Election Reflection #2: Move to the Middle?

I was talkimg to a guy at work yesterday and he said he voted Republican even though he is generally a Democrat, or some such crap. He said he "just didn't like the face of the current Democratic Party." When I asked him what he meant he said "You know, Snoop Dogg, P. Diddy, vote or die..." This is a family man in his forties, but almost for sure not a racist, and he's got a problem with black people urging him to vote? I don't get it. Maybe I'm wrong about him. You can't just ask people if they are racists. They will almost always say they're not, at least in 21st century USA.

This got me thinking about what the Democrats (my party, for better or worse) is going to have to do to get his vote in 2008 (2006, being local, is a whole different discussion). There is a surprising amount of talk and writing already going on about this very subject, just a week after losing the White House for another four years. I suppose that's all we can do at this point -- at least we're not going through the denial phase of dealing with our loss (the hard core lefties are in denial -- they are pissed off that Kerry conceded so early, and want recounts in Ohio, New Hampshire and maybe Florida). What I hope we (the Dems) don't do is dump P. Diddy, or change our beliefs to make them more palatable to conservatives. I am willing to sign on to a large corporate political party, but I still think that politics must be based on what you really think, not what you think will win votes. I think the Party stands for things that a majority of voters can actually get behind -- more on this in a later post -- but we need to say it more clearly. If we find the right candidate, and he articulates basic Democratic values plainly and honestly, we'll be able to get the needed votes (including my colleague at work).

Election Reflection: Sad American

I read this crazy letter on Blogger this morning, and I couldn't help responding. There were 11 comments when I first saw the letter. Two hours later, when I got around to writing something, there were 97 comments. By the time I posted, I was number 127.

I suspect this blog is not real. At the very least I'm not sure I believe this woman is being entirely sincere. Read it and see what you think. Since my feedback is buried 127 deep, here's a copy of it:

Dear Sad American,

My first reaction to your letter was that you have pretty clearly outlined the reasons why you shouldn't have voted Republican no matter who the Democrats were running. The more I read, the more I thought that this was some backhanded way to gloat about Bush's victory: My guy's a complete asshole and he's done nothing but bad and dangerous things in his public life, and your guy STILL couldn't get elected! In the end, if Bush's first four years in office weren't enough to tip the scale for you, Sad American, then the Democrats will never have your vote, and probably shouldn't expend too much energy trying to get it.

In broadest terms, the Democrats are the party of the people, and the Republicans are the party of the rich. The reason that sounds clichéd is that it's been true for generations. Shame on us (the loyal left) for not elucidating that point effectively in this past campaign, and for not showing that there are moral reasons for our positions on abortion, welfare, war, racial equality, marriage (gay and otherwise), social security and the environment. Despite your words, or because of them, I doubt the Democratic leadership will ever be able to get through to you, but you're right about one thing: we need to make our voice heard by more voters. And we will.

I can't help noticing that your "blog" seems to have been created solely for the purpose of posting this one message. This makes me wonder if you're for real. Here's my real name and email address. What's yours?

Larry Jones
jones@revision99.com

[NOTE: I've had to change my name here for reasons discussed elsewhere in this blog. In my actual message to Sad American I used my real name and email address.]

I bet she doesn't answer me, or reveal anything concrete about who she is.

President Bush

Well, what the fuck. The Republicans have just been projected winners in Ohio and Alaska, putting them at 269 Electoral College votes. This means I have again overestimated the intelligence of the American voter. I don't see how we could have had a worse president than this Howdy Doody look-alike. The only thing we had going for us, I thought, is that we could always tell ourselves and the rest of the world that Bush and company backed into it, or that they stole the White House. And yet they get elected to commit further mayhem! Now we must face that we have intentionally brought this upon ourselves.

I predict that Bush's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will not come to pass. Bush's handlers don't want to waste their time on stuff like that, when there are countries to invade and money and oil to steal. But acting like they supported it was effective in getting out the bigot vote, 2004.

Election Day

I am fried. For the past six months I have followed the minutiae of the 2004 Presidential Election. I have listened to it on the radio, watched it on TV and read it on the web, eagerly consuming poll information, strategies, the lucky and unlucky breaks both sides got, the scurrilous attacks and counterattacks, the great and bungled moments in the candidates' speeches, their conventions, their rallies. their endorsements, the financial news and so on and on.

In the last ten days the campaign has revved up to a level that seems unprecedented, or maybe it's just that I haven't wanted a guy out of office this bad since Richard Nixon, so everything seems to be more intense than it is (Come to think of it, both Nixon and Bush II were out of touch with reality, but at least in Nixon's case it was more of a clinical matter -- he couldn't help it.). Last night I came fully awake twice, and lay there worrying. This is very unusual for me.

The pollsters and pundits keep saying that the race is a "statistical dead heat," whatever that means. Almost all the polls have shown a two-to-four-point lead for Bush more or less continuously for six weeks. Every now and then, Kerry creeps ahead by a point or three in one or another poll, but then slips back behind a couple of days later. In a basketball game, this could be a hopeful sign: You only need to be ahead by one point when the final buzzer sounds, and if you stay close, that could happen.

But in real-world politics, who is fooling whom here? Any given poll on any given day might show a "statistical dead heat," but in all the polls one guy is leading 95% of the time right up to election day. Any one poll is "within the margin of error," but the Bush lead still spans pretty much all the polls, and consistently. So I am getting ready for four more years of insane violence abroad, repression at home and a laissez faire economy

And yet...

• There are millions of newly-registered voters, many of them not "pollable." Will they vote, and for whom? They are mostly young, a demographic that should favor Kerry.
• Who are all these early voters? Are they rushing to show their support for the status quo? Or unable to hold back their revulsion at what has been done in the past four years?
• There are hundreds of thousands thrown out of work during this Republican term -- millions if you count the teachers, scientists and manufacturing workers now working at McDonald's. If they vote their pocketbooks...
• There's not much chance that anyone will be turned away this year in Florida, what with all the lawyers, polling judges and international observers on hand. This should work in Kerry's favor.

These and other factors give me hope. I also derive some hope from Rush Limbaugh. I have been listening to his daily radio tirade for a while now, and the pitch of his rant has been rising lately. His attempts to spin literally everything that happens in the Republican direction have been getting hysterical in recent days. Probably his listeners get their news from him rather than from other sources, so they may not notice, but he has dropped any pretense of living in the real world lately, simply pulling out the facts he needs to make his points, ignoring everything else. He has researchers who find things out for him -- perhaps they are telling him bad news, and he is going bonkers on the air trying to make it not so. I can only hope.

This crop of religious right-wing nutcases that has taken over the White House has done a lot of damage, and they are planning to do more. The nation will probably wake up some time during the next four years if they get reelected (perhaps I should say elected), and vote the Party out decisively in 2008. I hope it's not too late by then. In the meantime, it would be delicious fun to throw them out now.