Failed presidential candidate Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush in the 2000 election after a Supreme Court ruling in a very close race. The former vice president now says President Trump will not concede if he fails to best Joe Biden in the November election.
On Tuesday, Gore said in an interview with Reuters that President Trump was “attempting to put his knee on the neck of democracy” by targeting mail-in ballots and absentee voting.
“He seems to have no compunctions at all about trying to rip apart the social fabric and the political equilibrium of the American people, and he’s strategically planting doubts in advance,” the former Democratic nominee for president said. He labeled it a “despicable strategy.”
In 2000 Gore won the popular vote but lost the election, much like Hillary Clinton; however, the official results were not flushed out for over a month past Election Day. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Gore’s demand for a recount in Florida, narrowly handing Bush the victory by only 537 votes.
Gore conceded the 2000 election to Bush on Dec. 13 of that year.
“It turns out there’s no intermediate step between a final Supreme Court decision and violent revolution,” Gore stated. “It seemed to me that respect for the rule of law and respect for the needs of American democracy were the orders of the day.”
“You can always explore the option of dragging something out, tearing the country apart, mobilizing partisans against one another in the streets and all of that, but it was not a wise course for our country,” he continued.
Gore says should Trump lose the election but not accept the results, he would like the military to remove Donald Trump. He pointed out that the Constitution says Trump’s final day in office should be Jan. 20, 2021.
“It’s important to say that it’s really not up to him. I hear people saying, ‘Well, would he accept that decision?’ Well, it doesn’t matter because it’s not up to him,” Gore said. “Because at noon on January 20th, if a new president is elected… the police force, the Secret Service, the military, all of the executive branch officers, will respond to the command and the direction of the new president.”
Due to the COVID-19 health crisis, millions of Americans are anticipated to vote by mail during the 2020 election. This impersonal system dramatically increases the likelihood that the public will not know the winner of the presidential election on the night of the vote. State election officials in numerous key swing states have already cautioned that the final count could take days to calculate.
President Trump has persistently argued that widespread use of mail-in voting could open the door for extensive fraud, which he once again outlined addressing the Republican National Convention on Monday.
Nevertheless, the commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, as well as other voting experts, have claimed that voting through the mail system will be safe and secure.
Nine states, the bulk of which are led by Democratic governors, say they are set to mail ballots to every voter in their state. The Wall Street Journal put out a guide for mail-in voting throughout the country.
Trump has yet to say if he will accept the results of the November election under the current circumstances.
“The president has always said he’ll see what happens and make a determination in the aftermath. It’s the same thing he said last election,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary stated during a press briefing last week.
A collective of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics says Biden is ahead of Trump by over seven percentage points nationwide. However, a recent study based on today’s market says Trump has an 87% chance of winning in 2020.