My my. Democrats do

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My, my. Democrats do seem to be pushing Andrew Sullivan right off the deep end. They’re pushing all his buttons. Pat Leahy’s a hypocrite. Ted Kennedy’s a hypocrite. There’s apparently no decent reason to vote against John Ashcroft at all. Sullivan has even picked up the Republican talking point comparing Janet Reno’s confirmation to John Ashcroft’s. Does anyone honestly think that Janet Reno was as ideological or extreme an appointment as John Ashcroft? Does Reno deviate from the centerpoint of American politics to the left just as much as Ashcroft does to the right?

Really. This doesn’t even pass the laugh test, does it? That doesn’t mean Ashcroft should be voted down. But let’s do keep some quality control on the analogies, okay?

(I won’t call Sullivan a friend, because I’ve only met him a couple times and corresponded with him briefly by email. But when I have met him he’s been very kind and generous. So that’s my two bits in that regard.)

For the last several weeks, on his very entertaining and insightful website, Sullivan has been pounding away at anyone and everyone who thinks something untoward happened in Florida, and even more ferociously whacking away at those who think that what happened in Florida should inform how Democrats treat Bush’s presidency.

He takes particular aim at Rick Hertzberg (writing in the New Yorker) and Michael Sandel (writing in the New York Times) both of whom argue that George W. Bush isn’t just any president and that Senate Democrats have both the right and the obligation to compel Bush to provide the moderate governance he promised during the campaign.

(Actually, I made much the same point, albeit more briefly, about six weeks ago in the New York Post. But, hey! That’s just a right-wing tab, so it doesn’t get so much attention. Anyway, back to our story …)

In passing, Sullivan notes the “unprecedented way in which Gore and his trial-lawyers tried to overturn the result of a presidential election through legal maneuvering” and generally ridicules the process of unofficial recounts going on down in Florida, especially the use of “the most liberal standards imaginable” for counting ballots – standards which, improbably, ended up giving Bush a few extra votes in Miami-Dade county this week.

Is it really irrelevant that half a million more Americans voted for Al Gore than for George Bush? Doesn’t this and the Democrats’ gains in the Senate call for and justify some added scrutiny of Bush’s decision-making from those 50 Senate Dems? Anything else is sour grapes and cheating. The Democrats, according to Sullivan, are the ones playing at the edges of a coup.

Obviously, this stuff just makes my blood boil … errr, Talking Points’ blood boil … errr, whatever. But, anyway, I’ve tried to give some thought to precisely why it does so. And now I think I’ve found out.

Sullivan’s election model seems to be symbolic procedural formalism. It really doesn’t matter how we got to Bush’s inauguration. What matters is that we’re there! If he got there with the most votes or the second-to-most votes. Or whether some people weren’t allowed to vote. Or whether some others were allowed to vote but then didn’t have their votes counted. This is all just ingredients tossed in the stew. Now let’s just eat!

And anyway, if you wanted to vote so bad, why didn’t you push the chad all the way through! Look, we had an election, everyone could vote, if %&$@# got weird, well, come on’, an election’s an election. Bush won and that’s the end of it.

But an election isn’t just symbolism. It’s not an ordeal or a trial by fire. The underlying democratic process actually matters. Everybody gets to have their say, and then you count up the says, and whoever gets the most says wins. It’s not shoddy or indulgent to actually try to find out what people said. That’s the point!

True, a ‘ballot’ doesn’t automatically become a ‘vote.’ But it should come pretty damn close.

Yes, George W. Bush gets to become president, with all the powers of the office. But this isn’t the same as popular legitimation. And doesn’t our constitutional system have enough play and flexibility in it (with things like the Senate’s “advise and consent” authority) to grapple even with odd and unprecedented situations like these?

Which got me thinking … Is this that whole difference between virtual representation, which the Brits are into, and actual representation, which the Americans like?

You know, like during the American Revolution when the colonists said you actually had to be able to vote in order to actually be represented. (A radical concept!) Maybe that’s where he gets this from.

But didn’t we fight a war over this? Isn’t this one settled? Hasn’t anyone told him?

P.S. Do you hope Sullivan will take this whole thing in good humor? I certainly hope so … And if he attacks you in print and drives gobs of people to your website? That’s the fallback … But does he even read Talking Points? Good point, probably not.

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