Please, let it go
Election was 2 months ago; inauguration is in 2 weeks; Jackson and Tubbs Jones should get on to something useful

Editorial   Cleveland Plain Dealer  Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Memo to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and the Rev. Jesse Jackson: The elec tion horse is dead. You can stop beating it now.

Not an ounce of political flesh remains on that carcass. Ohio has counted and recounted: President George W. Bush received 118,775 more votes than your man, Sen. John Kerry. 
 The senator had the good grace and sense to acknowledge the abundantly obvious, go home and resume his life. You might consider emulating his excellent example, because what you are doing now redoubling your effort in the face of a settled outcome will only drive you further toward the political fringe. And that long grass already is tickling your knees.

The 176 Democrats who sit on Ohio's 88 county election boards pondered their jurisdictions' results, accepted their subordinates' good work, and are turning their energies toward the future. Are they all dupes in some Machiavellian Republican scheme? Or do they simply have a firmer grasp of reality than that displayed by the two of you and a handful of unrelenting zealots still ranting in the January rain, eight weeks after the November voting?

Yes, long lines built voter frustration. Yes, some electronic machines malfunctioned. Yes, boards rejected more provisional ballots than usual. But such things happen when hundreds of thousands of new voters join the process and new technology debuts under fire. Your doubts notwithstanding, numerous nonpartisan election experts say Ohio did an above-average job.

Americans treasure the right to be loudly mistaken a right you now freely exercise. But for two national figures whose constituencies are among the poorest of the poor, it seems an embarrassing waste of energies sorely needed elsewhere. Fold your mildewed tents, collect your soggy cardboard and focus on the poverty, single-parenthood and out rates that have so impoverished those in whose names you protest too much. Good causes await your serious advocacy. And what you are doing now isn't serious.