If you're a Democrat, you'll always have Florida.

* If you're a Democrat, you'll always have Florida. At least that's how it seemed at the party's convention, as speaker after speaker revived the myth that Al Gore "won" the 2000 presidential election. "We won a half a million more votes than George Bush and Dick Cheney," said party chairman Terry McAuliffe. "If only we had gotten one more vote on the United States Supreme Court." One might have thought that McAuliffe and his party would have moved on by now. But for the record: George W. Bush won Florida, and thus the presidency. As McAuliffe may remember, a consortium formed by major news organizations studied ballots in Florida and found that in every real-world vote-counting scenario, Bush was the victor. Afront-page story in the New York Times on November 12, 2001, was headlined, "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote." The paper reported that, "[c]ontrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court." The consortium also found that Bush would have won under Gore's original scheme to recount ballots in heavily Democratic counties. The consortium found that in just one scenario, a statewide recount of all rejected ballots-something Gore did not ask for and no court ordered--Gore "might have" won. Other media outlets reported the same results. And, of course, if anyone cares, the official recounts in Florida showed Bush received more votes than Gore. So just a brief reminder, to one and all: Yes, Bush won.