It's 22 years later, and it's come up again because of various reasons beyond the scope of this question. What I'm wondering is, if this event had happened in some other country, this event seems it would be described as a political coup. But, it doesn't seem really talked about in the US, and I'm curious about why, and what lead up to it. The whole thing was just, swept under the rug really, and I'm baffled and curious about it.
I have had the same thoughts. I see a riot as something that a demonstration morphs into. That isn't what happened. It was orchestrated to look like a riot to intimidate poll workers into stop counting, and to create a pretext to allow and cause the US Supreme Court to intervene at a point in time when George W. Bush had more votes. I think the reticence about calling it a coup is because coups were supposed to happen in places like Latin America and with armies and strongmen. It was partisan unrest orchestrated to cause judicial intervention. I think it's safe to call it a type of coup.