“Florida, Florida, Florida” ... 2000 & 2024
The 2000 election in Florida helped to shape the events that have put the survival of the American Experiment in danger in 2024. Could it be different this year?
“Florida, Florida, Florida.” Those of us of, let’s say an uncertain age, can still hear Tim Russert repeating the state’s name three times on the night of the 2000 Election, as the count of votes in the Sunshine State teetered back-and-forth between Democratic nominee Al Gore and Republican nominee George W. Bush, with the outcome of the national election hanging—as it turned out, with hanging chads on punch-card ballots—in the balance.
That night and the 36 days that followed are directly relevant to where we are today. Although most Americans are not aware of the fact, the Democratic nominee has won the most votes in seven of the last eight presidential elections. The only election since 1988 in which more Americans voted for the Republican was 2004. But twice, in 2000 and 2016, the candidate who won fewer votes was made president by the anti-democracy Electoral College, a legacy of America’s Original Sin, slavery.
Prior to 2000, the last time the winner of the popular vote—known in any other democracy as the vote—was 1888. It had long been assumed that if that happened again in modern times, there would be national outrage and the Electoral College absurdity would be abolished.
The way it played out in 2000 derailed that result. Because everything came down to which candidate won Florida and that question occupied all the attention for the 36 days from Election Day to the Supreme Court’s halting of the recount on December 12, many people came to assume that whoever won the popular vote in Florida had won the national popular vote. When the Court, in a 5-4 decision, ordered the recount ended, giving Bush the state’s 25 electoral votes on the basis of a count in Florida that had him ahead by 537 votes, the impression in most Americans’ minds was that was what mattered and the outrage against the Court making this monumental decision along what amounted to partisan lines overshadowed the fact that Gore had won the national vote by more than a half million votes (Gore: 48.4%; Bush 47.9%). Florida’s 25 electoral votes gave Bush one more electoral vote than the minimum 270 needed to become president.
What happened in Florida twenty-four years ago played a major role in where we are today. It was the beginning of the politicized Supreme Court that so plagues us. More important, had Gore won he would likely have paid attention to the intelligence memo titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” that Bush ignored in August 2001, 36 days before the 9/11 attacks.
(It is a tragic and painful, though not significant, irony that the time between the election and the Supreme Court decision that put Bush into office and the time between the memo that might have averted the September 11th attack were both 36 days.)
Nor would Dick Cheney and nine other members of the Project for the New American Century been in the administration. The PNAC had called in 2000, before the election, for a major expansion of American military forces to establish United States world dominance in the twenty-first century, but said, “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Without Cheney and his PNAC colleagues pushing W to use the “new Pearl Harbor” of September 11th as a pretext to attack Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with the attack and which, horrible as Saddam Hussein was, served as a balance against the far more dangerous Iranian regime, the world would be a vastly different place today. The American war of choice in Iraq destabilized the region to the point where ISIS was able to rise, which in turn led to a massive flow of refugees out of Syria and adjacent lands, pouring into Europe and fueling the rise of right-wing movements based on opposition to the Muslim immigrants.
That is to say that the Cheney-Bush war of choice in Iraq may have been an even worse American blunder than was the Vietnam War, and it probably would not have happened had Florida’s electoral votes not been awarded to Bush in 2000, either because Gore would not have been likely to make that mistake or the 9/11 attack itself might have been thwarted.
It is unlikely that Donald Trump ever would have gained the presidency (which he “won” while losing to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million votes in 2016—he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 by more than seven million votes) had it not been for what happened in Florida 24 years ago.
“What if …” history isn’t going to get us anywhere, though.
Here we are.
And it suddenly seems that Florida may be relevant to national politics again. Following the tie in 2000, Bush won the state by 5 points in 2004, but Barack Obama won it in both 2008 and 2012. Trump won it narrowly in 2016 and by more than 3 points in 2020.
It appeared that Florida had moved from purple to red, especially after Ron DeSantis won reelection in 2022 by almost 20 points.
But, in their near-infinite lack of wisdom, the right-wingers may have put the state back within reach for Democrats (and democrats).
Trump’s appointment of three anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court made possible the June 2022 decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health that allowed state governments to deny women control over their own bodies. That was followed by ever more extreme anti-woman laws being enacted in several states. One was Florida, where Governor DeSantis and a “Republican” extremist state legislature passed a 6-week abortion ban in April 2023.
The extreme restrictions on women’s freedom stoked a powerful backlash, which has seen the right to abortion approved by large margins in every state, including very “red” ones, where it has been on the ballot since the Dobbs decision.
On Monday, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the six-week ban can go into effect in 30 days, but also narrowly agreed to allow a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights to be voted on directly by the people in November. (The Court also allowed a referendum on legalizing marijuana to be on the November ballot. That is likely to bring a lot more young voters to the polls.)
Though this year’s elections, which may determine whether democracy survives, are not a “game,” those issues on the ballot can be a “game-changer” in Florida.
As Jay Kuo wrote in his Substack, “The Status Kuo,” on Tuesday, “A high turnout rate by women and young people in Florida would have an immediate effect on the key senate race there. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is already running a competitive race against incumbent GOP Sen. Rick Scott, who is fairly unpopular.”
It just might also make it possible for President Biden to win the state over its most notorious citizen.
I’m not predicting that outcome, but the odds against it just became much shorter, and there is no way that Trump can win the election without Florida.
The history of the 2000 vote and how this impacts today is a story that needs to be told repeatedly. How different our world would be...