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A Different Drummer

Jesse Jackson on
How to Steal a Presidential Election,
And Live Happily Ever After

A re presidential elections now also to be subordinated to affirmative action?

The day following the FIRST 2000 Presidential election, the Rev. Jesse Jackson reported that he had gotten many calls during the previous day -- you know, what used to be known as Election Day -- from blacks in Florida, complaining of voting-rights violations. Blacks, he said, had been intimidated out of, or flat-out barred from voting.

The funny thing is, Jackson didn't mention any of those telephone calls during Election Day.

In fact, I saw the good reverend at 4 a.m. EST, or slightly thereafter, on November 8 (after Election Day), being interviewed live on ABC by a weary Peter Jennings. "Bush, Cheney, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Orrin Hatch, this is the same thing, states' rights, the denial of a woman's right to choose, attacks on affirmative action ..."

This was the whining of a desperate man, lacking any dignity in defeat. It was embarrassing to watch. George Bush, who had promised national standards for the schools, a closet Klansman?

At no time did Jackson say, "Peter, this so-called victory by George Bush is nothing but a case of voter fraud. My associates and I have been fielding calls all day from black Florida voters who were intimidated out of voting, or barred from polling places."

Not one word.

So as not to be too subtle, or appear to be making insinuations, I have to avail myself of a four-letter word to describe the Rev. Jackson: L-i-a-r.

By November 9, the Rev. Jackson had heard yet more voices. According to Left-of-Castro columnist, Juan Gonzalez, in the November 10 New York Daily News, "As the Rev. Jesse Jackson told me yesterday, it may be that the television networks projected Florida's results correctly the first time, but failures in the voting systems of Palm Beach and Broward Counties led to thousands of Gore votes not being counted."

But how could thousands of Gore votes be counted, if the voters were barred from, or intimidated out of voting?

A few hours after I saw him with Peter Jennings, Jackson was leading demonstrations in Florida. According to cheerleader/reporter Marion Dozier on November 9 in Florida's Sun-Sentinel newspaper, Jackson led a rally, or rather, press conference, in West Palm Beach, evoking Martin Luther King's legendary, 1965 Selma, Alabama march for voting rights. Except that Jackson never mentioned race.

"The shrill throngs, the allusions to Selma, Ala., the fervent oratory of the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- it had all the earmarks of a protest against racial injustice.

"But as hundreds of outraged Al Gore supporters were led in protest by black preachers and black political leaders Thursday in several Florida cities, few expressed their outrage in racial terms ...

"Their rejection of the balloting in Tuesday's presidential election was fueled by a larger concern: the future of the Republic itself.

Marion Dozier then quotes that great republican, Jesse Jackson: "Citizens were disenfranchised; the full weight of Florida law and the Voting Rights Act should come to bear in this matter. This is critical to our national interests ... This undermines the integrity of our democracy.

On the November 10 edition of Ted Koppel's ABC News show, Nightline, Koppel held a "Town Hall" meeting at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. One white student's "question" mentioned (Jackson's) charges that thousands of black Florida voters had been intimidated out of voting, and asked what could be done about this.

The student's dishonest "question," which assumed the truth of Jesse Jackson's wild charges, no doubt will make the young man, who identified himself as a "first-year" (eschewing the verboten, "freshman" tag) popular on campus. However, he couldn't have liked the response he got from William H. Lash III, a black, George Mason University law professor of economic and political rights: "The black turnout in Florida was 16 percent; nationwide it was 10 percent. It's hard to believe there was this 'chilling effect.'"

Patrick Hennessy, the producer of the Nashville in the Morning show on WLAC-AM, told me, "In Florida, they are saying they are above the law because they are oppressed, and Jesse Jackson is pulling that trigger."

I'll go Patrick Hennessy one better, with a prediction: In the event that George W. Bush is permitted to keep his election victory, across the nation outraged blacks will riot. And in the event that Bush is mugged out of his victory ... across the nation outraged blacks will riot!

Anyone who honestly believes that this isn't about race must think the moon is made of cheese.

Postscript: Well, I was wrong. Blacks didn’t riot – but Jesse Jackson threatened riots.