November 3, 2023: Contested Elections: 2000

[75 yearsago this week, Dewey didn’t defeat Truman—but the 1948 election was close andcontested enough that onenewspaper famously reported he did. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that electionand a few other hotly contested ones (not including 2020, because itreally wasn’t), leading up to a special Guest Post from an FSU alum andtalented young journalist who would never get it so wrong!]

On threefrustrating aftermaths of the most hotlycontested presidential election in our history.

1)     The climate crisis: It’s hard to remember exactlywhere our narratives stood in 2000, but I think it’s fair to say that Al Gore’s central rolein raising the alarm about climate change (or global warming, as it wasgenerally known then) was seen by many as at least slightly kooky, if notoutright silly, somewhat akin to the whole “AlGore invented the internet” conversations. As that hyperlinked articleargues, those latter critiques of Gore were pretty off-base—but not nearly asoff-base as any and all downplaying of his climate change activism. I don’tknow for sure what a Gore administration might have been able to do over thosefour or eight years to address the climate crisis, but I will always regret—andbelieve every one of us humans should regret—that we weren’t able to find out.

2)     The Supreme Court: No electoral aftereffectscould ever be as important as those, certainly not on a global scale. Butcloser to home, I would argue that the 2000 election, and more exactly thehugely and rightfully controversial Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision thatultimately decided said election, played a crucial role in shaping one of themost significant stories in 21st century American politics andsociety: the ever-more-overtly politicized presence of our highest court. As Iargued in this 2016 HuffPost piece, the Supreme Courthas always been political, and those origins and histories are important tokeep in mind. But nonetheless, the Court’s blatant and (to this AmericanStudier,among many others) unconstitutional intervention in a presidential electionmarked a decidedly more political role still, and at the very leastforeshadowed one of the single worst and most destructive court decisions inour history, CitizensUnited (2010).

3)     January 6th: Obviously—and Ido mean obviously—the November 2000 “BrooksBrothers riot” in Florida that sought to end the electoral recount there(and that most definitely did influence the Supreme Court’s ruling) was farfrom the first such expression of mass outrage and potential violence seekingto affect the outcome of an American election. But I nonetheless agree withthis excellent ChrisLehmann piece for The Nation thatthe 2000 riot was a direct predecessor to the January 6th, 2021insurrection, most especially in the ways that it demonstrated that far-rightrage and violence could dictate our national politics. Not sure any single factormore directly contributed to the rise and age of Trump, and I know that nosingle event better encapsulated those trends than did January 6th.One more reason to (as sarcastically as possible) thank the 2000 election.

SpecialGuest Post this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?