It was 20 years ago so nobody (except you, dear readers) remembers the 2000 election and post-election shenanigans. Probably some relevant and soon to be even more relevant lessons from then! One is don't count on the referees - the media - to, well, referee. They were unified with the Bush campaign line - even when it sometimes suddenly changed - the whole way. Why precisely that was is for the margin of this blog post, but trust me, it was.
More than that, they were unified with it before election day. There was a brief period when "conventional wisdom" was forming that the "unthinkable" might happen. Yes, that's right, that Al Gore would win the electoral college vote but lose the popular vote and proceed to steal the election by defying the will of the people and not promptly refusing to take office and demanding that his electors vote for Bush instead. For about a week "everybody" in the cable news green rooms agreed this would be the only possible way forward.
And then, well, that's not what happened...
