11/14/00 3:30 p.m.
Count Them Out
Republicans should boycott the re-recount.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

epublicans believe that the hand re-count of Democratic precincts in Florida is a mockery of justice and an attempt to steal the election. So why are they abetting it? Their presence at the recount is supposed to limit the Democrats' ability to "interpret" ballots the way Ruth Bader Ginsburg interprets the Constitution. But their presence doesn't limit the damage enough to justify the legitimacy it lends to the process. If they believe what they say, they ought to be ridiculing the process, not participating in it.

The Agony of Victory
One of the most unusual qualities of this unusual election, no matter how it turns out, is that the winner will look bad and the loser will look good (assuming he avoids a protracted legal battle). It's usually the reverse, of course, with talk of mandates and honeymoons on one side and recriminations on the other. The victorious party races forward to inauguration day, energized and excited; the defeated one retreats home, exhausted and demoralized.

This time, the losers may discover some demoralization in their ranks — but mostly they'll encounter outrage. Instead of pointing fingers at each other ("Why didn't Gore campaign with Clinton?" or "Why did Bush spend so much time in California?"), they'll believe an injustice has been done to them. The enemy won't be within, but without. They'll feel like football players on a team that lost a game because of a referee's bad call on the final play. Instead of thinking about how they might have given their quarterback more pass protection in the first half, all they'll want to do is make an angry call to the league office on Monday morning.

These sentiments may become an important organizing tool for whichever party isn't in the White House during the 2002 elections. Like all mid-term elections, these will be said to favor the party that doesn't control the executive branch. Redistricting and a round of Democratic retirements — plus unforeseen political events — are sure to play a large role. But an overriding sense of disenfranchisement will animate one of the parties two years from now. Just as some Republicans think losing the presidency in 1992 might have been worthwhile because it made the sweeps of 1994 possible, the party out of luck in 2000 may thank this misfortune later — or at least its congressional wing.

Back in Black
If Gore becomes president, he will have increased turnout among black voters to thank for it. Although blacks accounted for roughly the same share of the electorate as they did four years ago — about 10 percent — their turnout was up sharply in several locations, said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies on Monday at a forum sponsored by the Center for Equal Opportunity.

In Missouri, for instance, the black vote share grew from 5 percent to 12 percent — an increase of 140 percent that probably explains why Democrats won close races for governor and senator. Turnout also rose in North Carolina, which may have made a difference in the gubernatorial race, won by a Democrat. But did these increases matter on the presidential level? Bush carried both Missouri and North Carolina, as well as Tennessee (where black turnout also was up dramatically).

Well, there's Florida, where black voters leaped from 10 percent of the electorate in 1996 to 15 percent last week. It's too early to say what caused it, but one possibility is already making the rounds: Ward Connerly's suspended Florida Civil Rights Initiative, and Gov. Jeb Bush's reactive One Florida plan. If true, that's bad news for the anti-racial-preferences movement; its support among Republican lawmakers, already weak, may erode further.