Bush was graceful after McCain’s defeat, yes. Note that Obama’s campaign was amazingly light in touch _while the outcome was in doubt_: repeatedly praising McCain as a war hero and honorable man of experience. An even more relevant comparison, there, is Obama during the campaign with McCain during the campaign; McCain was lying about Obama’s tax plan, health care plan, voting record, legislative achievement record, and imaginary relationship with a guy he’d served on a bipartisan education reform board with 12 years ago.

The logical solution to the Florida debacle was to split the electoral votes evenly. I’m glad we’re in agreement that (1) Gore really got more votes but (2) it wasn’t going to be possible to count them all in the necessary time frame. That doesn’t mean liberals haven’t been, on the whole, astonishingly forgiving about Gore of the most votes losing. For all of this, I think the original post’s point is wrong.

The reality is that the election was a statistical tie, which really makes it impossible to say that either man was the ‘true’ winner in an empirical sense. You can only follow the predetermined rules in the most impartial manner possible, and requesting EVERY form of recount and attempting to discern voter intent from improperly marked ballots at the request of one candidate (and refusing to allow courts to overrule those requests under any circumstance) is not the way that’s done.

I hadn’t intended to get into a lengthy argument of this but was just responding to Justin’s rationale for BDS- but I do apologize for misstating my case because I also didn’t intend to distort the facts.

And a couple of people who are routinely villified by the left really did have extremely gracious (and seemingly sincere) reactions to the Obama win- namely, Karl Rove and President Bush. Funny how little mention there has been of that- I couldn’t find a youtube clip of Rove, but I was watching the election coverage on Fox last Tuesday and Rove was one of the first to comment when the election was called and there wasn’t a trace of bitterness or pettiness and nothing but praise for the milestone of a black candidate winning the presidency.

2) The final newspaper-sponsored count of the 2000 election in Florida showed Gore, not Bush, to have the most votes. The recount was completed two months after 9/11, so the accounts tended to be astonishingly gracious to the sitting President: the New York Times story, for example, was headlined “Study of Disputed Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast Deciding Vote”, and the first three paragraphs describe partial-recount scenarios under which Bush would have won Florida. Paragraph four, however, reads

“If all the ballots had been reviewed, under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won”.

Read that carefully. Read it again. In other words, Gore got more votes in Florida, as he did nationwide. In further other words, the voters elected Gore — and yet in the wake of an attack on U.S. territory, that was relegated to fourth-paragraph news. Yes, many liberals were angry. That most of them rallied behind the president post-9/11 despite his having lost the legitimate vote undercuts the entire thesis of this article.

3) Examples of graciousness from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Anne Coulter — probably the three most widely-listened-to voices of the American Right — would be of interest to me. Please supply us with some.

I do think that a disproportionate number of conservative in the blogosphere deserve credit for being gracious in defeat. And I do think that there are several left-leaning sites that present themselves deceptively as reasonable but which have shown by their behavior over the past several days that they are partisan hacks motivated by hatred even after they win. And while I agree that no one is under an obligation to be “hypervigilant” in condemning their own side, I do think that people have an obligation to be use consistent standards when incidents are specifically pointed out to them. Willful refusal to do that is, to me, a clear sign of partisan hackery.

At the point that you even acknowledge that there is a difference in how they should treat “their own kind”, you are accidentally conceding my point, Justin: They are willing to compromise their supposed principles to protect their ideological associations.

I’m not accidentally conceding anything. We’re not talking about objective truths and that’s my overarching point here. You have a POV about calling out hackery that I simply don’t share

To that point, if I’m reading you correctly it seems as if you believe that all bloggers must be hyper-vigilant about what their own side is saying. I disagree. I don’t feel the need to condemn the MoveOns or the Randi Rhodes or the Daily Kos’ when they say something moronic because I’m not part of the far left and I don’t care what they say. And to that point, I don’t really care what the far right has to say either. This is why you don’t see me constantly calling our Michelle Malkin, Gateway Pundit, Flopping Aces, etc., even though it would ridiculously easy to do so. 99% of the time the debate on Donklephant is with a candidate’s POV or a news organization’s characterization of a certain bit of news.

One thing I do often on Donklephant is delete comments from both sides on that say incredibly inflammatory things, or I call out folks who talk in a condescending fashion or name call. My record is consistent in that respect. But do know that as much as I try to I tend to my own garden, it’s an impossible task to hold down a full time job, blog as much as I do and read ALL the comments on Donklephant. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. So you can understand again why I’m not a big fan of your idea that one must stay vigilant for hackery on my side of the ideological spectrum when I can’t even keep up with my readers.

However, do I read Memeorandum? Do I look at headlines? Do I click through to Michelle Malkin and Gateway Pundit and Daily Kos and Fire Dog Lake? Sure. And what I find is usually pretty hacky. But then I visit places that are more moderate in tone (like Volokh, QandO, Washington Monthly and TPM) and I find that my opinion is affirmed that there are reasonable places on both sides of the aisle. Certainly much more of a balance than your 100% claim.

So you can think that what I’ve said is revealing, but I simply think you’re placing an expectation on me that I don’t think is realistic. I’d rather lead by example then call others out constantly. I spent my first couple years of blogging trying to do that and it was ultimately tiring and pointless. Once I switched into the “take care of my own blog” mode, we started getting more readers. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

I’m going to move on after this comment because I think we’ve reached a stopping point where we’ll have to agree to disagree, but if you want to email me personally please feel free to do so: justin@donklephant.com

Your argument seems to boil down to:
We refuse to accede your point that left leaning bloggers (or the left in general) are more viciously partisan somehow proves our partisanship. The essense of that argument is circular.

You can dress it up all you want in vague hand-waving about “honest discourse” (and what that means in the absence of a requirement for consistent standards for criticism that include “their own kind” is far from clear), but I still think you’re just covering up for certain people. You have often shown a eagerness to condemn conservatives when they run interference for “their own kind”, but when someone criticizes lefties for it, you suddenly show a reluctance to make a condemnation. That contrast is very revealing.

Can we agree that those lefty blogs that are keeping on with the pre-election attack mode, including bashing “Joe the Plumber” because he was poor as a child are beyond the pale?

I disagree. I don’t think you can take a couple situations and claim an author is “beyond the pale” and therefore characterize his or her blog as “hackery.” It has to be a consistent demonstration of willful ignorance, of which there are many examples of on both sides.

That’s one of the biggest problems I’ve had with your entire characterization of left leaning blogs vs. right leaning blog. It’s all situational and you can pick out moments in time on ANY blog to try and demonstrate that somebody is a hack.

As far as your definition of fair critic vs. partisan hack, again, it’s again situational given your POV on any given event or policy. I would also add that those who don’t concern themselves with the business of pushing partisan attacks don’t bear responsibility for condemning bloggers just because they happen to share a common political philosophy with them. And as far as having things pointed out to them, well, there are only so many hours in the day and I think you’re putting an unrealistic burden on bloggers at that point.

So I’ll continue to stand by my point that there are a large amount of hack blogs on both sides, but also a variety of good blogs too. And “good” is defined for me as consistent honest discourse, not consistent attacks on their own kind.

@marc – There’s no doubt that the Dems move to count only some counties was boneheaded, but at the time the SCOTUS rendered their decision, ALL counties were beginning recounts. It’s in this context that I talk about illegitimacy. But agreed that neither side was going to be happy nor gracious in the face of defeat that year.

But no, I won’t concede that Michael’s point is correct because I think the idea of what the “natural order of things” depends heavily on your POV. In other words, no political philosophy owns an innate sense of what is and isn’t “natural” and I sincerely hope we can all agree on that. I also disagree strongly that liberals are more about saving the world through purifying change than conservatives, and I think the last eight years and conservatives’ strong belief in the doctrine of American Exceptionalism demonstrates exactly why that’s not anywhere close to being a truism.

But Michael’s essential point is correct: liberals’ fixture on saving the world through the purifying change only they can offer invests them more in victory and leaves them disproportionately outraged when they lose. Conservatives, after all, are more content with the natural order of things. That’s what makes them conservative.