Anyone who remembers the 2000 presidential election can tell you that it was a crazy time in this country. We went to bed the night of the election thinking we had a president only to find out the next morning — and for many, many mornings thereafter — that it wasn’t a done deal. Al Gore, however, did not call it rigged for months beforehand.
2000 Presidential Election – Recount Was Required By Law
Current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, along with his surrogates, is trying to compare what Gore did in the 2000 presidential election to Trump’s current warnings that the election will be “rigged.”
This, of course, is absurd. As the Washington Post put it:
“To compare what Gore did in the aftermath of the contested 2000 election with what Trump is doing is like analogizing a fire marshal investigating the cause of a blaze to an arsonist.”
On election night in November, 2000, then-Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore called George W. Bush and conceded the election when the news outlets reported that Bush had carried Florida. However, a recount was triggered by Florida state law when it became clear that the votes in that state were extremely close.
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, is attempting to draw a parallel between then and now, saying:
“I’m going to keep reminding everybody about the 2000 election when Al Gore said he would accept the results of the election and then did not. He retracted his concession.”
While it’s somewhat true that Gore retracted his concession, it’s not the whole story. E.J. Dionne, Jr. wrote in the Post:
“Gore’s call to George W. Bush after midnight conceding the race actually showed how much respect he had for the electoral process. It was only after news organizations withdrew their calls of Florida for Bush, depriving him of an electoral-college majority, that Gore decided a recount was called for.”
That recount, as you may recall, went on for about a month before the United States Supreme Court put a stop to it in early December. When that happened, Gore accepted the outcome and made an eloquent concession speech. In it, he called for unity behind the president.
So, to Mr. Trump, Ms. Conway, and the entire Trump team – stop it already.
Watch the Washington Post‘s take on it here:
CNN’s Chief Political analyst Gloria Borger also talked about how the comparison is insane:
Featured Image by Center for American Progress Action Fund via Flickr under a CC BY-ND 2.0 license
