CBS News Special Report - John Kerry concedes 2004 election

Channel: malgent

Transcript

Language: English (original, YouTube automatic captions)

[0:05] And the word is in just now. We want to

[0:07] go right to Bill Plant who is at the

[0:09] White House. The word is from the White

[0:11] House that John Kerry has called

[0:13] President Bush and has conceded this

[0:15] election. Bill, what do you know?

[0:18] >> White House tells us, Harry, that John

[0:20] Kerry called President Bush within the

[0:22] last few minutes to concede the

[0:24] election. It is now officially over. The

[0:28] White House had been holding off all

[0:29] morning on scheduling an appearance for

[0:31] the president. They said last night that

[0:34] Mr. Bush would appear to claim victory

[0:36] even in the absence of a Kerry

[0:38] concession because the White House said

[0:40] he had the votes and it was numerically

[0:43] impossible for Kerry to overtake him in

[0:46] Ohio. So they waited, perhaps playing a

[0:48] little bit of a game here, they waited

[0:50] until they heard from the Kerry people

[0:52] and now they have. We are told by the

[0:55] White House that John Kerry called the

[0:57] president within the last few minutes to

[0:59] concede the election. Harry,

[1:01] >> here's the story for people who may just

[1:03] be joining us now because of course the

[1:05] whole dispute was all about Ohio. These

[1:08] provisional votes that uh that many in

[1:10] the Democratic side wanted to have

[1:12] counted. Uh there was a a lead in in the

[1:15] overall vote count of more than 100,000.

[1:18] And what Andrew Card said early this

[1:20] morning about 5:40 5:45 this morning was

[1:23] that it was a literal mathematic

[1:25] impossibility to overcome the vote lead

[1:28] in Ohio with those provisional votes.

[1:30] And now we're understanding that the

[1:33] Kerry camp has said we're not going to

[1:35] fight this fight. We're not going to

[1:36] bring lawyers in. We're not going to

[1:38] open up all of those envelopes and count

[1:40] them one at a time. We are going to

[1:41] concede this election. And President

[1:44] Bush has in fact been reelected to a

[1:46] four-year term.

[1:49] Bill

[1:50] Harry, that's right. The White House has

[1:53] said from the beginning that the

[1:54] president hoped, in fact, he said it

[1:56] himself yesterday, that the election

[1:59] would be over last night. Well, it

[2:01] wasn't quite, but it now does appear to

[2:02] be over definitively this morning. They

[2:05] maintained when uh Secretary Card, the

[2:08] chief of staff, came to what was to have

[2:11] been the Bush victory celebration at a

[2:13] quarter to 6 this morning with people

[2:16] rolled up on the floor sleeping waiting

[2:18] for the party to start. They've

[2:20] maintained that it was mathematically

[2:22] impossible for John Kerry to overtake

[2:25] President Bush in Ohio because of the

[2:28] number of votes that they said the

[2:30] president had versus the number of

[2:32] disputed ballots that were out there.

[2:34] And they tried to create an air of

[2:36] inevitability. The strategy here was

[2:38] obviously for the president to act

[2:41] legitimate from the beginning and to

[2:44] create this air of an inevitability so

[2:47] that whatever happened the president

[2:49] could claim uh and go on acting doing

[2:51] his business as though he were the

[2:53] president without waiting for this to be

[2:56] resolved. And now it has been because

[2:58] John Kerry has called the president we

[3:00] are told and conceded. All right, Bill

[3:03] Plant live at the White House this

[3:04] morning.