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So Goes the Nation DVD Review

by Kam Williams

DVD Exposes Tainted 2004 Presidential Election

So Goes the Nation is a damning documentary which indicts the GOP for stooping to just about every dastardly deed imaginable to prevail in the last presidential election. Directed by Adam Del Deo and James Stern, this shocking, though patently partisan, expose' makes a convincing case that wholesale irregularities came into play in the State of Ohio on Election Day 2004, all at the behest of sinister right-wing operatives. The evildoers discouraged likely Democrats in many of the ways already witnessed four years before in Florida.

Yet, since President Bush is a lame duck President with woeful approval ratings, this subject is likely to be of little concern to most people right now. If there is a villain in this movie, it's the then Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, an African-American who went out of his way to run interference as the fall guy for the Republican Party in its assorted efforts to suppress the black vote.

Thousands of duly-registered citizens were directed to use provisional ballots, based on a selectively-enforced legal technicality. Then, when Blackwell arbitrarily decided not to count those votes, the Bush re-election was ensured. For his loyalty, Blackwell was rewarded with the Republican nomination in Ohio's next governor's race, a contest which he lost in a landslide.

Featuring appearances by such incriminated suspects as RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie and Bush Campaign Manager Ken Mehlman, So Goes the Nation unfortunately feels a little anticlimactic at this juncture. But if the idea behind the tardy timing of its release is to keep the GOP honest in 2008, I suppose there's no harm in registering a fair warning that the world is watching to see whether the architects of wholesale disenfranchisements of blacks would dare put their thumbs on the scales again.

Very Good (3 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 90 minutes
Studio: Genius Productions/IFC
DVD Extras: Commentary by filmmakers James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo.