirely due to mistakes and delays attributable to the Florida court."
Personally, I think the four judges in the Florida court majority might well have wound up ignoring all this by simply ordering Harris, at the eleventh hour, to certify a slate of Gore electors. Cynical, yes, but nevertheless a possible outcome.
Meanwhile, my primary argument remains wholly intact -- why weren't the nonjusticiability arguments you and Tribe think are so compelling actually advanced by Tribe in the Supreme Court (or by the dissenters in Bush v. Gore) in the first place? As I argued, that's my main concern with Tribe's Monday-morning quarterbacking. Again, as Lund has pointed out: "The least known passages in Bush v. Gore are those in which the dissenters explain why the majority's legal analysis was erroneous. These passages are not well known because they do not exist." Instead, what we got from Justice Stevens was an argument that consisted "of a rhetorical flourish rather than analysis: 'What must underlie [George W. Bush's] entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed.'"