11/07/2006

Election Day - Grapes So Sour You Can't Get Your Lips Around Them:
You haven't seen sore losering or sour graping until you've seen the way that, when a loss is even remotely close, Republicans grasp like insane cats falling off a precipice to the last straws they can stick their claws into. This year, you're gonna see massive litigation, spun as the last hope for democracy (read: Republicans winning), that'll make the mythical frivolous lawsuit wave seem like a drip from a leaky faucet.

Don't believe it? Huh. Howzabout a little history lesson, just from the last dozen years or so.

In Connecticut, in 1994, Democratic Representative Sam Gejdenson defeated Republican Edward Munster by a tiny margin. Upon two recounts, Gejdenson was still ahead by 21 votes, but Munster, living up to his comical monster-like name, would not be stopped, and eventually the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that Gejdenson was rightfully elected and that Munster, who was looking for a new election, could go fuck himself. Then a Republican-led panel on the House of Representatives decided to look into "wrongful" voting in the district. The whole goddamned thing ended when Munster decided to be a mensch and gave up in April 1995.

In the same time period, Republican and devoted conservative ball licker Ellen Sauerbrey lost the governor's race in Maryland to Democrat Paris Glendening by 6000 votes. Sauerbrey went to court to have 11,000 votes tossed out, asserting all kinds of things about corpses and felons voting, in a crazed numerical disinformation campaign that would have made Joseph McCarthy proud. Problem was that Sauerbrey could produce nary a piece of evidence to back up her claims. Indeed, so fucked-up was her desperate challenge that she claimed 37 dead people voted, and then it turned out some of those dead people were, in fact, alive. And not too fond of Sauerbrey. When the court tossed out the lawsuit, Sauerbrey said she thought the rules of evidence should have been relaxed for the sake of "truth."

What else? 2004's Washington gubernatorial race where Democrat Christine Gregoire won by a razor thin margin in the intial tally and the recount over Republican Dino Rossi? Where Rossi went to court to have the whole damn election invalidated? Or howzabout Bush v. Gore? There's a reason "Bush" is the first name there - 'cause he was the goddamned plaintiff.

Yep, come tomorrow morning, the troops of lawyers on both sides will tramp out to file suits, but you can bet that Republicans, having spun the slight jiggle in the polls recently as a sign of "tightening" in races they're gonna lose, will be first at the steps to the courthouses to make their last stands.