You don’t hear this often from people you can point to as reputable sources of information—journalist Harvey Wasserman discussing the ongoing controversy surrounding the presidential vote in Ohio said: (emphasis added)

“Based on the exit polls, we have had statisticians look at the validity of the exit polls in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. We have had one statistician tell us that the odds on the exit polls being wrong in the three states, which they were, — either the exit polls are wrong or the ballot count was wrong — the odds against it are 150 million to one. There’s no way that George W. Bush won this election.“

That’s right—someone from outside the apparently ignorable “blogosphere” is saying this on Democracy Now!.

But is it significant? I’d say so, but not for the reason you might think.

If you’ve read this blog for long, you know that I find this interesting not so much for determining who is US President (that was settled by the two parties allowed to be heard on the matter, not by voters, and you’re not going to get vastly different policy from one of these candidates over the other). I find this interesting as a taste of what is not to come from those who call themselves “progressives”.

In two and a half years, do you think anyone will remember this? Do you think progressives will recall this and arrive at the reasonable conclusion that the Democrats are untrustworthy, that they can lose elections all on their own and be counted on to not do the work to defend voting rights?

Or will we get a list of lame reasons why the Democrats of 2008 (remember, even progressives don’t care about midterm elections where you have more voting power) are significantly different and this time for sure they’ll defend everyone’s voting rights by living up to what John Edwards told the country a few hours before he conceded the election to Bush:

“John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that in this election every vote would count and every vote will count.”