I mentioned a few days ago, my belief that most Americans would come to regard as fact, the concept that Al Gore actually won Florida…or perhaps I should have said, "…should have won Florida." This prompted a number of folks to bombard me with "evidence" and facts, all about various press recounts and how many overseas ballots were counted without postmarks and such. Actually, I've read all this stuff and it led me to the conclusion that, based on the count, the final totals could go either way.
A lot of the tallies involved votes for which the rules are unestablished and arguable, and the Bush people did a better job of getting their arguments accepted by a state government that, after all, was controlled by their candidate's brother and their candidate's campaign manager. There is a reasonable interpretation of the balloting that makes Bush a slight victor, just as there's a reasonable interpretation that would have given the state to Gore…and anyone who thinks their guy "definitely" got more votes is, I think, believing what they want to believe.
Actually, my belief that Bush's victory will become more and more tainted is based on following the stories about the vast numbers of Florida voters — most of them, black and Democratic — who were denied their right to vote at all. That story is not going to go away and, even if it is ultimately viewed as a paperwork screw-up and not an intentional act, I think it's going to become accepted that Bush would not have come close to winning the state, but for that screw-up. And, of course, a lot of people will never accept that it was not an accident…
For more on the matter, check out the website of Greg Palast. He's the B.B.C. reporter who broke a lot of this story. Here's a link to an article he did for Harper's that lays it all out in some detail and, elsewhere on his site, you'll find the text of Katherine Harris's rebuttal, which merely argues that the errors were not intentional. I'm not arguing that they were or weren't. I believe that the fact that they were made at all will be accepted as the only reason Bush didn't decisively lose the vote total in Florida.
I still believe that the next presidential election will turn almost wholly on how well the war on terrorism has been fought. But I also think that Bush will lose the argument that he was fairly elected in 2000, as he and Cheney are starting to lose the argument that their past business dealings were always Kosher. The press pounced on the assertions that Clinton had committed crimes in Whitewater and that he was humping interns in the Oval Office. Future terrorist attacks notwithstanding, they'll pounce on the assertions that Bush and Cheney reaped millions in shady stock deals and that black, Democratic voters in Florida got screwed.