Mark Crispin Miller: Why Dems are in denial about the stolen election

This is a transcript of Mark's November talk in Portland:

http://www.oregonvrc.org/SpeakerSeries1

He tells the story about his meeting with Kerry, and the wider implications.
I was there when he gave this talk and he was really on fire that day. There is good humor interspersed. Here is a taste (this starts just after he told the story of his meeting with Kerry):

I don’t make things up. In this world, these days, you don’t have to make things up. (Audience laughter.) Do you know what I mean? You can’t. It is impossible to keep track of reality. So I tell this story to make a few larger points. It is not about Kerry per se. And it is not about my personal pique, about being treated so disrespectfully. This is not a personal issue. It is not even a partisan issue. It is a civic issue. It is a civic issue of profound importance. And I tell the story about Kerry partly to make clear that this is not a left versus right, or Democrat versus Republican issue. In fact, on this issue, it’s really the people at risk because of the collusion of the two parties. I think the collusion is passive. Some people have said that they know, they have made a deal, but I think that is unlikely.

If someone has the evidence, I’ll look at the evidence. But I don’t think that it is necessary for there to be a deal, because this has happened before. When you have a resolved, well organized, highly disciplined fascistic movement of some kind, (audience applause) right. (Audience applause) Let’s hear it for Fascism. (Sarcastically...Loud audience applause.) Calm yourselves. (Laughter) And they have a tremendous amount of social power and media influence, and they manage to get the press on their side for various reasons, those who would resist this, but who aren’t all that zealous about it, are simply going to deny that there’s a problem. Now why do the Democrats refuse to face this issue? Does it make any sense? Their existence as a party is threatened. They will cease to be, if this Republican party, the Bushevic party, (audience laughter) the theocratic Republican party, has it’s way, there will be no more Democrats. Now, one of the reasons that Democrats refuse to look at this, or read the evidence, or listen to it, is just corruption. Because a lot of democrats are in fact republicans. And in places like Ohio, rural Ohio....maybe you’ve had Bob Fitrakis come here and speak? ...(audience confirms)...as he explains to me and he says in his writing, the democrats in rural Ohio are just as much a part of the status quo as the republicans. They are very close to the Republicans and they all serve at the pleasure of Ken Blackwell. So they all toe the line.

But aside from that there is just plain old denial. Kerry was describing denial to me. Dodd wouldn’t have gotten angry if this thought did not frighten him. Because the implications of what happened last year are quite frightening....quite frightening. It doesn’t make any difference how brilliant a campaign you run. It doesn’t make any difference how smart your TV ads are. It doesn’t make any difference what a stellar profile your candidate has. You could run Jesus Christ for President, ok? You’re not going to win. You’re not going to win because this is not a functioning Democracy. America is no longer a Democracy. The last three elections have been stolen.

This refusal to confront the implications of what is going down has to do with deeply rooted ideological assumptions that we all have. Like "it can’t happen here." That’s the very important one. Like this is "The city on the hill." This nation was claimed by God. And what has happened to other countries can’t happen here, can’t happen here. So however copious and solid the evidence you have that it has happened here, you can’t get anywhere. It’s fascinating. You’ve got a moment in which pretty much everyone now finally agrees that the Bush regime lied, or deluded itself and the rest of us, to get us into a major war that we are losing. That’s really not a good thing. And people will face that. And the press will say yes that seems to be true. You’ve got a moment at which the people will say: yes, they did deliberately conspire to out a CIA agent who was responsible for keeping us safe from weapons of mass destruction, and they did it for petty political reasons. The people struggling to deny this are having an ever harder time. We accept this. We accept that they had to know that the attack was coming on 9/11 and they, at best, did nothing about it. (Audience applause.) We also accept that in the face of one of the worst natural disasters in our modern history, they did nothing and they continue to do nothing. All of this we accept. Right? All of this we accept. All this the press will admit "Yeah that’s true." OK. Progressives, everybody snarling foaming at the mouth...Bush is wicked, terrible. But somehow there is this magic circle drawn around "The Election." "Oh no, they wouldn’t do that! They wouldn’t to that!" Well, that’s what they would do first of all. In fact, that’s what they did do! That’s why they’re there. (Applause)

I think it DID happen here, in 2000, but did NOT happen in 2004.

I'm not in denial.

What is it you are not in denial of, ol' Befree, wonders.

Do you deny that elections were fair and square in 2004? That not only republicans, but some democrats, too, are only in it for the money?

Or are you not denying that paperless, secretly coded, privately owned and super expensive voting machinery wasn't programmed to count votes the way the programmer wanted those votes to be counted?

'Cause that would sure take some strong denying.

I said I'm not in denial in the way Miller said. If I was in denial that a presidential election could be stolen in this country, I couldn't believe that Bush stole the election in 2000. But I do believe the election was stolen in 2000.

off the hook. I agree that it isn't a right and left issue, but I'd say that it is a corpochrisy vs. pleb issue. It's very expensive to run for office these days and many a dollar fluffer has things they want for exchange for their clouds of dollars.

As we'll see next week when we're told up to 20 people will be implicated in the Abramoff scandal, I think some of us are going to be surprised to see some "democratic allies" on the list.

So many repubs wanted * out, to say nothing of the Dems.

I am going to buy the book,

snip

Understand this...I want to try to give you a sense of what we’re really up against, because I think it’s only if we face that, will we be able to deal with it. Ok, here it is folks. It’s about the elections. The electoral system is a mess. I think there are certain policies we should all pursue to improve the system. And we can talk about those policies. I want to give you a foretaste, because often people want to hear that. These are "take home points." We should go back to paper ballots. (Applause.) We should ban the participation of all private vendors in our electoral system. (Loud long applause.) So that means in Oregon, you know, you’ve got the paper ballots. You’ve got to get the software out of there, because as you know, using proprietary software to count the votes is like having a secret vote count. And so this is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. Anyone who defends this is a foe of American Democracy. It’s a simple as that. We also need a uniform federal standard for our election from coast to coast, from county to county, from precinct to precinct. We have to have....I’m going to say the dirty "B" word...we have to have an efficient, utterly non-partisan bureaucracy, on the order of the Post Office (it just delivers mail) to oversee our elections.

snip


My mantra: Paper and pen voting, hand-counted at the precinct under direct bipartisan observation, with the final tally telephoned in to the Secretary of State's office.

I wouldn't trust him with my ballot for a second

latest update on the continuing search for what happened to voter registration in Ohio before the 2004 election:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5719248
thread title (12/30 GD): Coalescing Evidence of Massive Voter Registration Fraud in Ohio 2004

It's not just the hacked machines and the long lines - they were taking NO CHANCES, and STILL our so-called representatives too often deny the obvious. Thank whatever good there is in the world for heroes like Conyers, Boxer and their truth-telling colleagues.

And ask yourselves - at what point will the loyal followers of Dem politicians who continue to waffle on the Iraq war and evade discussions of electronic election fraud FINALLY realize that their continued support of these people is NOT in the interest of this country?

I think that there are also a couple of other issues here:

Our MSM is also, to a large extent, in denial about those other things that Professor Miller mentions as well. Sure, they'll cover them if they have to, but they don't give them anywhere near the coverage and the honesty that they deserve. I mean, the outing of a CIA agent for petty political reasons, and failure to respond adequately to a national emergency are not given as much coverage as a blow job was given when Clinton was President.

So, Dems are reluctant to talk about election fraud even if they believe it because they know that they will be lambasted by the MSM for it. They are really between a rock and a hard place.

Indeed.

right along talking about the new candidates or the mistakes Kerry made....I'd post a "But he won" thingy in the middle and get NO RESPONSE! NOT EVER! They must see it - but they all tiptoe around it and go back to strategizing - because that, they can deal with. "We just need to work harder, raise more money"
And even the falacy that if you win by a large enough margin somehow you can beat "the margin of theft" - that the machines can only eat that many votes they they'll get ashamed, cry "Uncle" and stop....still out there..."Gore won - but not by much...close enough to steal..."
At least they know Gore won - but Kerry didn't allow the truth about HIS win to be known and I blame him for that

Marc Crispin Miller may give him a pass here, but I don't. It's not Dodd's responsibility to tell us the truth, it's Kerry's....
But the teacups/soreloser inconveniences are in the way...:grr:

I've read! Thank you Amaryllis!

...It’s not just corporations. It’s not just the drive for profits. It’s not just corporate capitalism. As a matter of fact, certain large sectors of the corporate system are extremely unhappy with this president, like the insurance industry has done a big about face on global warming. Well for rational reasons. (Audience laughter.) Because they don’t want to go bankrupt!

So this is rational self interest at work. You read accounts of the financial get together in Datyl, Switzerland...it’s like a wake there now. They’re just miserable because this guy, this cabal, this movement is destroying the economy. They are on a suicide course. So even though they are infinitely pleasing to many corporate interests, you know, Haliburton and so on, especially their cronies, they are on a suicide course. They had an apocalyptic streak, that cannot be explained in economistic terms. Now people on the left tend to explain everything in economistic terms. It’s always about the money, follow the money. That’s true to a great degree. But it is not enough, because it does not account for the ferocious strain of anti-enlightenment activism that this regime represents. (Audience applause.)

Understand that this is a theocratic movement. It is not just a bunch of corporations, that know better, slyly manipulating the pieties of the masses. That is a leftist fallacy. Because we are talking about the energetic, political participation of a number of extremely right wing billionaires with enormous clout, people like Richard Mellon Scaif, and Howard Ahmanson. These are people who are extraordinarily active and productive on the political front and they make Soros look like a piper. They spent far more money that he does. They spend it on propaganda; they spend it on political issues. Howard Ahmanson is the motive force behind the schism in the Episcopalian Church. He supports the Discovery Institute which is behind the spread of Intelligent Design. So to say there is religion over here and there are corporations over here is a mistake. It’s not that simple because there are points of convergence.

What we have here is a movement intent on turning the United States into a Christian republic. Now they often say that the United States is a Christian republic, then you say to them, "As a matter of fact, it isn’t." Look at say the First Amendment, look at Article 6 which forbids a religious test for office holders, look at everything the framers ever said on the subject. Well they don’t want to hear that so they say, "Well, it’s a Christian republic." Does this sound familiar? "Mr. President, there is no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." "0h yeah? there is too." "Go back and find it." "Oh, wait. Here it is, here it is." See? We think they are lying through their teeth, but please believe me that Cheney still believes there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If it were only lying, or or if it was only machiavellian manipulation, I promise you we would be better off than we are right now. What we are dealing with is pathological. You tell them, "Hey, there is no evidence for intelligent design," and they say "oh yes there is." They proclaim that there is. There is no evidence that abstainance based sex education does anything except raise pregnancy rates and raise rates of sexually transmitted diseases. They say "Nope...no..." Because it’s faith based...

Long but so worth the read!! And totally worth passing on to everyone you can and encouraging them to pass it on!

btw - If anyone isn't aware, MCM has a blog - it rarely gets comments and he's absolutely brilliant!!

http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/

As was Dave Berman.

Mark discussed further the Democratic party and Kerry, as well as theocracy, the Leo Strauss folks (Cheney and Rumsfeld), etc.

Dave discussed grass roots activism re election reform.

Available on archive.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407171

Posted at Mark Crispin Millers blog: (linked in my above post)


Rich Lang on "Ring of Fire" today, tomorrow


Greetings folks,

Just a FYI …. I’m on Air America this weekend on the Ring of Fire Show (with Mike Papantonio … the show is co-hosted by Bobby Kennedy Jr.) … We are talking about Christian Fascism and the state of the church. I think it might prove interesting.

There might be a problem hearing the interview.
a.) it might be pre-empted by a Cougar basketball game
b.) the show is two hours but only one hour in Seattle

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a live-body at the local station to tell me whether or not it will air as everyone seems to have been raptured. Ah well.

You can access the show in Seattle on KPTK 1090am Saturday at 5-6pm. If, for whatever reason, the show is not aired, you can access the interview on the Ring of Fire site (ringoffireradio.com) next week.

For you computer whizs the show can be accessed live Saturdays 5-7(EST) or rebroadcast Sunday 3-5pm (EST).

Link to listen to Air America Radio - ON NOW!!

http://www.airamericaradio.com/

I wanted to point that out again. In this version, Kerry never said he felt the election was stolen. Miller does admit to sending out an email making that claim however.

Curious I'd say.

Kerry he was robbed (of the election), Kerry said, "I know." robbed - stolen. Same difference. Then they proceeded to discuss how Kerry couldn't get anywhere with anyone talking about computer fraud. I have heard Mark talk about this a number of times and he has ALWAYS repeated the same story.

Kerry clearly asked Mr. Miller for 'evidence' that the election was stolen, as being robbed (of votes) does not mean that the number was enough to sway the end result. Mr. Miller mis-characterized his conversation from the beginning and later became indignant when Kerry said "hey wait a minute, I never said that." Kerry was telling the truth, Mr. Miller is promoting a book.

for the versions of the story?

I have to say, I smelled a rat when I read the initial account. It seems to me that there are various things that Kerry could have thought about electoral corruption that would be compatible with his apparent interaction with MCM and also with the later denial.

The election theft story comes in shades of grey, but the evidence is that MCM sees in black and white. Kerry seems like a greyscale guy to me. Easy for miscommunication to happen in these circs (as I know to my cost).

incident. Miller stated in no uncertain terms "Kerry now believes election was stolen." He attempted to characterize the conversation he had with JK in this manner. After much scuttlebut, rather than indicate that he may have misunderstood JK, or that they may have had a communication breakdown, he proclaimed "I am not a liar." The entire episode need not happen, and with a bit of "professionalism" it would not have.

Sorry I don't have any links for you, reading the article above and how Miller sent out an email stating "Kerry now believes election was stolen" is all one needs really.

Peace

You seem to have read the story as I did.

Happy new year!

On edit and further thought:

The Kerry-Miller story makes perfect sense if you consider that there are two senses in which Kerry could have interpreted the phrase "you were robbed, Senator!".

Because, although I don't, personally, actually believe Kerry "won" the election, I do happen to believe he was robbed. Perhaps more importantly, his voters were robbed, and if he really said that "sour grapes" thing, it's time someone told him that it doesn't actually matter whether he won or lost - the fact is that people who wanted to vote for him were robbed of their votes. And that is insupportable in a democracy.

But if Kerry is convinced that he was robbed of votes (which he was), but unconvinced that he was robbed of the presidency (which is a lot less clear) - then MCM is telling the truth, and so is Kerry. But MCM is also doing what he has done in other contexts, which is extrapolating beyond the range of his data.

stolen."

But if Kerry is convinced that he was robbed of votes (which he was), but unconvinced that he was robbed of the presidency (which is a lot less clear) - then MCM is telling the truth, and so is Kerry. But MCM is also doing what he has done in other contexts, which is extrapolating beyond the range of his data.

The tactful thing for Miller would have been to immediately state that there was likely a mis-understanding as he made a very bold statement in a very public way.

if he thought that was the case.

I am prepared to believe that MCM thinks the election was stolen; that he believes that Kerry thinks the election was stolen; that Kerry thinks he was robbed of votes; that Kerry thought that MCM agreed with him; and that MCM thought Kerry agreed with him, and that both discovered afterwards that what they thought they agreed on wasn't the same thing.

But then I find the ways in which good people, concerned about the same issues, can misunderstand each other to be, sadly, infinite. It's something to do with excluded middles, I think. I happen to believe votes were stolen, or at least "stolen" (never cast when they should have been; never counted when they should have been), and more were stolen (or "stolen") from Kerry than from Bush. I don't think it is likely that the election was either stolen or "stolen".

But either way, the senator was robbed.

denied the context, Miller should have reconsidered his assertion instead of digging in his heals.

Regarding robbery. Indeed Kerry was robbed, we all were.

Have a nice day - in spite of it all. :)

STOLEN, stolen, stolen, stolen, stolen, stolen, stolen, stolen, stolen, _stolen, ^stolen and stolen.

And I am afraid we have become one of those nations that hold "elections" rather than elections.


_{Edit: add three more ways votes were stolen that I had forgotten about.}

and until you can drop the quotes around "elections" with confidence you don't really have a true democracy (I must work on my html).

I'm just perhaps a bit more optimistic than you are that the condition of American democracy isn't yet terminal. I think the evidence is that stealing an entire election is harder than some people think, even for Americans (I still think the biggest form of vote theft was via voter and vote supppression)

As long as it isn't too close a race next time, I think you can win. And you know what to look out for now, which should help.

I'll be rooting for you guys from over here, anyway (even if it didn't work in 2004).

I absolutely never do this sort of thing, but...

:toast:

I will not quibble over the content.

on exit polls.

:beer:

Cheers to you and Febble for the New Year.

:rofl:

A happy new year to you too!

I don't think that Mark Crispin Miller is shading the story in order to sell books (cf. your preceding post). In fact, I think his version (as detailed in the transcript linked from the OP) is probably much closer to reality than what Kerry's spokesperson said. I also don't think that John Kerry intended to express belief that the election was stolen through vote miscounts -- and I don't think that Kerry is convinced that it was. I think that Miller was excited, as he said, and his actions reflected it. He wasn't functioning as a journalist at that point, nor, I think, as a huckster; he felt, I imagine, that Kerry's position as he understood it opened up new possibilities for change. I agree with you that the entire incident didn't have to happen.

My two cents as the friendly neighborhood omnidirectional empathizer. I disagree with some of MCM's opinions, but I respect what he is doing given what he believes. There is no manual one can read to prepare for the role he is trying to play.

Why dig his heals in when he may have just become "excited?"

I appreciate your perspective however, and intend to entertain it.

If I'm right that Miller and Kerry really did talk for several minutes along the lines Miller describes (although Kerry never intended to say that he thought the election was stolen), then Miller could not have been pleased that the spokesperson would say (I'm paraphrasing from memory) that the only thing true about his story was that he gave Kerry a book. It's one thing to acknowledge miscommunication, but accepting that version would be a pretty big lump to take for the team, especially since it isn't his team. "I am not a liar" seems like an understandable response.

Of course it is also possible that MCM has a rich fantasy life -- I have no way of knowing. But with all respect to John Kerry, it is not altogether unusual for a politician to issue a flatter denial of something or other than is actually warranted.

I'm happy to entertain your perspective too.

person accountable. I do think the denial was strong, but the original statement was over the top as well. It's a matter of reaping what we sow.

Night.

to sabotage Dem Party from within. Seems like an effective strategy and
consistent with a lot of what Dem "leadership" is doing.

Or is the main problem competition for big special interest money, and attempting to
immulate the Repubs who get most of the big special interest money.

is that Kerry (and the Dems) are getting conflicting information.

There are four possibilities that Kerry has to consider:

1. That he won the popular vote, and was defrauded of it by massive vote-switching across the nation


2. That he lost the popular vote, but was defrauded of Ohio, and thus the presidency, by various forms of direct vote theft.


3. That he lost Ohio, but this was because of massive, systematic, and possibly deliberate disenfranchisement of Democratic voters in Ohio, whose votes, had they been cast, would have given him the presidency.


4. That he would have lost the election even had it been clean, but that it was nonetheless unjustly and corruptly conducted.

I myself think there are arguments for all these positions, but that the further down the list you go, the more persuasive are the arguments. I expect Kerry, being a man who understands nuance (one of the characteristics that would have made him an excellent president, but probably didn't enhance his chance of becoming so, IMO), understands this. I don't think this constitutes being in "denial" but it must surely be a source of enormous frustration to him, such as MCM apparently witnessed.

I agree that if you start from the assumption that he self-evidently won the election, his behaviour, and that of the Dems, is odd. But I would question the assumption - that it is self-evident, I mean. I expect Kerry does too - he's that kind of guy.

the problem is, proving that an election was stolen.

IN North Carolina, we have/had paperless electronic voting in half of the state.
In Diebold and the Unilect machines, we know that the central tabulator
has no real audit trail.

I don't know about the other many DREs in our state.

If you are going to point the finger and say the election was stolen,
consider this - do you mean the presidential election only?

In North Carolina, Bush won the electoral votes, but Democrats won
the state legislature.

Were both rigged?

By the same people?

Or was there quite a bit of rigging going on?

And why has opposition to voter verified paper ballots been from the democratic
leadership?

North Carolina's law could have passed at the first of this year,
but was butchered in a democratic chaired committee.

Why?

So, while it is great to say the election was stolen, we certainly
can't prove it wasn't, but can we prove it was?

Elections results should be provable, by the way.

But there has to be complicity by both sides to make it possible for
such widespread cheating. IMHO.

IIRC, the huge problem with thousands of lost votes in one county was the impetus the new law being passed. Amazingly, many Dem's did try to subvert the new law!

As Mark lays out, there are Dem's who are really in the pockets of the VRWC, a conspiracy that would change our democracy into an autocratic style of rule. They may wear a dem hat but secretly conspire to whittle away at our democracy,and the vote at the root of democracy IS being whittled.

I've seen the chips.

&&&&&&&&&&&

It's quite obvious that Kerry won the 2004 election. There is no coincidental evidence that bush was the winner since there has not been an honest recount and there never can be since so many of the votes are vapor. Nor is there any evidence that the people wanted bush for a second term. But there remains a HUGE body of coincidental evidence that people wanted Kerry, and evidence that, indeed, Kerry won.