It seems like I constantly have to explain to liberals the differences betwen Ohio and Washington.

Ohio: Bush won by rougly 119,000 votes. No evidence of fraud, tampering, or supression of votes has been found. John Kerry’s advisors and his lawyers who were on the ground agree and do not contest the results. Congressional Democrats also conceded that the results were surely not going to change—even as they contested the votes of the Ohio electors.

Washington: Gregoire’s alleged victory is 129 votes. Plenty of real evidence has been uncovered to indicate fraud and/or tampering occurred.

Yet, some peopel think there’s some hypocrisy that most sane people realize that Bush’s victory in Ohio was legitimate while Gregoire’s in Washington was not?

They just don’t get it. The margins of victory in these cases tell the story. 119,000 vs. 129. One of these is within the margin of fraud. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which one.

I’ll break down the math.

Approximately 5.6 million people voted in Ohio in the Presidential Election of 2004, while approximately 2.8 million people voted in the Washington state gubernatorial election. While only twice as many people voted in the Ohio presidential election, Bush’s margin of victory in Ohio is over 90 times larger than Gregoire’s “victory” in Washington.

Why contest Washington and not Ohio? The answer to that is well within the margin of duhhhh….

When I first started blogging, the word was that blogging was “a liberal thing.” I didn’t exactly believe that—I ultimately proved it wrong—but that was the stereotype. Then came Ra^therGate and blogs suddenly achieved some legitimacy, much, much more than the DNC or the RNC managed to accomplish. Liberal bloggers like to take credit for taking down Trent Lott, but in reality both liberal and conservative bloggers contributed to that.

But in the aftermath of Ra^therGate, generally speaking, you got silence from the left side of the blogosphere, to this day I believe that they felt emasculated that it was conservative bloggers who collaboratively took down Dan Ra^ther, and perhaps eventually CBS.

Since then, liberal bloggers have had Ra^therGate Envy. Desperate to make a name for themselves they’ve gone after every ridiculous thing hoping for their own Ra^therGate-type claim to fame.

Allegations of Bush cheating in the first debate was probably their first attempt—which didn’t go anywhere because it was absurd (after all, according to them, didn’t Kerry win that debate?) Following the election they thought they’d win for Kerry, it was the Ohio challenege. They tried so hard to get Kerry to challenge the state, find evidence of fraud… So much for that. Sound Politics has done more to find voter fraud and election irregularities done on behalf of the Democrat in Washington state, while no liberal blogger has been able to find any evidence of a stolen election in Ohio.

So what’s their next attempt for the left’s own Ra^therGate? They’re going after the Armstrong Williams story. Striving for relevance, at least one liberal blogger, Oliver Willis, who once enjoyed The George Bush Jr burger at Bartley’s in Harvard Square, has created a whole new separate category devoted to his coverage of the situation… in order to justify not discusses the CBS Memo Report, he has to shrug it off as insignificant. Other liberal bloggers have chosen to virtually ignore the CBS report and concentrate all their energies on Amstrong Williams. However, even right-wing bloggers are speaking out negatively towards the Armstrong Williams situation.

It’s Ra^therGate Envy. They want to break a story of their own that they think will be of equal or higher impact. They want to get interviewed by the media, and get a cover story in TIME Magazine… How sad.

UPDATE: Looks like a lot of other bloggers don’t think much of OhDub..

More kind words from Hugh Hewitt:

Every v.p. for marketing in America ought to be trolling through the web identifying blogging talent like Scott, Matt, Bill, Doug, or Rick to name five, and e-mailing them inquiries on availability.

I am available any time! So is Scott!

Thanks again, Hugh!

I’m rounding up blogger reactions here…

If you haven’t already, check out Mark Steyn’s column today.

Well, not really… but Thomas Sowell says that Bush “needs to carve out his place in history.”

In the aftermath of the battle in Congress over Bush’s victory has lead Democrats to take the position that they were not expecting the outcome to change, but rather address the problems in the electoral process. Now voices on the left think that Republicans&mash;who strongly opposed the theatrics in Congress yesterday—don’t want to address these problems.

No one will deny that there are flaws in the system. At Blogs For Bush we did our best in the weeks and months leading up to the election to highlight uncovered cases of potential abuse.

But what happened in Congress yesterday had absolutely nothing to do with address the problems of our electoral process. The source of “evidence” used yesterday was a 100-page report citing alleged problems in Ohio—and Ohio alone. The state Bush won which gave him the presidency.

Had the real concern been addressing the problems of the electoral process, then other states with alleged problems would have been included in this manifesto, such as Pennsylvania, a state with 21 electoral votes, and Democrat governor, who in the days leading up to the election sought to disenfranchise the military and give convicted felons the right to vote. Kerry won the state. I have yet to hear a single Democrat in Congress argue about irregularities in Pennsylvania.

The 100-page “report” also would have addressed the gubernatorial race in Washington, which according to the latest, had Democrat Christine Gregoire winning by the slimmest of margins—126 votes, which more problems and irregularities coming out in the aftermath that faith in the electoral process in the state has suffered far more drastically than any other state in the union for sure.

If the contesting of the Ohio electors yesterday was not really about changing the results of the election, the debate would never have occurred. It has been reported that John Kerry himself plans to propose some type of election reform legislation during the 109thsession of Congress. The problems with the electoral process would have been more appropriately addressed when this legislation is brought up for debate as opposed to an unnecessary delay of the formal tallying of the electoral votes.

Using Ohio as the sole focus of the debate during the official tally by Congress was undoubtedly effectively protesting the results of the election. The results were inevitably certified, and the Democrats in Congress who formally protested knew nothing would change that.

Yet, according the small number of Democrats, this contesting of the validity of the results in Ohio was not about changing the results. How do you contest the validity of the results if the point isn’t about changing the outcome?

So why did they do it? By protesting during the official tallying of the electoral votes it merely served to further embolden the constituents of the Democratic Party who do still hold on to the belief that John Kerry won Ohio and the presidency. Congressional Democrats can now say that they made a stand, and now their supporters can continue their futile fight in the background. That’s what it was all about. That, and the Democrats want to pretend as if they have the moral high ground on the issue of election fraud.

I do not doubt that our electoral process has flaws and needs improvement. I think the country needs Congress to take a bipartisan look at the electoral process, note the flaws, and fix them. However, the grandstanding that occurred yesterday was meaningless and motivated by partisanship—not the desire for the integrity of the eletoral process.

Seen this contest?

Here’s my submission…