Coleman Cites Bush v. Gore

I’ve believed for a while that the most constructive way for progressives to deal with Bush v. Gore is to play it straight — that is, to pretend that it actually stands for a principle that vote counting standards should be fair and uniform. Norm Coleman, however, has an approach much closer to the spirit of the Supreme Court’s indefensible intervention into the 2000 election. Obviously, his claim that the 14th Amendment requires ballots that were improperly excluded to remain excluded is a legal argument with the rare distinction of being more farcical than Bush v. Gore itself. But when you consider that the actual “principle” (to distort the word beyond any possible meaning) that the Supreme Court seemed to be applying in that case was that arbitrary, non-uniform recounts are perfectly acceptable unless they threaten the election of a Repblican candidate, in which case states are required to conduct a recount according to uniform statewide standards restore the arbitrary recount that benefits the Supreme Court’s preferred candidate…well, you have to admit that the Coleman team’s cite is directly on point. Fortunately, I doubt that the Minnesota courts are going to go along….