> Did you know there is actually an electoral scenario in play that > would make Bush president and John Edwards vice-president?
I like the scenario where aliens invade, and kill everyone except Cheney, who is revealed to be a cyborg. *If* this scenario comes about, there is a 78% that it will culminate with him standing on top of a huge pile of alien and human corpses, with his synthetic flesh melted away to reveal the steel endoskeleton beneath. Several experts in robotics and electoral politics go so far as to suggest his eyes will glow red while a cold, inhuman, maniacal laugh issues from his voice-synthesizer as tornados whip accross the scorched landcape. --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
The way it works is this: If there is a 269-269 tie in electoral votes, the US Presidential election is thrown to the US Congress, with the Senate picking the President and the House of Representatives picking the Vice President. Since the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, it would most likely choose Dubya Bush as President; since the House of Representatives is controlled by the Democrats, it would most likely choose Pretty Boy Edwards as Vice President.
Re:virus: electoral scenarios
« Reply #4 on: 2004-11-03 02:27:36 »
ahoy i realise that i never post on the bbs but i was thinking about this electoral votes thing and something about it was bothering me. this system seems more than a little strange (not to mention inefficient). surely the person who gets the most individual votes should win the election? i mean you have to count them anyway, so why not just let those figures stand as the result of the election? why all this time- and money consuming arsing about? or do american taxpayers recieve such huge salaries that they don't mind paying for this nonsense? or perhaps i am misunderstanding how this whole thing works altogether and it is actually completely fair to all concerned. any information would be appreciated if this is indeed the case.
Bush is ahead nationally by three and a half million votes in a contest that featured record voter turnout. He has won enough states to assure his electoral college success. Kerry and Edwards might be petty and venal enough to challenge in Ohio, but a 126,000 vote lead with 97% of the precincts reporting is pretty insurmountable, even with the provisional ballots yet to be counted there.
Even Andrew Sullivan accepts this outcome and counsels that it is time for us to bind our partisan wounds and move on, forward, as a united and purposeful nation:
President Bush is narrowly re-elected. It was a wild day with the biggest black eyes for exit pollsters. I wanted Kerry to win. I believed he'd be more able to unite the country at home, more fiscally conservative, more socially inclusive, and better able to rally the world in a more focused war on terror. I still do. But a slim majority of Americans disagreed. And I'm a big believer in the deep wisdom of the American people. They voted in huge numbers, and they made a judgment. Not a huge and decisive victory by any means. But at least a victory that is unlikely to be challenged. The president and his aides deserve congratulations. And so, I think, does Senator Kerry, whose campaign exceeded the low expectations of many of us.
FOR NOW: But the most fundamental fact of this campaign - and one of the reasons it has been so bitter - is that we are at war. Our opponents at home are not our enemies. The real enemy is the Jihadist terror network that, even now, is murdering innocents and coalition soldiers in Iraq. Our job now - all of us - is to support this president in that war, to back those troops, and to pray for victory. We saw yesterday, in the cold-blooded murder of a Dutch film-maker for his open criticism of Islamist misogyny, that the enemy is still at large; and aiming directly at our freedoms and security. In Fallujah, our troops are poised for a vital battle against terrorists and theocrats intent on derailing a free future for Iraq. Democracy is on the line there and throughout the world. I've been more than a little frustrated by the president's handling of this war in the past year; but we have to draw a line under that now. The past is the past. And George W. Bush is our president. He deserves a fresh start, a chance to prove himself again, and the constructive criticism of those of us who decided to back his opponent. He needs our prayers and our support for the enormous tasks still ahead of him. He has mine. Unequivocally.
Roger L. Simon's comments here are especially pertinent:
Disputing Ohio, assuming the numbers come in close to where they are now, will make the Democrats seem like soreheads across America. It is a dumb move.
Moreover, with the President winning the popular vote by over three million votes, disputing this election seems deeply weird.
Juan Williams is talking about conspiracy theories on Fox when his man lost by over three million votes. What a creep! The big loser tonight is the MSM.
Juan William is a real jerk. He says Kerry shouldn't concede. Kerry SHOULD concede in order to bring the country together. If he doesn't he is a hypocrite.
The Democrats should concede. To fight on when you have lost the popular vote by three and a half million shows no class and no respect for the people. The reviled Nixon conceded, as we all know, in a much closer election.
No grace from Andrew Sullivan who says Bush was "narrowly elected." Andrew, he won the popular vote by three and a half million votes. Read your history. That's not narrow. Bill Clinton never got over fifty percent of the vote.
The Democrats now have the option of self-destructing over implausible challenges, as Michael Barone just said. or of learning and changing.
Re:virus: electoral scenarios
« Reply #6 on: 2004-11-03 06:10:56 »
joe my question was "why does the usa persist in using an antiquated, long-winded, expensive and untimately silly (imho) system to elect their presidents?" not how many prayers (!) gwb needs to win the election. the rest of the world gets by on counting the votes and that's that. perhaps the american people are under the false assumtion that because they invented democracy they somehow simultaneously perfected it. i also find it hard to believe that an active member of the CoV can unquestioningly support a raving bible-thumping fundie like gwb. i think that their are catholic priests in training who are less thoroughly indoctrinated that you are, joe. remember, you are not the car you drive... you are not the contents of your wallet... you are not the country you live in... while some may find your loyalty to your country admirable, i think that your are merely propegating intolerance by defining yourselves (being you and the rest of the american people) as "us" and the rest of the world as "them".
ahoy i realise that i never post on the bbs but i was thinking about this electoral votes thing and something about it was bothering me. this system seems more than a little strange (not to mention inefficient). surely the person who gets the most individual votes should win the election? i mean you have to count them anyway, so why not just let those figures stand as the result of the election? why all this time- and money consuming arsing about? or do american taxpayers recieve such huge salaries that they don't mind paying for this nonsense? or perhaps i am misunderstanding how this whole thing works altogether and it is actually completely fair to all concerned. any information would be appreciated if this is indeed the case.
[Blunderov] My understanding of the matter is that, back in the day, in order to achieve the necessary agreement for union, some states had to be given over-representation. Some might now feel that the system should be revisited but the consensus seems to be that it still works ok.
With regard to a Republican president and a Democratic vice-president; I recall an episode from 'The West Wing' in which the Democratic president's daughter was kidnapped and he was subjected to political demands by the abductors. According to the script, when a president finds himself in a position where he cannot be expected to exercise impartial judgment, he has the constitutional option to resign the presidency in favour of the OPPOSING party for a limited time. Presumably, although the script was not clear on the matter, the vice presidency would go unchanged.
I hasten to add that one should not believe everything one sees on TV.
ahoy i realise that i never post on the bbs but i was thinking about this electoral votes thing and something about it was bothering me. this system seems more than a little strange (not to mention inefficient). surely the person who gets the most individual votes should win the election? i mean you have to count them anyway, so why not just let those figures stand as the result of the election? why all this time- and money consuming arsing about? or do american taxpayers recieve such huge salaries that they don't mind paying for this nonsense? or perhaps i am misunderstanding how this whole thing works altogether and it is actually completely fair to all concerned. any information would be appreciated if this is indeed the case.
[Blunderov] Admirable writing and excellent layout. Kudos.
I think proportional representation is a comparitively fairer system but it has its downside too. The voter has to vote for a party as such and has no say over the actual persons who get to feed at the public trough. The winning party names it's (sometimes literally) favourite sons for plum positions at its own discretion. Or lack of it.
Erik's plural system also has the cardinal virtue of encouraging a more diverse democracy and is also the more 'scientific' system.
But it seems to me unlikely that the USA will ever be able to break the shackles of its history in this respect - people do not lightly give up privileges they have gained.
Here is some more on the subject of the American Electoral College.
WHY does America have such a confusing way of electing its presidents? It's because the racists of the Deep South wanted to hang on to their slaves.
In 1787, when the Founding Fathers met to hammer out a constitution, delegates from the South feared the populous North would win power and abolish slavery.
So they came up with the Electoral College. The parties in each state would appoint "electors" to choose the president depending on the voting in their state. The number of a state's electors depended on its population.
Then the slave owners played their trump card. Each slave would count as three-fifths of a white man.
When America votes today, the system will still bear the legacy of racist Deep South gerrymandering. </snip>
[Blunderov] Of course there are no more slaves, at least in the usual sense of the word, with which to stuff the ballot boxes. My reservation about the system that it is a zero-sum game and not the survey that it pretends to be.
Talking of theoretical scenarios, in the event of a tie, the presidency is decided by the house of representatives...(again, from the link provided above) <snip> One other potential tiebreaker is Richie Robb, a Republican who will be one of West Virginia's five electors. He is preparing to be a "faithless elector" and may refuse to vote for Bush in protest over Iraq. </snip>
The candidate I voted for appears to have won, barring unforeseen circumstances in Ohio. I am relieved, but to a point. The divide within America is as wide as ever, although President Bush won by a more comfortable margin than 2000. Only our unanimity of purpose in the world will secure America's destiny, more than any leader who only has the hearts and minds of half the nation. I am glad the United States is pressing ahead in this war. I hope the President can refine his strategies and positions, and strike unfamiliar ground. We're all in the breech in this one.
I hope the Democratic party goes to the woodshed and reinvents itself. They must. Kerry was no unifier, with his leftist anti-war past. Democratic leaders must rise within their party who recognize we are in a war for our way of life---leaders who have shaken-off Vietnam. They must distance themselves from leftists like Michael Moore. Barack Obama might be a rising star within the Democratic party because he has the potential to grasp the war, and what it means for all Americans. Democrats need to own the war, and wrest it from the domination of the Republicans. We would all be better off for it. At Mark Stein's website, a reader named Carl Mackay commented:
...When Americans go to the polls to vote for President, it will be for two distinct reasons: Republicans will vote for President Bush because they think he is telling the truth about his intentions in Iraq and [will] stay the course; Democrats believe Senator Kerry is lying and [will actually] pull out of Iraq. For me, that's it in a nutshell. The Democratic vote seemed dishonest---the campaigning, the media bias, the subversive elements seething below the surface---something is rotten in the Democratic party. And so Daschle is gone now. They must open the doors and windows of the woodshed and let out the dust and damp, and breathe new life into their party. We would be a stronger nation for it. The GOP has control of all branches of government. That's a mandate to the Democrats to get their heads out of the pot smoke of the Sixties and get serious. I will root for that, even if it seems unlikely.
And to spread the responsibility evenly, the Republicans have a lot to prove in the next four years. Broad expansion of government spending and military commitments abroad can't continue indefinitely. By the next election, Republicans will have dominated government for a long enough period to be fully responsible for the state of the union at that point. Seeds planted in the early Bush years will blossom in the later ones. In 2004, the war was relatively young; by 2008, whether or not America is entrenched or winning the war will be apparent. The judgment of the electorate will be harsh if today's policies don't become the basis of our security in 2008, domestically and internationally.
We have some serious business on the blotter in the next year. We are faced with two rising nuclear rogue powers; Bin Laden apparently lives, and plans; democracy is fragile in Russia; China's economy roils; Europe is in political realignment. May the seriousness of our world be matched by our own serious resolve to fully engage it. We can do it.
As the whole world knows by now, it is pretty evident that George W. Bush will be the President of the United States for the next four years. Obviously, that makes me happy.
A lot of people are having some trouble with my happiness right now. That goes for you, too, if you voted for GWB. A flow of nastiness is seeping from through the floors of the country, pooling around the feet of the collective left.
But which left, you ask? Because sometimes, people will come after me for saying 'the left" as if that phrase represented everyone who sits, well, to the left of me and not just the wingers, even though they know full well I mean the Michael Moores, the DU citizens, the Oliver Willises and MoveOn members of the world.
Not so sure about that today. I woke up to a very different world in which people I assumed were rational Democrats are spitting poison nails. I received some nasty emails and comments (since deleted) that were alarming in their venom and hatred. People I never had a harsh word with were suddenly knocking down my virtual door to leaving the equivalent of letter bombs. This did not frighten me so much as make me sad. I can say with all honesty that, had Kerry won this election, I would have done no such thing. But, that's just me.
I did read through some of the near lunatic fringe of the left today. Sad state of affairs, really. They seem to be so overcome by bitterness and anger that their emotions are getting in the way of rational thinking. How else do you explain the call to arms, the threats to join al Qaeda, the pleas for violent uprising, or the wishful thinking for a terrorist attack to happen now?
And here we go again with the "illegitimate" election fantasies. The whole basis of argument for the left in recent times has been "if I don't agree with it, it must be a lie." This has never been more evident than right now. Witness: This election is a fraud, a sham. The Republicans (sorry, Rethuglicans) cheated their way through another vote. The vote counts are all wrong. The machines were fixed. Someone was paid off.
And, of course, the exit polls were rigged. Even if Bush were to win both the Electoral vote and the popular vote, his win would be decried as illegal. Perhaps that is what is driving the hate today; the fact that there is nothing to point to in order to support the cries of another fake presidency.
I do believe that even if every person in America who voted for George Bush marched themselves in front of a line of lefties outside of George Soros's mansion this morning and pledged that they did, indeed, vote for GWB, they would claim that Karl Rove implanted mind control chips in each and every person.
Why is it so hard to imagine that not everyone thinks like you? Are these people so arrogant, so self-smug that they truly believe their way is the only way? Funny, that. They accuse Bush of that all the time and here they are engaging in it, with relish.
If you don't mind, I'd like to address the throngs of Chicken Littles who seem to be out in full force on the net today. I just want to clear up a few things, as you all seem to be pretty misguided in more than one area today.
I voted for George Bush.
I am not a redneck.
I do not spend my days watching cars race around a track, drinking cheap beer and slapping my woman on the ass.
I am not a bible thumper. In fact, I am an atheist.
I am not a homophobe.
I am educated beyond the fifth grade. In fact, I am college educated.
I am not stupid. Not by any stretch of facts.
I do not bomb abortion clinics.
You will not be thrown in jail for the sole reason of being a liberal.
Your child's public school will not suddenly turn into a center for Christian brainwashing.
Your favorite bookstore will not turn into puritan central.
This is not Nazi Germany in any way.
You will not be forced into concentration camps.
You will not be burned in human-sized ovens because of your religion.
We will not be forced to wear uniforms and march in line every day.
You will not live in fear.
If you think this is a country in which you have to live in fear, I have some friends in Iran who would like to have a little talk with you.
What does the (presumed) election of George Bush mean to you, as a member of the left? It means you and your party have four years to get yourselves together and figure out exactly what you stand for. It means you have a couple of years, max, to come up with a viable candidate who represents the majority of you and doesn't pander to every knock off group of your party. It means you have time to get your act together and decide once and for all what you stand for and produce a leader who will stand up for your ideals. It means you better find a candidate who is someone you can vote for with conscience, and not just vote for out of hatred for his opponent.
What did you all believe in this year? Hate? Anger? You ran your own campaign, one filled to the brim with bile and acidic spittle and you wonder why you feel so black today? You were pinning your hopes on the wish that the rest of America harbored the same intense hatred as you and would vote with their clenched fists. Now that you are left without the hoped for victory party as an outlet for your rage, you have to direct it somewhere else. If not at the candidate, then at his voters, right? What I am seeing today makes me pity you, and it's a pity tinged with disgust and should not be mistaken for empathy.
It means the same things for us moderate Republicans. Maybe in this time we can produce a candidate who doesn't alienate the social liberal in us, yet speaks to our concerns about defense, security and the war on terror. I am not completely enamored with the Republican Party. There's a lot of work to be done within the ranks. I'd like to see a full stop of the move towards the religious right.
Perhaps there is the perfect candidate out there for both of us, someone just making his or her way up the political chain right now. With any luck, there will be a day when a president is elected who is liked by both sides of the fence, who is respected by everyone.
And that's the great thing about waking up today. See, the world is still here. The sun has risen, there were no great floods or earthquakes or visits from Lucifer during the night. We have the future. We can all - Republicans, Democrats and everyone else - learn a lot from this election and use those lessons to move this country forward.
Sure, it's easy for me to say those things while I'm sitting in the victor's chair at the moment. But I believe in my heart that if Kerry were today making a victory speech, I would feel the same way.
I certainly wouldn't be calling for violent action. I would not be threatening total strangers with death or wishing ill will on them.
But this is a left that is buttressed by people who have more bile than good will, more venom than virtue. They are fronted by circus sideshow acts like Michael Moore, who turn up the flames underneath their followers until the kettle is whistling like mad. That is the shrill sound you hear coming from the left today. And I fear no one is going to turn the flame down.
We are living out the proverbial Chinese curse of living in interesting times. I do hope with all my heart that we can turn down the hate at some point and make the next four years a little less interesting.
Whatever slim hope that Democrats might have of extracting something positive from this week's resounding defeat depends entirely on how much authentic introspection they are willing to inflict on themselves. To the degree that they look outward - instead of inward - to identify the causes of the 2004 debacle, the more certain they are doomed.
The more that we hear in the coming days and weeks about counting and recounting in Ohio, about supposed voter intimidation and suppression, about fixed machines, crooked and partisan secretaries of state, about unfair advertising, or Karl Rove's dirty tricks, then the more that anyone with something other than tapioca for brains should abandon any hope of rejuvenating or rebuilding this hollowed-out excuse for a party.
The Democrats lost this election fair and square and have absolutely no one to blame for it than themselves. They don't even have pathetic Ralph Nader to scapegoat like they did four years ago. Sorry if I rush to hang the crepe. But the four million vote margin racked up by Bush”the first absolute majority since 1988 in a presidential election - is an undeniable and clear victory that robs any other solution - as unlikely as that might be - of any moral legitimacy. At least it should --after Florida's Hurricane Chad-- in whose aftermath the Democrats screeched that Bush was an illegitimate president because he had lost the popular vote and was appointed, in effect, by the Supremes. Surely the Democrats would want to eschew any similar stigma, wouldn't they?
Locating the roots of this defeat, you are free to dig as deeply or as superficially as you care. We could start this particular narrative, I suppose, in 1993 when a newly-elected Bill Clinton gambled all of his political capital to bully and ultimately divide his own party, forcing passage of the pet project of Bush 41 - the job-shredding NAFTA. Or perhaps, you'd prefer to begin this story three years later when the same Democratic President signed the Republican abolition of federal welfare thereby putting on the table the simple question of why we should even bother to continue having a Democratic Party. Or maybe in '98 when Democrats re-assured America that all presidents lie and why pick oin you-know-who.
Yet, to unravel this latest tragedy, there's no need really to rehearse the ancient history of the Clinton Nineties, now enshrined in official Democratic mythology as, perhaps, the peak moment of Western Civilization. Going back to the fall of 2002 will suffice. I refer to the moment when Senator John Kerry joined with Trent Lott and Tom DeLay among many, many others in voting the same Florida-tainted George W. Bush full authorization to move toward a patently and brazenly unnecessary war with Iraq.
Not that Kerry really meant it, of course. He had opposed what was a significantly more justifiable war with Saddam a decade earlier. But, then again, Kerry wasn't contemplating a presidential run back in '91.
Or we could zero in on that frosty evening back in January when about 30,000 rosy-cheeked and gray-haired Iowa farmers and their neighbors decided that, among Democrats, only John Kerry was "electable" and millions of Democrats coast-to-coast immediately rubber-stamped that now rather discredited notion.
Maybe it's unfair, however, to isolate any single catalytc moment. A cool-headed assessment of the entire Democratic response to the Bush presidency would herald the doom dealt out on Tuesday night almost independently of who ultimately was the candidate. From the onset of his administration, the Democrats have combined a freakish accommodation to Bush with a shrill, sometimes paranoiac exaggeration of his evil. One moment they are part of his War Cabinet. The next they are demonizing him as an individual and warning we are on the doorstep of fascism. And then we blame the voters for being confused.
But once so many Democrats had worked themselves into a frenzy with the mantra of stolen elections and Supreme Court electoral coups, the die was cast. If Bush was, in fact, the most dangerous, evil and demented President ever as Democrats tirelessly reminded themselves (and apparently only themselves), then Anybody But Bush would do just fine and...well...the rest is now history.
Mr. Anybody turned out to be quite the loser that voters suspected he was before his miracle resurrection in the snows of Iowa. No one can, with a straight face, repeat just what was the precise message of his just-passed and wretched campaign. Is there a reader out there who would like to write in reminding us of one memorable line to be extracted and preserved from amidst the logorrhea that overflowed his campaign? Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush? A real-life opposition party would have been insulted to be matched with a such an unworthy and frail rival. The Democrats, by contrast, got their lights punched out..
Think for a moment, if you can bear, just how fraudulent the Party has become as a champion for everyday, working Americans. John Edwards, it should be said, did a fine job of evoking the rude inequalities of the Two Americas. And it's a pity that someone like Edwards couldn't emerge as the Democrats' national rabble-rouser. For a brief historical moment, the unlikely Howard Dean flashed in that role and then was even more quickly extinguished. But when you ask yourself who are the great Democratic mass icons of our times, the two or three individuals who put a face and some heart on the core populist values, damned if we don't come up with literal clowns like Al Franken and Michael Moore. They may or ( may not) be just dandy entertainers. But doesn't this say something rather startling about the state of the Democrats?
Once the whining over Ohio dies out, what will laughably be called the war for the "soul" of the once-again-defeated Democratic Party will commence - a struggle so drearily predictable that the whole exercise can be easily scripted in advance. On the one side the corporate shills of the Democratic Leadership Council who will argue that Tuesday's results demand a repositioning of the Party to the right. On the other, the "progressives" who will refloat their own formula that success resides in simply moving the Democrats leftward (as evidenced by what? The 2% primary draw of Dennis Kucinich). Both notions are simplistic and insufficient. The Democrats have not won the sort of absolute national majority pocketed by Bush in more than a quarter of a century. The party doesn't need to be reformed or repositioned. It needs to be rethought and reborn.
The re-election of George W. Bush is a tragedy for which we all pay dearly - some much more than others. And the only succor I cling to is the notion that the President's punishment for being re-elected is that he will now have to manage the myriad catastophes he has conjured. Good luck to him -- and to us
In the meantime, I shed no tears for the humiliation of this Democratic Party-- only for those who suffer for having invested their hopes in it. But that the Democrats richly deserve to go down-- no question. My deepest regret is only that the Republicans don't go down right alongside it.
While we may yet win Ohio, I'm not holding out much hope for it (though, that might be in our favor, considering my predictive record during this election). So where are we?
It's a pretty depressing spot, actually. Not so much because Kerry lost, though that is a crushing blow, but because the Republicans enlarged their majorities in both the House and the Senate. I used to tell myself that the country got through 8 years of Reagan and we can do the same with Bush. But we did that with a Democratic Congress, gridlocking his initiatives. Aside from the filibuster, Democrats have no control over the levers of power and Republicans, sadly, have no compunction about using them. For the next 4 years, radicalism will reign.
The question, as always, is how we fight it. First, we need to get real. I can't tell you how optimistic I was going into this election, though, looking back, there doesn't seem to have been a reason for quite such a sunny view. But I, like most of us, fell for the echo chamber. Daily Kos, MyDD, Steve Soto, Pandagon, and all the other blogs are run by good people with positive intentions, but if they're you're primary source for information, you're outlook is perverted by an overwhelming amount of good news and a general disdain for the factual accuracy of bad news. It perverts your perspective and, because the sample group is so totally different than most of America, it begins to twist your political predictions and assumptions of what works (for more on this, see my article Power Trippi). So the first lesson, insofar as I'm drawing them, is remain a member of the reality-based community, and too many blogs and partisan sources can compromise that.
Next, it's time for some real soul-searching as a party. We didn't lose this of terror or Iraq or the economy, we lost it on values and wedge issue shit. In the end, Rove was right to spend years playing to his base, and we were wrong to go after the center. I'm not one who thinks we can blame this on John Kerry. He was, in my eyes, the best candidate of the bunch (save Clark, but Clark's political skills were uncertain). But John Kerry -- genetically, demographically, spatially -- simply radiated elite values. And though they're the correct ones, they also provide a clear foil for guys like Rove, who're just begging for an opportunity to play on the fears and prejudices of the American people. We're going to need to fix this, either through better candidate choice (voters don't generally know what a candidate stands for, they just know what he seems like he stands for. Clinton stood for what they stand for. Ironically, so does Bush, but not Kerry) or a better way of talking about issues. Matt Yglesias mentioned the use of a transformative policy agenda here, and I agree with him, but I'm not sure what our transformative policies would be, seeing as how we long ago lost the linguistic war that separated, say, single-payer health care from Communism.
And, for now, we must admit that the superstructure the Republicans have spent 40 years building beat the shit out of the one we spent 4 years building. For whatever reason (call it the internet), we hadn't expected that to be the case. I highly recommend Paul Waldman's comments on this matter, because the sooner we admit this, the sooner we go back and build some more.
When I was at The Washington Monthly, we ran a feature entitled "What If Bush Wins", featuring contributions from leading political thinkers on the shape of this guy's second term. I found the feature vaguely offensive -- of course this guy won't win! -- but it's ended up being quite prescient. Of particular note is an entry by Todd Gitlin, which correctly predicted the outcome and provides the best blueprint I've seen for how we should respond. So today, on a really tough day, my advice for you to read it, print it out, make notes in the margins and tape it above your desk. We lost this round and I hardly need to tell you how bad it hurts.
And sure, we deserve a couple days to heal (I'm going on a pre-planned trip to Santa Cruz tonight, where I'll relax with my girlfriend and blog very, very little until Sunday), but after that, we have to pick up off the floor and reenter the fight. Because if there's one thing I've understood as countless schoolmates -- both gloating and depressed -- have asked me what happened, it's that this wasn't a predictive exercise or some sort of enjoyable contest, this election was an attempt to forestall some truly bad things from being done to this country. We lost. But that doesn't change how serious our cause is, or how badly we need to win it over time. Come Monday, I'll be back in the trenches, and I hope you will too. After all, 2006 is just around the corner...
It may be presumptuous to say John Kerry lost the election for the reasons I personally voted against him. But I've decided to say it anyway.
I didn't vote for George W. Bush in 2000. I've never voted for any Republican president. This time was my first. And I did so because of the Terror War.
I know quite a few people who didn't support Bush last time but did support him this time. And every single one of them did so for the same reasons I did. Because of the Terror War. Because Kerry could not be trusted.
I don't know of anyone, anywhere, who swung from Al Gore to George W. Bush because of gay marriage, tax cuts, or for any other reason. I'm not saying they don't exist. But if they do exist, I haven't heard of 'em. They're an invisible, miniscule minority.
There aren't enough of us liberal hawks, disgruntled Democrats, neo-neoconservatives - or whatever else you might want to call us - to trigger a political realignment. But it does appear we can swing an election. At least we can help. And though I don't think of myself as conservative (I did just vote for a Democratic Congress), my alienation from the liberal party is total. A political party that thinks crying Halliburton! is a grown-up response to anti-totalitarian war just isn't serious.
I may vote for the Democratic candidate next time around. Then again, I might not. I'll be watching what happens over the next four years, trying to decide if I'm part of the new wave of neoconservatives or if I'm just Independent.
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