CONCESSION STAND
Notes from underground. Deep underground.
Let me begin by doing what Bush is too stubborn to ever do: admit a mistake.
My prediction of a decisive Kerry victory was wrong. What rankles me is not my own flawed fatidic facility: the pollster Zogby thought Kerry would win, as did many Republicans, including Crossfire's Tucker Carlson, so I am in good, and bipartisan, company.
No, the rub is that Kerry lost the popular vote so decisively. Three-and-a-half million more voters preferred Bush's what-me-worry smirk, his casual attire, his sincere-sounding delivery, and his well-documented penchant for malapropism to Kerry's stately gait, equivocal loquacity, long experience, and intimidating IQ. Despite the misadventure in Iraq, the flagging economy, the egregious discrimination against a minority group, the shoddy record on homeland security, the eroding of America's standing abroad, and worst of all, the obdurate arrogance of the Administration, the who-would-you-rather-have-a-beer-with metric has won the day. (This, although Bush, a recovering alcoholic, doesn't touch the stuff).
It was a banner day for the Elephants. According to CNN, the last time a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Congress won re-election was in 1900, when William McKinley did the trick. (Memo to Bush: stay out of Buffalo. The Curse of the Shawnee Prophet is alive and well).
The vaunted Youth Vote, those armies of first-time voters who were expected to turn the tide, failed to materialize. Seventeen percent in 2000, seventeen percent in 2004. Those who will be called upon to serve the country's feckless occupation -- which is to say, to die for Uncle Sam -- didn't bother to show up at the polls. Methinks they'll show up next time. War is the perfect cure for apathy.
Who did turn out in droves were the Evangelical Christians, just as Karl Rove said they would. And what impelled them to the polls was a threat more grave than Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong Il, or the stalwart Islamicist insurgents in Iraq: gay marriage.
It is disappointing to see Bush's misleadership validated. It is sickening -- it literally makes me sick to my stomach -- to see gay marriage bans so enthusiastically supported across the country. This makes me so angry I can barely see straight. This makes me want to go Zell Miller on their collective ass and challenge these so-called Christians to a duel.
Pundits wonder why we liberals view Evangelical Christians with disdain. The answer is, because despite the love-your-neighbor-as-yourself commandment, theirs is an ideology of hate. They are our Mullah Omars, they are our Taliban. The way they view Lesbians and gays is the same way the Taliban views women. And hiding behind the cloak of religion -- any religion -- is no excuse to discriminate against a group of people.
Dick Cheney knows this. Bush himself, in a recent television interview, said that he didn't care what the party platform said: he was for gay civil unions, for equal rights for gay people. I hope -- I pray -- that he was telling the truth. For once.
Some of the blame for the loss must rest on Kerry's aristocratic shoulders. While he ran, for the most part, a solid campaign, he failed to capitalize on the many mistakes made by his opponent. And too many voters who would have benefited greatly from Democratic policies allied with Bush, whose re-election helps only the very rich and the very religious.
What will become of the Democratic Party? Their conservative rivals control all three branches of government, and stand poised to tilt the Supreme Court to the right for the foreseeable future -- a defeat of Carthaginian proportions. Will Hillary Clinton rise phoenixlike from the Democratic ashes? Will Barack Obama? What's John Edwards going to do for the next four years? And does anyone really care? It's not a pretty sight.
I am, I remind you, not a Democrat. This flirtation with Kerry may be my last foray into major party politics. I am a Naderite at heart, and this morning, as I write this, I feel some pang of regret for not voting for Ralph. His ideas are good ones, radical ones, and the reality is that most Americans would be helped by them. When I saw him at a rally in 2000, he said, "Don't vote out of fear." In 2008, I might take that advice to heart.
There are, it must be said, advantages to Bush's victory. Advantages? Silver linings.
A Kerry Administration would have had to contend with the quagmire in Iraq, homeland security issues, the transition period that leaves us so vulnerable to attack, and a hostile Congress that would have stalled anything he tried to accomplish. Now Bush is left to finish what he started, for better or worse. The hare-brained invasion of Iraq, the economy, the crippling deficit, the low standing of the U.S. in the world, the kowtowing to big business, the rape of the environment, the wretched health care system -- these are real problems, and they are not going to go away by simply denying they exist, as has been Bush's policy.
As an American, I hope that the President will be able to turn it all around. Intellectually, however, I don't see much cause for hope. Why should these four years be any different than the last? If anything, his decisive victory will only make him more arrogant.
In my lifetime, the U.S. has been under Democratic rule for just twelve years: one term of Carter malaise, two of Clinton centrism. Since World War II, the presidents who have won a second term are almost all Republicans: Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and now Bush. When a strong Democrat has emerged, he's been impeached (Clinton) or assassinated (Kennedy).
What does this mean? The U.S. is, and has always been, a conservative country. The vestigial Puritan flavor remains. We have been deliberate with respect to change: we were the last Western country to ban slavery, for example, and other social advancements -- universal suffrage, civil rights reform, and so forth -- have been slow in coming, just as we are taking our time seeing the light on issues like equal rights for Lesbians and gays and capital punishment.
The flip side of this is, because we are so conservative, so un-progressive, there is, and has always been, more stability here than elsewhere. We have endured two-hundred-twenty-some-odd years of continual government, which is impressive. We have never had a radical left-wing government. And maybe this isn't so terrible.
The job of us liberals -- a label I wear proudly -- is to push the change along. They are the right; we are right. Sooner or later, the rest of the country will realize that. It's always been that way. And God willing, it always will.
—Greg Olear
Editor, LARGEREGO
November 3, 2004
Editor, LARGEREGO
November 3, 2004
"We are a nation in danger." |