63% of Americans Would Eliminate Electoral College
63% of Americans Would Eliminate Electoral College
Al Gore should have won in 2020
More than six in 10 Americans have long regarded the Electoral College as an anachronism and would prefer that the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote become the president, according to the Pew Research Center.
This would have meant Hillary Clinton served as president 2017-2021 instead of Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by nearly three million, and Al Gore served as president from 2001-2005 instead of George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote by 200,000.
Al Gore Could Have Legitimately Divided America Like Trump Did Illegitimately
After losing the too-close-to-call 2000 election due to a 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court , Al Gore “could have handled the whole thing differently,” he told the Washington Post Magazine, “and instead of making a concession speech, launched a four-year rear guard guerrilla campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Bush presidency and to mobilize for a rematch.”
Gore rejected that advice, he said, because “I just didn’t feel like it was in the best interest of the United States or that it was a responsible course of action.”
Donald Trump did exactly as Gore was advised to do but chose not to do, though he had less legitimate reason to do so. More than 60 courts rejected Trump’s appeals to the courts.
2000: When the Wrong Man Was Selected As President
American University Political Scientist Allen Lichtman revisits the 2000 election and says Gore should have been elected, and has proof that black voters in Florida were illegally purged from the rolls.
How the Supreme Court Decided the 2000 Election
History.com: “Learn how Florida ended up determining whether Al Gore or George W. Bush would win the U.S. presidency in 2000. See how a vote recount in the state led to the U.S. Supreme Court giving the election to Bush and subsequently changed voting standards.”
If Al Gore Became President After the 2000 Election….
Al Gore lost Florida, and hence the presidency, by 537 votes in 2000. If the Elian Gonzalez affair had not emerged as an issue in the 2000 election, Gore would have probably won Florida and won the presidency.
Gonzalez's mother drowned in November 1999 while attempting to leave Cuba with her son and her boyfriend to get to the United States. Elian survived and was placed for months with paternal relatives in Miami. But Elian's father in Cuba requested that the boy be returned to him. A federal district judge, as well as Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno felt the law was on the side of Elian's father, and ordered that Elian be returned to his father in Cuba. This enraged anti-Castro Cuban immigrants in Florida.
Vice President Gore initially supported Republican legislation to give the boy and his father permanent residence status in the U.S., but later supported the Clinton Administration position. He was attacked by both for pandering and being inconsistent.
In his novella, "43: When Gore Beat Bush," Jeff Greenfield makes this a central point for how Gore could have won the 2000 election. If Elian Gonzalez's mother did not die in the crossover from Cuba, thereby polarizing the Cuban-American community about what should happen to Elian, thousands of Florida voters would not have been alienated against Gore for waffling on the case. Gore received just 20 percent of Cuban-American votes, whereas Bill Clinton in 1996 received 35 percent of the Cuban-American vote.
However, Greenfield goes on to speculate that Gore would have had a frustrating and fractured four years as president. Republicans would have felt the election was stolen due to extremely close votes in Wisconsin, New Mexico and other close states. Gore would not have been a favorite of liberals because he was determined to prove he was not a "big government liberal" and would have sought federal programs and departments to abolish.
Gore would have been much more attuned to the threat of Al Qaeda, and might well have worked with NSA Director Richard Clarke to have Bin Ladin killed before 9/11. But he would have gotten little credit for that because few people had heard of Bin Ladin or Al Qaeda or knew it was a serious threat.
The threat of terrorist attacks from Islamic extremists would have remained because the American bureaucracy simply wasn't prepared to defend against such attacks, Greenfield argues. Vice President Joe Lieberman would have pushed Gore hard to attack Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. If Gore resisted, and Greenfield argues that he would have, Lieberman likely would have resigned in protest.
With both liberal and conservative Democrats disappointed with Gore, and after 12 years of Democrats in the White House, Greenfield suggests Gore likely would have been beaten by John McCain in 2004. McCain would have eagerly attacked Iraq, so that fiasco probably would not have been avoided either.
Drill Deeper:
"43: When Gore Beat Bush," by Jeff Greenfield.
