FutureShock: The odd thing about spin is, you often simply cannot see it if you agree with it. Nothing is more reasonable than a shared prejudice.

From my perspective, the Democratic spin machine won several key victories in the election:

1) They got people believing that votes were "not counted", when in fact every vote was counted, most of them twice.

2) They got people believing that the courts are the proper place to make political decisions, despite reason and tradition to the contrary. They convinced the public that the people specified as responsible by the constitution (the legislature and the secretary of state) were the *wrong* people to make these decisions.

3) They got people believing that a hand count was "more accurate" even though we could see that this so-called "accuracy" was simply an artifact of arbitrary definitions.

4) They got people believing that Gore "really won" in Florida, and that an "accurate" count would bear this out. To this day, people are convinced that had the USSC permitted hand counts, Gore would have won.

These are powerful spin victories, FS. They got the public to view the election through Democratic lenses, accepting Democratic assumptions as facts.

[Unfortunately, 95% of America is perfectly content to believe spin- after all, why should they think for themselves?]

Physician, heal thyself. You not only believe it, you deny it's even spin you are so taken in.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 05, 2001.

500,000 is what Gore beat Bush by, who is spinning what? Miami-Dade was never handcounted. At least five voting areas have been very public in admitting they did NO recounts at anytime.

-- Doc Paulie (fannybubbles@usa.net), January 05, 2001