A Stitch in Haste

As you may recall, Paul Krugman wrote an "Al Gore won Florida in 2000" column that was not only so logically strained as to bring his competence into question, but also turned out to be flat-out factually incorrect in several aspects. Krugman had to issue an apology for the grievous errors.

Now it turns out that he was even more inaccurate than he initially admitted.

But, in the spirit of "fake but accurate," he still manages to pull deception out of the jaws of journalistic honesty:

None of this has any bearing on my original point ... that, when you combine that fact with the effects of vote suppression and ballot design, it becomes reasonably clear that the voters of Florida, as well as those of the United States as a whole, tried to choose Mr. Gore.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

First, I will again point out that tens of thousands of illegal Florida votes for Gore were cast by "Snowbird voters" from New York. That indisputable voter fraud swamps, by orders of magnitude, and and all questionable votes that might, even under the most lopsided criteria, have gone for Gore.

Second, the rule is not "make every vote count," but rather make every valid vote count." Stated differently, there is no right to be an idiot in the voting booth. If you're too stupid to figure out how to vote, then too bad so sad. Perhaps you shouldn't be voting in the first place.

In any case, Krugman forgot one of life's most basic rules: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.