The 25th anniversary of Bush v Gore was yesterday. The modern vote suppression movement (as opposed to the earlier vote suppression of Jim Crow) got its mojo from that Supreme Court decision, learning for the first time that the partisan Supreme Court would have their backs. Virtually everything bad that has happened in this country over the past quarter century can be traced to that moment.

Dave Roberts of Volts, (who I’ve been following on social media for 20 years and who is one of the most insightful curmudgeons on BlueSky — a man after my own heart 😉 wrote this about that momen]:

In terms of US politics, Bush v. Gore is the defining event of the century. It set the template: a ruthless right that instinctively seeks power & doesn’t give a shit about rule of law…and a bunch of hapless, feckless octogenarian Dems worried about the good opinion of centrist opinion columnists.

It was like waving a giant white flag and announcing, “the people on the side of rule of law, democracy, and decency WILL NOT FIGHT AS HARD AS THEIR OPPONENTS. They don’t have the grit or guts for it. Act accordingly.” And readers … they have acted accordingly.

Back in 2001, the right-wing takeover of US media was still a ways off. “Right-wing media” was still a distinct, separate thing. Nonetheless, the conservative browbeating of “MSM” voices had been loud enough, long enough, to suppress the natural civic horror at GOP cheating in the election.

This, more than anything, is what the right realized in the wake of the 2000 election: in a moment of chaos or crisis, they can do anything — *anything*, no matter how overtly criminal or gross — & just smooth it over later with “both sides” pablum. “Let’s not fight, let’s look forward,” etc.

They applied that lesson again & again in subsequent years. Bush II was basically a criminal administration, even aside from its world-historical blunders — allowing 9/11, f’ing up Afghanistan, f’ing up Iraq, f’ing up Katrina, f’ing up the economy — but after it was over it took a matter of *months* before the media had collectively smudged & smeared the whole thing, “ah, there were many fights, who can say, let us come together & look forward rather than backward,” etc. Crime –> no consequences. Greater crime –> still no consequences. And so on, still today.

I was still in the throes of anger about the Clinton impeachment in which the media had sided with the Republicans and then this happened. (Remember Sally Quinn and “the village”?) I will never get over being told to “get over it” by Wolf Blitzer on CNN in the days after the decision. I screamed at the TV, “who do you think you are????” It radicalized me.

. . .