Friday, December 17, 2004

Mayor Daley’s Legacy

Here in Massachusetts it’s axiomatic amongst the liberal inhabitants that George W. Bush ‘stole’ the 2000 election. The idea that a Democrat would do such a thing is dismissed as so much nonsense. Yet, they do seem to keep at it.  Over at the American Thinker, Richard Baehr explains:

The late Chicago columnist Mike Royko often told a story about election night 1960 in Illinois, and the Presidential contest between then-Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon. As Kennedy’s lead over  Nixon in Illinois  kept falling through the night, Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, the Senator’s campaign manager,  nervously kept calling then-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the father of the current Mayor Daley, to get an update on the race. Daley kept assuring Bobby that there was nothing to worry about. Illinois would come through in the end for his brother. Kennedy continued to remain one state short of victory in the Electoral College as night turned into day at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts. Bobby’s growing nervousness finally caused him to blow up at Daley and demand an explanation as to why the Mayor could be so sure of eventual victory in the state. Daley told Bobby that he was “holding out” some precincts in the city, to which Bobby replied: “How do you know they will be enough?”  Daley replied:  “I assure you they will be enough”.

One might have hoped that 44 years on, we would have evolved into a somewhat more transparent and legitimate way of deciding elections, particularly close ones.

Unfortunately, the events unfolding in Washington State the past few weeks in the very tightly contested race for Governor, suggest the Daley approach to politics is still being practiced. When your candidate (in this case, the Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire) appears to be coming up short,  the Party works to find some “missing” votes. When they are still short at the end of the count, they have a recount, and find some more that need to be counted. When that still fails to put their candidate over the top, they demand and pay for a statewide hand recount, and “find” some more. The process, as in Florida in the 2000 Presidential race, is to keep counting and finding votes until your candidate eventually takes the lead. Then you stop counting.  In Washington State in 2004, Democrats in King County are behaving like Chicago Democrats in 1960, and Broward, Dade and Palm Beach County Democrats in 2000.

Maybe they should consider changing the name of the party to Dictacrats. Baehr follows with an excellent summary of the Washington governor’s race - still undecided as of this writing. It’s a must read.

Posted by Matt on 12/17 at 10:54 AM
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