Al and Tipper Split the Sheets

In a June 1^st email distributed privately to family and friends, Al and Tipper Gore announced that they’ve decided to separate after 40 years of marriage.  They said, “We are announcing today that after a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate.”  They went on to say that, “This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration.  We ask for respect for our privacy and that of our family, and we do not intend to comment further.”

The immediate speculation was that a love affair was involved, but those closest to the Gores are convinced that this is not the case.  The fact that author Joe McGinniss has not offered to sublet his rental in Wasilla, in favor of a sixteen-room rental next door to the Gore’s in Nashville, is probably a good indication that Algore has not been playing around. 

Some Washington insiders, such as liberal Washington Post writer Sally Quinn, believe that Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 General Election was a major underlying factor in the breakup.  Many who know the Gores well are convinced that Gore has never gotten over his paper-thin loss to Bush.

If that is truly the case, Gore probably has good reason for carrying a grudge… not against Bush, but against leaders of his own party.   If Democrats have stolen elections for others, which they have on many occasions, Gore might be forgiven for failing to understand why they couldn’t have rigged the 2000 election in Florida in his favor.

For example, Gore is aware that in 1960, when it appeared that Richard Nixon would defeat John F. Kennedy, Kennedy’s father used his close ties to Chicago organized crime figures to fix the outcome of the election in Illinois.  According to Washington Post editor and publisher Ben Bradlee, a close Kennedy friend, Kennedy telephoned Chicago mayor Dick Daley on election night to get an update on the election results.  Kennedy was told, “Mr. President, with a little bit of luck and the help of a few close friends, you’re going to carry Illinois.”

Those “few close friends” were members of Sam Giancana’s organized crime family and the corrupt Daley machine… Barack Obama’s political home.  New York Herald Tribune reporter Earl Mazo, suspecting that the election had been stolen, went to Chicago and initiated an in-depth investigation.  He confirmed that the 1960 presidential election had, in fact, been stolen and began publishing a 12-part series on election fraud.  Gore must wonder, if the party could do that for Kennedy in Illinois in 1960, why couldn’t they do the same for him in Florida in 2000?

In the 2002 Senate election in New Jersey, corrupt incumbent Robert Torricelli was given “the hook” by New Jersey Democrats just 36 days before the November 5 General Election when it appeared that he would lose to his Republican opponent.  In the days that followed, New Jersey Democrats sought to replace him with retired Senator Frank Lautenberg, in spite of a New Jersey law stipulating that a candidate may not withdraw from the ballot any later than 51 days prior to an election.

Democrats took their case to the Democrat-dominated New Jersey Supreme Court and, not surprisingly, in New Jersey Democratic Party v. Samson, 175 N.J. 178 (2002), the Court ignored the law and allowed Democrats to make an eleventh-hour substitution of Lautenberg for Torricelli.  Lautenberg was seated illegally in the United States Senate in January 2003 and remains there to this day. 

Gore must wonder, if New Jersey Democrats could pull that off in 2002, why couldn’t they pull out a victory for him in Florida in 2000.  After all, many New Jersey “snow bird” Democrats regularly vote in both New Jersey and Florida.  In September 2005, New Jersey Republicans announced the results of a study of voting practices within the state.  Among other things, they found that some 170,000 New Jersey residents were registered to vote in more than one state, and that 6,500 of them had voted in two or more states in 2004. 

In the 2004 gubernatorial election in the State of Washington, Republican Dino Rossi won by less than 3,500 votes over Democrat Attorney General Christine Gregoire.  Democrats demanded a recount in King County (Seattle), a heavily Democratic county, which produces roughly one-third of the statewide vote. 

On November 12, King County Democrats began turning in affidavits testifying to the validity of provisional ballots, and four days later, on November 16, Democrats began “finding” large numbers of ballots that had been mysteriously “misplaced” – 10,000 ballots on November 16 and 1,779 ballots on November 23.

A recount on November 24 gave Rossi a slim 42 vote victory, but a hand recount demanded by Democrats on December 3 gave Gregoire a lead of 129 votes.  And although Ms. Gregoire had herself quickly sworn in as governor, a subsequent review of King County election board records showed some 1800 more ballots cast than the number of voters who actually requested ballots.  It was also learned that some 3,500 King County absentee ballots were sent out “in error.”  Apparently not all of the “phantom” absentee ballots were voted, but a detailed hand count showed 810 more absentee ballots counted than could be accredited to actual absentee voters. 

The Democrats simply kept voting and kept counting until they had enough votes to declare victory.  Al Gore couldn’t help but wonder, if Democrats could do that for Christine Gregoire in 2004, why couldn’t they have done that for him in Florida in 2000? 

In Minnesota, in 2008, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party succeeded in stealing a U.S. Senate seat, defeating incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in favor of television comic and failed Air America talk show host, Al Franken.  The initial vote count on election night showed Coleman leading by 215 votes, but Minnesota Democrats continued to “find” previously uncounted ballots.  They failed to “find” any misplaced Coleman ballots but they continued to “find” additional Franken votes until they had accumulated enough to declare him the winner. An official recount gave Franken a 225-vote edge.  

Coleman filed a lawsuit, contending that a) ballots were allowed for Franken that shouldn’t have been, b) ballots for Coleman that should have been allowed were not, and c) damaged absentee ballots that had been duplicated ended up being counted twice, favoring Franken.  After months of litigation, a Democrat-leaning three-member trial court rejected all of those claims. 

And now, in 2010, we have evidence that the White House Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff, working on behalf of Barack Obama, have attempted to bribe at least two candidates for the U.S. Senate who opposed Obama’s favored candidates in Pennsylvania and Colorado.  In at least one instance they used a former president, Bill Clinton, as a messenger boy to deliver their bribery offer. 

In Florida, in 2000, Democrats sent lawyers around to most of the sixty-seven counties, seeking court orders prohibiting county election boards from counting absentee ballots from overseas military personnel that did not have a proper postmark.  They challenged every possible chad… dangling, dimpled, and otherwise.  And when all else failed they implored the Florida Supreme Court, comprised primarily of partisan Democrats, to intervene.  Then, acting totally without jurisdiction in the presidential election process, the Court ordered recounts in only the four most heavily Democratic counties in the state. 

The initial count showed Bush with a 1,210 vote lead out of 6 million votes cast.  The proper thing for Gore to do, under the circumstances, would have been to concede.  But, unlike Nixon in 1960… who called New York Herald Tribune writer Earl Mazo to ask that he stop publishing articles on the stolen election because the articles had the potential of creating a constitutional crisis at the height of the Cold War… Gore at first conceded, then later retracted his concession.

It was left to the United States Supreme Court to stop the selective recount by pointing out that the Democrats’ plan to reexamine only the ballots of the four most heavily Democratic counties represented a violation of the “equal protection” clause of the U.S. Constitution.  

With each passing year, Gore has observed from the sidelines as Democrats at the state and federal level, from Obama on down, have used their influence to steal elections for other Democrats… but not for him.  And with each election cycle, as the likes of Jack Kennedy, Frank Lautenberg, Christine Gregoire, and Al Franken have achieved political power through fraud and deceit, Al Gore felt nothing but salt being rubbed into his wounds. 

Gore apparently remains convinced that, in spite of all that was done to steal the 2000 election for him, it was not enough.  Sharing home and hearth with an embittered Al Gore over the past ten years could not have been much of a picnic.  So if we were to learn that Tipper is spending a lot of time these days partying it up with friends, we’ll give her that.  She’s earned it.