Al Gore told Bill Maher on his HBO “Real Time” show that he thinks he carried Florida in the 2000 election.
Gore also believes that rising temperatures will doom mankind to extinction unless we revert economically to the Middle Ages. Which ignorant belief is dumber?
Gore, 69, visited Maher on HBO’s “Real Time” on Friday to discuss his follow-up climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” when the host broached the issue of rising sea levels.
“So when the sea levels rise, obviously we could lose Venice. We could lose Florida. And who would know better about losing Florida?” Maher joked, leading to some groans from the live studio audience in Los Angeles.
Actually, I think I carried Florida,” a smiling Gore retorted. “But that’s another — we won’t go there.”
Maher agreed that Gore won the hotly-contested state and its 25 electoral votes at the time.
“That’s right, OK, there you go. I think you did too.”
The 2000 vote in the Sunshine State was settled in Bush’s favor weeks after the election on Dec. 12, with the former Texas governor winning by a margin of 537 votes after the Supreme Court stopped a recount by a 5-4 vote. Gore conceded the following day.
Bush lost the popular vote but won the electoral college, 271-266.
Anyone not named Al Gore (or apparently, Bill Maher) knows that two independent studies by media organizations proved that Bush won the 2000 race in Florida and hence, the election.
The most comprehensive review was done by a consortium of media companies, including:
The [New York]Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post and CNN. The group hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in January to examine the ballots.
The consortium examined the 43,000 ballots that remained to be counted when the Supreme Court stopped the process. They determined:
Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.
Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.
Another media group headed up by USA Today and the Miami Herald also conducted an extensive study and came to the same conclusion:
A USA Today/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study after the election concluded in May 2001 that Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots, called “hanging chads,” if a standard advocated by Gore had been used.
“Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes,” the study concluded.
But liberals hate it if they’re not being seen as suffering under the yoke of oppression. The election was stolen! Gore should have been president!
We’re seeing the exact same effort to delegitimize Trump. Hillary didn’t lose the election. Trump colluded with the Russians and stole it! Outrage! Call for a special counsel. Start the impeachment!
Democrats never change.
Does Gore really believe he won or is he just trying to keep faith with the narrative? Admittedly, coming that close to winning the presidency and losing is a psychologically debilitating event. Perhaps one part of Gore’s mind knows he lost, but his partisan soul wants him to continue with the charade that the election was stolen.
Any way you look at it, Gore is wrong — wrong about Florida in 2000 and wrong about his hysterical predictions regarding climate change.
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