Can you say bias?

A story on Yahoo News got my attention this morning, titled Kerry Looks to Avoid Gore Recount Errors. Okay, that's fair enough, let's see what's inside.

Sen. John Kerry, bracing for a potential fight over election results, will not hesitate to declare victory Nov. 2 and defend it, advisers say. He also will be prepared to name a national security team before knowing whether he's secured the presidency.

Okay, Kerry is assuming it will be close and is coming up with a strategy. That's fair enough too. But wait a second! Kerry "will not hesitate to declare victory"? Even if he loses? Is this what the Democrats mean by "regime change"? (An election is not a regime change as the US would still a republic form of government.) Will he just declare victory no matter what happens in the polls?

The Democratic vice president prematurely conceded the 2000 race to George W. Bush in a telephone call, then had to retract his concession after aides said Florida wasn't lost. He never declared victory, an omission Kerry's advisers — many of whom worked for Gore — now believe created a sense of inevitability in voters' minds about Bush's presidency.

What?!? A sense of inevitability in voter's minds? They've already voted! It was a matter of counting the votes. Since there were so many states where the margin of victory for one candidate or the other was in the hundreds or thousands, every vote had to be counted and in some places, recounted. How did the Gore concession affect anyone when the polls had already closed?

Gore didn't plan for the legal showdown, though few could have predicted it before Election Day. And he watched as Bush seized political advantage during the 36-day recount by publicly discussing a transition to the White House.

Well, I would say that no one predicted that Gore would go off the deep end and try to circumvent the US Constitution as well as the State of Florida's Constitution. Again, Bush naming Cabinet positions and security advisors didn't affect votes already cast. It was a technical process, not a political one at that point. Every recount in Florida declared Bush the victor there. That's why Gore kept asking for more recounts (except for the absentee ballots of course, we wouldn't want the military voters to sway an election).

"Right now, we have 10,000 lawyers out in the battleground states on Election Day, and that number is growing by the day," said Michael Whouley, a Kerry confidant who is running election operations at the Democratic National Committee.

That alone should chill the hearts of Americans everywhere.

While the lawyers litigate, political operatives will try to shape public perception. Their goal would be to persuade voters that Kerry has the best claim to the presidency and that Republicans are trying to steal it.

Again, they're talking about after the election, after the polls are closed and the counting begins. Shouldn't Kerry be trying to persuade voters before they vote? What does Kerry hope to accomplish after the polls have closed? Projection anyone? Sounds like Kerry is planning on blaming Bush for something he plans to do himself.

Democrats are already laying the public relations groundwork by pointing to every possible voting irregularity before the Nov. 2 election and accusing Republicans of wrongdoing.

Yes, there have been some Republican wrong-doing, however, most of the stories about fraudulent voter registrations are by Democrat related 527s and PACs. Is Kerry announcing that he is trying to steal the election in advance?

Amid the tumult of the 2000 recount, Bush sought to make his presidency appear inevitable time by leaking word of his national security team and bringing news cameras into his transition meetings.

I would think that not only did a Bush presidency "appear inevitable" after the election, it actually was inevitable. It was made more inevitable with every recount in Florida. Again, the voters had already cast their vote. The polls were closed. People had made up their minds. No more voting was going on. Media "perception" had nothing to do with the technical fact that Bush won more electoral votes than Gore.

What's the Chinese curse again? "May you live in interesting times." Oh, what an appropriate saying.