Word: recounting
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This is what Florida has done to us. Nearly eight years after Bush--um, "became President"? Can we agree on that?--the Florida recount still grips our politics, down to its semantics. To choose a verb is to take sides. Florida is not just a state but a state of mind: the widely held attitude that the game is rigged (by the courts, the media, the voting machines ...) and that any close election is suspect. Florida looms over politics like the Alamo, the Maine and the grassy knoll all rolled into...
...docudrama about the legal-political battle between Bush and Al Gore will remind us of all that again. You might think that HBO would have timed Recount to air around Election Day. As it turns out, the network could not have scheduled the movie better. The Democratic primary, like the Florida election, has turned out close enough that it must be decided by people whom nobody voted for--this time superdelegates, not Supreme Court Justices. With the old electoral wounds being ripped open, here comes Recount like a brimming shaker of salt...
Even if the primary is settled by the time Recount airs (or by the time you read this), some Democrats will feel bitter and cheated and will invoke the powerful language of 2000 all over again. If Barack Obama gets the nomination, the anger will center on the primaries in Michigan and you-know-where. (Democrats! Disenfranchised! In Florida! The blog posts write themselves.) Hillary Clinton's camp has already stepped up the "count every vote" talk. If it's Clinton, the protests will be that, as in 2000--when thousands of black Floridians were struck from voter rolls--African...
...Recount is told largely from the Gore camp's perspective; the Dems even get the marginally bigger stars--Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary and Ed Begley Jr. to the Republicans' Laura Dern, Tom Wilkinson and Bob Balaban. When a Florida court decision holds out hope for Gore, stirring music swells. When Bush recount honcho James Baker III (Wilkinson) walks onscreen, the sound track all but plays Darth Vader's theme...
...makes sense for Recount to be Dem-centric. True, Florida was bipartisan in feeding cynicism about institutions--politics, the courts, the media. (There's a montage of the networks calling the state for Gore, then Bush, then no one.) But it had the greatest effect on the Democratic psyche, as will happen after you lose an election. (My apologies for writing "lose." And "election...