Recount

My ex-husband and I went to see "Recount," the HBO movie about the 2000 presidential election results (or lack thereof). I had free tickets to an advance screening in Philadelphia (although the concept of an advance screening was stretched a bit by the fact that HBO had televised the movie the preceding Sunday -- eh, what did I care? I don't get HBO) and as it was during a trip to Philly for doctors' appointments, and I was staying with the ex, it seemed reasonable to take him along.

My ex-husband, like my current husband, is British. The difference is that I was in the first marriage in 2000, so H. and I had lived through the legal and political debacle that was that election. The movie is rather fun; I enjoyed it well enough. (H. only looked like he was going to explode once that I noticed...) But what the entire event revealed is that politics is everywhere. You would have thought that people -- reasonable people -- would have wanted to have all the votes counted to determine who actually won the election. But no, people -- yes, even reasonable people! -- want their candidate to get elected. And if it seems likely that counting more votes will risk the other guy getting elected, then you don't want more votes counted.

This is important, and sad, in equal measure. I reluctantly agree that Bush would have won -- probably -- if all the votes had been counted. But boy can I disagree with how this all played out. I have a friend, who I suspect of being slightly more Democrat than Republican, and he feels strongly that the Supreme Court was right to close the Florida recount down when it did. I dunno. I still think it's sad that the Supreme Court revealed its own political biases even in the face of its own stated precedents. The same conservative justices who trumpet states' rights voted to stop a state from resolving a state-run election. That just doesn't look good to me. I wasn't a fan of the Supreme Court before that decision, but I thought it had some integrity. I sure don't think so now.

And how outrageous is it that Justice Scalia has the gall to say, in effect, "That's old news. Get over it," when asked by Lesley Stahl about the result in Bush v. Gore on 60 Minutes. This is the court that lives by stare decisis, the principle that they are bound by precedent even decades or centuries old. It was a big deal in 1938 when the court overturned a hundred-year-old principle in Erie v. Tompkins. Eight years ago, and it's "old news"? Oh, that's so annoying.

Otherwise, well, it's politics, innit? I've read the criticisms about how John Hurt has portrayed Warren Christopher; I can't get worked up about them. (After all, they set up one of the film's best jokes, when a Republican operative says of Christopher's manners, "He probably eats his M&Ms with a knife and fork!") Sure, liberals like me wanted the Gore team to get down and fight hard. And particularly now, when we look at what Bush has done with his presidency. But the film version of Warren Christopher was hoping for a reasonable discussion of how to resolve a bizarre situation. What's so bad about being reasonable?

It's like elitism. What's so wrong with elitism? Being elite is a good thing. You want your child to get into an elite college. Barack Obama went to an elite law school. Hillary Clinton went to an elite law school from an elite college. (Of course, what does that prove -- George W. Bush went to an elite college and an elite business school, and I'm not sure he's even close to being anyone's notion of "elite.")

What we don't want is stuffy. We don't want a "not-our-kind-dear" mentality in our politicians. We don't want to feel that politicians are condescending to us. We want to be understood, liked, appreciated, cared for. They do it in different ways, but I think both Obama and Clinton succeed there.

And there's a difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. Back in 2000, pundits wondered why working class voters were favoring Republicans. The answer, as studies showed, was that they were casting their votes not based on what favored their socio-economic interests in the moment, but what would help them when they got rich. "Aspirational voting," it was called.

I hope that working class voters get it now, during this "not a recession dear" economic down turn, that their interests have not been well served by eight years of a Republican president. Supposedly, back in 2000, Bush was the guy more people wanted to have a beer with. But after eight years of a Bush presidency, can they still afford to drink with him?

It makes you wonder how people would vote now in the 2000 election.