Earlier today, Tim Tagaris had an amazing post,
My ATM Pin Number - Or Fundraising On-line that sparked something that I believe we should pay attention to because it is what the blogosphere has been asking for.
If you read the piece, you'll understand why Tim Tagaris is a communications visionary. In the comments, Matt Stoller
wrote:
Tim,
I'm working at NDN for Simon's prospective chair race. We have a special situation, in that there are 447 DNC members who vote. What would you suggest?
Also, my email is matt@bopnews.com. Please email me.
Thanks.
When I saw it, my first thought was, YES. There are great ideas on the blogosphere every day and I believe many of us are in favor of reform because we want responsive leadership. This was the perfect example. Sure Rosenberg has a reputation for lurking, but knowing Stoller will keep him in the loop on anything he might miss is a great credit. Tim showed he "gets it" with his writing and his history of online innovation. Stoller showed that Rosenberg "gets it" when he followed up on a good idea and asked for more.
But that isn't why I'm writing a diary. The reason I'm writing a dairy is because of what I read a few minutes ago. On the day before Christmas Eve, late in the day, news broke on Gregiore winning in Washington. So I headed over to the NDN Blog and sure enough not only had Rosenberg noticed, but he had written about it. Himself. And it is really good shit.
He begins by talking about Washington:
The apparent reversal of the Washington Governor's race means much than a good win right before the holidays. By showing once and for all that a recount of a close, contested election can find human error and change the outcome of an election, the Washington case reminds us that the Supreme Court's rationale in stopping the vote in 2000 - and the legitimacy of the Bush Presidency - was predicated on a great big lie.
Whooah there, I guess he only talks about Washington for a sentence. Then he pivots and uses it as an example to bash Bush. Which he continues to do:
Throughout that awful fight in 2000 the Bush/Baker/Rove argument was that machine counting was more accurate then hand counting and therefore the effort to count the votes again was an illegitimate exercise. While in many cases machines will be more accurate than hands in counting votes, the dispute in Florida - just like in Washington - was not over machine versus hand. It was whether to count at all, and which ones to count. In both cases well-intentioned election workers made mistakes. In both cases state and local laws required human oversight of the audit/recount. Why? Why not just run the ballots through the machines again and call it a day? Well, experience has shown that lost boxes turn up, numbers get written down wrong etc, and human-overseen audit/recounts catch these mistakes.
The Bush machine's argument throughout the Florida debacle was that hand re-counting the votes in the contested counties was prone to flawed human error and judgment and therefore could not possibly yield a better result. They fought to have the hand re-counting shut down because like in Washington State they were worried that in these heavily Democratic counties enough new votes would turn up and give the election to Gore. So, they made up this implausible story - hand supervised recounts are fatally flawed - and sold it hard to the media and the American public. An unprepared Gore campaign did not fight the Bush campaign's story, and lost this crucial argument in the court of public opinion. Losing this public argument is what I believe at the end of the day gave the Supreme Court the confidence to unexpectedly overturn the Florida Supreme Court's order to keep the counting going.
I vividly remember a poll done by a national news outlet right before the Supreme Court ruled that showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans believed machine counts to be more reliable than hand counts, feeding into the sense that this human recount happening in Florida - which was being conducted exactly as state and local law required - was somehow illegitimate and unfair.
History will show that the entire Bush Presidency is based on a gigantic and aggressive lie. Machine counting had nothing to do with the Florida dispute, as it had nothing to do with what happened in Washington. And yet that is how both the public and the Supreme Court understood to be the major issue in 2000. We learned then that the GOP hunger for power would trump their respect for the powerful democratic values that has made America different and better then the rest of the world. It is a lesson America and the world has learned again and again in the years since the Florida debacle.
But instead of just bitching, he presents a better vision for democracy and the Democratic Party:
The other lesson from Washington State is that one Party in America - the Democrats - is for people voting, and the other Party - the Republican Party - is not. We have to make a commitment in the next four years to frame the various arguments about voting around a very simple message - we want to make it easier for everyone to vote and for their vote to be counted. We are for democracy and people voting. The other side isn't. The other Party's philosophy has consistently come down on making it harder for people to vote and have their vote counted. They spend millions intimidating voters. They block reforms to make it easier for folks to vote. They argue against hand recounts. They systemically put too few voting machines in minority, heavy Democratic precincts. Their Secretaries of State consistently cross the line. It goes on.
Democrats want all Americans to vote. They don't.
Friends, this was a big day for Democrats, but an even bigger day for America and our Democracy. Let us take this important story to the American people over the next four years and end the disgraceful reign of these radical Republicans once and for all.
I was glad to see Stollers comment, it is a credit to Rosenberg that Matt gets it. But posting a great blog entry on a late breaking story over the holidays shows that Rosenberg gets it.