So much has been said on this issue, and it's so long ago now that I imagine most people no longer care. I just wanted to point something out that was made obvious to me in an Urban Geography class at Berkeley around the time of the election.
|
The most obvious argument for why George W. should have never become president is the simple numbers. Look at the official and final tally numbers taken straight from the U.S. government site that are displayed in the table above. Gore received more than 500,000 more votes than Bush did. More than an entire half percent! I understand the electoral college system and some of the benefits it has, however it clearly failed us here. Flat out, no argument about it... Gore won the popular vote. More voters voted for Gore than Bush. All sides agree on this fact.
Looking at the map above, you might be thinking to yourself, "Just LOOK at all the red in that picture!" Well, true, at first glance, it appears that Bush just trounced Gore. But take a step back for a moment, and look harder. Notice how all the blue lies on the coasts and around the major metropolitan areas of the country? "So cities are more liberal than the heartland. Well, what's new?" Herein lies my point: I challenge anyone to disagree that, for the most part, the most educated, sophisticated, and progressive people generally flock to and live in urban areas. Am I wrong? Is that not true? I've had people tell me they hate when people generalize farm-country dwellers as unsophisticated hillbillies. They say, "I know lots of smart people who came from the heartland." Well, I believe you, but consider this: you met them here in California! Yes, I'm sure they are smart and progressive-minded... that's why they left the heartland and came here! This is where smart people live!
The Democratic strongholds are generally dense and focussed in urban areas. The reports of the 2000 election pointed out that most of the states Bush won, he won by a small margin. The ones Gore won, he generally cleaned up in. So what should that tell you? It should tell you that Bush won because his support comes from a weak majority across a lot of sparsely populated states. Gore won the popular vote nation-wide, but many of those votes happened to come from a few, dense states. So what is democracy? It's ruling for, of, and by the people, right? Bush won because his (fewer) votes were spread across more land, no? Who gives a crap about what state the votes came from? Democracy is supposed to based on the will of the people, regardless of what state they live in! One person, one vote, right? WRONG. Check out this excerpt from FairVote.org:
|
The Electoral College gives disproportionate voting power to the states, favoring the smaller states with more Electoral votes per person. For instance, each individual vote in Wyoming counts nearly four times as much in the Electoral College as each individual vote in Texas. This is because Wyoming has 3 Electoral votes for a population of 493,782 and Texas has 32 Electoral votes for a population of over 20 million people. By dividing the population by Electoral votes, we can see that Wyoming has an "Elector" for every 165,000 people and Texas has an "Elector" for every 652,000 people. The small states were given additional power to prevent politicians from only focusing on issues which affect the larger states. The fear was that without this power, politicians would only focus on the big states and major cities. |
Bush got killed in the Bay Area. He got killed in New York. But my vote out here in California didn't count as much towards the final result as the vote of a (typically more conservative) voter in Wyoming. That is fucking asinine. Besides, I don't know about you, but my feeling is that most of the minds I am going to respect are probably living in S.F. or N.Y. rather than B.F.E., Utah. If anything, our votes should count for more! You're probably thinking that this just comes down to another of my California-is-the-cultural-Mecca-of-the-universe-and-anyone-not-from-or-in-it-is-inconsequential rants. Well... yup.
Do I think Gore was the best man for the job? Of course not. He has a whole host of problems too. But there was no worse candidate (in my not-so-humble eyes) in 2000 than George W. Bush. I have never in my life felt as passionately about any political issue or politician as I feel passionate dislike and disgust for him. If you share these views, go take out your frustration on The Rack.
- Benzilla
