Tristero and Avedon both have posts up that further the debate about berlin niebuhr's rant topic below. Both are in response to Farhad Manjoo's rebuttal of RFK's argument in Salon. To me, this is, beyond anything else, a conversation worth having. If, as Tristero says, RFK Jr was less than honest in his write-up, then that does put a damper on what he said. But quite simply, this is an issue that needs to be investigated by as many people as possible (media, bloggers, etc.). If you think RFK Jr's wrong, then prove it. When you see things like "The odds of that happening were 1 in 660,000" (which appeared in his article), then you need to look into it and figure out what happened.
From Avedon:
Manjoo also uses another trick that's become common among Bush-won explainers to discount anomalous results in 2004: dismissing the oddities as being consistent with the 2000 election results.
Has everyone forgotten so soon that much of the result in 2000 was itself anomalous? Don't we recall that Republicans were explaining-away odd outcomes in Florida counties with unsupported claims way back in 2000? Am I alone in remembering that, even then, Democrats were pointing out that this was a new phenomenon? Unless debunkers are prepared to go back to earlier elections when results were not in dispute, we can't accept 2000 as a control against which to measure the 2004 election.
Interestingly, Manjoo repeats the mistake of dismissing the entire thesis on the grounds that no single method of suppression was sufficient to depress the Democratic vote enough to throw the election for Bush. That's a very odd analysis indeed; since no one is claiming that long lines in Democratic precincts alone were what resulted in the alleged Bush victory, it makes no sense to say things like:
But even if Kerry got two-thirds of those ballots -- a huge margin, matching what he got in Ohio's bluest counties -- he'd have won about 86,000 more votes, while Bush would have won 43,000 more. This would have reduced the final 118,000-margin in Ohio to about 75,000 -- that is, Bush would still have been comfortably in the lead.
That would only be a legitimate criticism if no other method of voter suppression (or vote-cooking) had been reported.
Bingo. The other thing I'd like to add is, if you read the magazine version of this article, you find a chart/graphic that adds up the numbers of votes lost by different methods...voter suppression, ballot stuffing in rural counties, etc., and it ends up being a lot larger number than 86,000. While I'm sure Manjoo makes some legit points, it pisses me off that he doesn't acknowledge that RFK outlined at least ten different ways that the election might have been affected/stolen, and to me that makes the entire intent of his 'rebuttal' pretty dishonest.
|