"The Dems and Dirty Tricks" - Election Night 2008

Remember back in February when WikiLeaks released emails from Stratfor, also known as Strategic Forecasting, a “leader in business intelligence and geopolitics?  While the emails released didn’t have the same “bang for the buck” as the State Department release, there were a few interesting emails, among them, the subject of tonight’s posting.  While I posted on this back in February, I thought that since we are on the eve of the 2012 election, it was time to revisit what happened behind the scenes on November 7, 2008.

As background, Stratfor is a Texas-based global intelligence corporation founded in 1996.  Stratfor provides its subcribers, often Fortune 500 companies, with a wide range of research on international affairs.  They have their own intelligence network for the gathering of data which is then evaluated by their in-house analysts.  Here is their own video explained their raison d’etre:

Now, let’s get down to the reason for this posting.  In searching through WikiLeaks, I found these two emails, the first entitled "Insight - McCain #5" dated November 5, 2008 and the second entitled "Insight - The Dems and Dirty Tricks" dated November 7, 2008 of particular interest.  Both emails were flagged as **Internal Use Only - Do Not Forward**.  You'll see why.

The author of both emails, burton@stratfor.com, could well be Fred Burton, Stratfor's Vice President for Intelligence, a former special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service among other things. 

Let's start with the second email, complete with typos, to put the first one into context.  The second email opens by stating that:

"1.) The black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio as reported the night of hte election and Sen. McCain chose not to fight.  The matter is not dead inside the party.  It now becomes a matter of sequence now as to how and when to "out".

2.) It appears that the Dems "made a donation" to Rev. Jesse...to keep his yap shut after his diatribe about the Jews and Israel.  A little bird told me that it was a "nice six-figure donation".  This also becomes a matter of how and when to out.

3.) The hunt is on for the sleezy Russian money into O-mans coffers.  A smoking gun has already been found.  Will get more on this when the time is right.  My source was too giddy to continue.  Can you say Clinton and ChiCom funny money?..."

For your information, the word "ChiCom" generally refers to Chinese Communist.

The recipient of the email, howerton@stratfor.com, responded by stating that

"...The Dems quit pretending and admitted to themselves that to win it you have to get off your high horse and play dirty when you have to.  And they won."

 Now, let's look at the second email.

"After discussions with his inner circle, which explains the delay in his speech, McCain decided not to pursue the voter fraud in PA and Ohio, despite his staff's desire to make it an issue....Staff felt that they could get a federal injunction to stop the process.  McCain felt the crowds assembled in support of Obama and such would be detrimental to our country and it would do our nation no good for this to drag out like last go around, coupled with the possibility of domestic violence."

"Curiously, there are whispers of McCain being set up by the Cheney/Bush crowd, because McCain was never liked by either...My guy said Rove and company want to bring in someone they can control the next go around.  McCain was not controllable.  Jeb Bush's name is being discussed...". (my bold)

To summarize, the evening of the 2008 federal election, John McCain was urged by his aides to contest the results of the election by seeking a court injunction to prevent the voting results in both Ohio and Pennsylvania from being certified.  All I can think is thank goodness that John McCain had the strength of character to just say "no" when it counted.  I also found it quite interesting that, according to Mr. Burton, Karl Rove et al did not like John McCain because he was "not controllable".  What does that say about George W. Bush?  What does it say about Mitt Romney?

Let’s take a look back four years at the results of the 2008 election to see what might have changed if Senator McCain had succumbed to the wishes of his handlers and contested the vote in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.  First, nationally, Barak Obama received 365 electoral votes and his share of the popular vote was 69,456,897.  John McCain received 173 electoral votes and his share of the popular vote was 59,934,814.  Ohio had 20 electoral votes in 2008 and 52 percent of voters chose the Democrats giving Obama all 20 electoral votes.  Pennsylvania had 21 electoral votes in 2008 and 55 percent of voters chose the Democrats giving Obama all 21 electoral votes.  If John McCain had won all 41 electoral votes from both Ohio and Pennsylvania, his total would have risen to 214 and President Obama's total would have dropped to 324, making the end result exactly the same as it turned out to be with an Obama victory.  If John McCain had elected to contest the election, it would have solved nothing other than perhaps creating unnecessary national chaos, especially in light of the kerfuffle after the 2000 election.

With all of this in mind, it will be interesting to see if there is a repeat of these accusations in the 2012 presidential election cycle, unfortunately, we’ll likely never know what goes on within the confines of Stratfor.  One thing that is becoming apparent is that, sooner or later, like developing nations around the world, we’ll soon require independent confirmation of clean voting at every voting location in America.