Our man is the president. The election was a fiasco. Both sides played anti-democratic hard-ball politics. Neither was interested in hearing the unvarnished will of the people.
How can anyone deny that more people intended to vote for Gore? But of course intentions don't matter. Actual (counted) votes do.
But when you count all the legally countable votes, Gore got more. Too bad for his sorry ass. He gets his comeuppance because he didn't have enough principle to seek a count of all the votes. He got what he deserves, which isn't the presidency.
Bush gets the presidency. Partly because of his own strategizing which was more bare knuckle and even less principled than Gore's. Politics ain't pretty. Let's not pretend either side was high-mind, interested in democratic principles and the truth. If you believe that ....
Bush gets his comeuppance too, in a way. History will not look kindly on this election. The fact is that he didn't win a plurality of legal votes.
But he has the stage and it matters more what he does with it now, not what he did to get it. I think anybody who insists that Bush got more votes is a cowardly, self-deceptive liar. I'm sorry to have people roughly on my side who refuse to admit simple obvious truths.
Don't get me wrong. I love the bare knuckle game -- when it's kept within reasonable bounds. And I think we should be pleased that the liberal press is largely too cowardly and ass-licking to speak the truth. That serves our purposes and shows how easily they can be cowed.
But let's not pretend.
I definitely do not wish to be included in the group of people you consider to be on your side. You have no "side", your side is simply you talking to yourself.
While you may be a self-congratulatory gadfly and thoroughly, albeit singly, enamoured of your own analysis, quite to the contrary history will simply show that the law and the Constitution when upheld, are bare-knuckled enough to take on theives and slime who don't chose to play by the rules.
Your attempt to equate Bush and Gore on the basis of hard-ball politics alone neglects the overarching point that Bush had the law on his side and Gore didn't. Your plurality point is nonsense since those aren't the rules of "the game." George Bush doesn't have to waste his time re-assembling the widely identified instances of voter fraud accomplished by Dems nationally which give the appearance of +500K votes more for Gore.
Bush won by playing the game by the rules. You and Democrats may not like the rules, but that doesn't make GWB any less the established President that he is.
History will look back and give an account of how perilously close the American public came to being defrauded of the better man for President. It will give an account of the affirmation of the rule of law following 8 years of seemingly "no controlling legal authority."