There is an ugly set of accusations and counter-accusations going on between Sen. John Kerry and an author who claims that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. In Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), Mark Crispin Miller argues that a conspiracy of GOP officials, voting-machine companies, and shadowy political operatives created, in the words of Miller’s publisher, “a new Republican electoral strategy…not one overwhelming fraud but thousands of little ones” that gave the election to George W. Bush.
Last Friday, Miller took to the left-wing media to announce that John Kerry, who accepted the election results in his November 3, 2004 concession speech, now agrees with Miller that the vote was stolen. Appearing on Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!” with host Amy Goodman, Miller said:
Speaking of John Kerry, I have some news for you. On Friday, this last Friday night, I arranged to meet Senator Kerry at a fundraiser to give him a copy of my book. He told me he now thinks the election was stolen. He said he doesn’t believe that he is the person who can go out front on the issue, because of the sour grapes, you know, question. But he said he believes it was stolen. He says he argues about this with his Democratic colleagues on the Hill. He had just had a big fight with Christopher Dodd about it, because he said, you know, “There’s this stuff about the voting machines; they’re really questionable.” And Dodd was angry. “I don’t want to hear about it,” you know, “I looked into it. There’s nothing there.”
Miller breathlessly reported the news on his website with the headline “BREAKING: Kerry now believes the election was stolen.” He further explained that, “Kerry’s statement was not planned. He did not expect to see me. His sister, Peggy Kerry, purposely invited me to that fundraiser so that I could hand the senator a copy of my book. (She too understands the urgency of getting the top Democrats to push the issue of electoral reform.)”
If true, Miller’s revelation would be major news: the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate taking up arms with the small fringe of conspiracy theorists who argue that the election was stolen. The only problem is that Kerry strongly denies it. Another lefty website, RawStory, got in touch with Kerry spokeswoman Jenny Backus, who said:
I know Mr. Miller is trying to sell his book and he feels passionately about his thesis but his recent statements about his conversation with Senator Kerry are simply not true. The only thing true about his recollection of the conversation is that he gave Senator Kerry a copy of his book.
Miller maintains that his story is accurate, telling RawStory that Backus’ comments were “contemptible” and “completely false.” On his website, he headlined the story “Kerry goes AWOL again.”
I wrote about Miller in The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. Prior to his crusade to prove that the 2004 election was stolen, he was on a crusade to convince Americans that a powerful, well-organized theocratic movement, fronted by George W. Bush but controlled by a secretive group of right-wing religious figures, is working to establish Biblical law in the United States. Miller wasn’t speaking figuratively; he wrote of a Republican-dominated United States in which adultery, for example, is punishable by death by stoning. In his latest book, Miller has combined his two areas of interest, arguing that the election-stealing conspiracy was carried out by Bush-supporting “theocratic militants.” In his mind, apparently, it all fits together.
Miller is, by the way, a professor at New York University.