What If...

One of recent history's greatest "What Ifs."

In this clip from the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Al Gore comments on the unfortunate consequences of the 2000 election.  In hindsight, the 2000 election was much more important than most would have imagined, Gore says before explaining how he would have solved the problems plaguing his former opponent's ill-fated  presidency.

Election 2000: Tim Russert

Tim Russert appeared on the Today show on November 13, 2008 to discuss the pathways to victory for each campaign depending on how Florida was allocated. Russert goes into great detail about any possible outcomes of the election, what Katherine Harris might do, what the Gore campaign might do, what the Bush campaign might do. It was an awful shame that Tim didn't get to be involved in the election this year; he surely would have had a ball.

This cartoon characterizes the difficulties many citizen of Florida ran into when attempting to vote in the 2000 election. The main problem with the ballot in Florida was that the ballot was tilted and slanted so the wholes did not exactly match up with each candidate. As many as 19,000 voters realized they accidentally voted for Buchanan and attempted to correct this by punching an additional whole in the third whole for Al Gore, their candidate of choice. However, these ballots were inevitably thrown out and not counted during the recount and this lost Gore the election.

I think this cartoon shows how little understanding the American voters had of the events of the 2000 election. It was extremely confusing even for those actively following. In this case a voter is shown to think that Dangling Chad is the name of a person rather than a problem with ballots. It also in some ways shows how easily people forget the affect that Nader had on that election because there was so much emphasis on the recounts in Florida.

Here's a short clip of Saturday Night Live's Ana Gasteyer as Katherine Harris.

Primary Source Assignment

This cartoon is by Darrin Bell (http://www.rudypark.com/editorialcartoons/topics/elections/2000/001109florida.gif). I like this source because it points out a major issue of the election that was due to a flaw in one person's logic. I don't understand why the ballot needed to be confusing - it really shouldn't be that difficult for people to vote.

COUNTING THE VOTE: HUMOR; Television Shows Find Comedy in the Errors

This article, published 11/17/00, recaps a bunch of goodies for wannabe political humor wonks - including some of the posts that precede mine - well done, students more diligent than myself, well done [new window]. 

Also, this being more recent, Katherine Harris commented on her protrayal in Recount, available in this transcript off FoxNews.com (as she appeared on the ever-entertaining Hannity and Colmes). It's not really anything you wouldn't expect - obviously the film's portrayal was biased and probably over-the-top, but who doesn't love a good puppet-villian here and there?

Finally (and I do mean finally - this clip is so hard to find, it should be boxed in a vanity case and sold on QVC as the special item of the day), I tracked down one of my favorite SNL political skits - the Bush v Gore First Presidential Debate. NBC.com doesn't have this available, and they'll be itchin' more than a man with ants down his pants if they find out this little ditty made it past their de-youtubeing-of-NBC-stuff interns. [Thanks go out to Dan Rather for inspiring me with good 'ole southern backwoods talk.]

[Sorry about the awkwardness of the video placement... AOL Video doesn't like Safari or Firefox when it comes to blogs, it seems: Link to the original source [new window]