podpolia

During my research lately, I stumbled across an editorial in the New York Times dated January 5, 1883. It discusses a recent election controversy in the state of Connecticut. I found it interesting, so here’s the first part of the article:

“SOME SUPRISED DEMOCRATS.
Now that GOV. WALLER, of Connecticut, has peacefully taken office and the Democrats of that State and their political brethren elsewhere have recovered from their ridiculous panic, it is possible to discuss the affair of the ballots without danger of being accused of sedition, treason, and privy conspiracy. Some of the ballots cast for the Democratic candidate for Governor of Connecticut were clearly and palpably illegal. A decision to this effect was given by the highest judicial officer in the State, the matter having been brought before his court in a suit to determine the legality of a municipal election in which the so-called black ballots were used. [Instead of being white ballots with black printing as required by law, these were black ballots with white printing. This was at a time when each party made its own ballots. -Ed.] The Democrats, inflamed to the highest degree of madness by this opinion, charged that the raising of the question (and presumably Chief-Justice PARK’s decision) was a part of a conspiracy to “steal the State,” and that the Republican candidate for Governor, Lieut.-GOV. W. H. BULKELEY, was deep in the aforesaid conspiracy. It did not seem to occur to any of these exacerbated persons that the decision was that of a high and honorable court, and that the Republican candidate for Governor had no more power over the case that he has over the tides of the ocean.
When Lieut.-GOV. BULKELEY was asked by a reporter “what he should do about it,” meaning the dispute over the doubtful ballots, he declined to disclose his intentions. This confirmed the panic-stricken Democrats in their belief in the existence of a deep-laid plot to revolutionize Connecticut. It was also charged that the Republicans had used illegal ballots in the late election, as if the alleged irregularity of the Republican ballots could be made to offset the pronounced illegality of those cast by Democrats. Finally, Lieut-GOV. BULKELEY wrote a letter in which he manfully said that, if the black ballots were thrown out and the election of Mr. WALLER were declared invalid, he, as the Republican candidate, would refuse to accept the office of Governor. The Democrats, considerably taken aback by this unexpected declaration, found fault with Mr. BULKELEY’s and then began to exult over what they called the failure of courage shown by the Republicans. This was saying, in effect, “If we had been in the Republican position, we would have made the best use of our opportunity and have gotten away with the Governorship.”"

This all has a very familiar ring to it — allegations of fraud, the allegation and counter-allegation of irregularities, and even claims of an election stolen by judicial conspiracy. I wonder why this all sounds like I’ve heard it before?

I’ve been meaning to post something about the new movie that has recently been making headlines — the one that’s a retrospective of the assassination of President Bush. I wasn’t really outraged by it, personally: it seems like a great premise for a movie. I was less impressed with the geopolitics that it invented after the ‘assassination.’ They weren’t overly realistic, in my mind, and the portrayals of various administration figures after the assassination seems rather cartoonish and two-dimensional (at least according to the account that I read of it here). There are so many inventive possibilities for realistic ends to the world that they needn’t have used such a distorted one. Rather a pity, in my opinion. I’d have enjoyed a good political horror drama like this had the potential to be.
Anyhow, I was reminded about the whole issue while reading a recent Powerline poast on the topic, which is an interesting interpretation of the movie’s premise as liberal political fantasy.