Tuesday, August 10, 2004
The Terrorists Have Already Won
Let me clarify something I said yesterday: that the odds against Kerry getting elected are 100-1. My reason for saying this is my belief that the Bush gang will manipulate the election somehow, either by exploiting a terrorist attack or by some sort of October Surprise so that the vote on November 2 won't be a straight-up fight. And if the vote on November 2 is close, I expect them to try some rerun of Florida 2000 to steal the election again. If all else fails, I think there's half a chance that they will manufacture some crisis leading up to the inauguration that makes it "too dangerous" for them to step aside. As outrageously unlikely as those possibilities seem, keep in mind that any one of them, up to and including a refusal to leave on January 20 after being defeated, would have the full support of at least one cable news channel and one-third of the electorate. Call me paranoid if you want, but it would take only one of these possibilities to keep Kerry from taking office, and based on what we've seen, can you really dismiss all of them?
The reason for such paranoia and skepticism is pretty clear--if the election is a straight-up fight, the Satan-spawned Massachusetts liberal has a decent chance to prevail over the hand-picked candidate of the fundamentalists' god, and that simply can't be allowed to happen. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD has analyzed poll numbers from swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, and finds that Kerry got a post-convention bounce there, if not nationwide. Even though the news seems good for Kerry, the electoral vote count is still razor-close--and, to circle back around to the preceding paragraph, the Bush gang holds lots of trump cards, and will have no shame about playing them when necessary.
The biggest card Bush has--one he's already playing--is the "scared shitless" card. The usual pattern in a presidential campaign is for candidates to move to the middle in order to capture the vast numbers of voters there. Kerry has done it, but Bush hasn't--as somebody somewhere has noted (maybe a commenter to the thread on MyDD), Bush seems to be shoring up his base and trying to scare the middle. Instead of responding to this tactic, Kerry has done little more than nod gravely in agreement every time Bush suggests terrorists want to destroy our way of life and contaminate our precious bodily fluids. In a fascinating piece by Miles Benson, Ohio State poli sci prof John Mueller suggests that we need to get a grip on our "false sense of insecurity." Benson reports that the odds of any given person being a victim of terrorism is extremely slim. Even in 2001, more people died of "complications from medical care" than died from terrorism.
Terrorists simply can't destroy our country, and it's doubtful that they want to, Bush rhetoric to the contrary. They want to terrorize us--and who can doubt they've damn well succeeded?
Recommended Reading: Sheila Samples asks CNN if it realizes just how big a GOP whore it has become. Also, new on The Hits Just Keep On Comin'": No Longer Live or Local.
Quote of the Day: Bush told an audience in Virginia yesterday that high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." Kos reported it as another gaffe--until somebody else pointed out the line is a regular part of Bush's stump speech. And across the country there are people making $14,000 a year who will vote for Bush because they think he represents them.
Let me clarify something I said yesterday: that the odds against Kerry getting elected are 100-1. My reason for saying this is my belief that the Bush gang will manipulate the election somehow, either by exploiting a terrorist attack or by some sort of October Surprise so that the vote on November 2 won't be a straight-up fight. And if the vote on November 2 is close, I expect them to try some rerun of Florida 2000 to steal the election again. If all else fails, I think there's half a chance that they will manufacture some crisis leading up to the inauguration that makes it "too dangerous" for them to step aside. As outrageously unlikely as those possibilities seem, keep in mind that any one of them, up to and including a refusal to leave on January 20 after being defeated, would have the full support of at least one cable news channel and one-third of the electorate. Call me paranoid if you want, but it would take only one of these possibilities to keep Kerry from taking office, and based on what we've seen, can you really dismiss all of them?
The reason for such paranoia and skepticism is pretty clear--if the election is a straight-up fight, the Satan-spawned Massachusetts liberal has a decent chance to prevail over the hand-picked candidate of the fundamentalists' god, and that simply can't be allowed to happen. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD has analyzed poll numbers from swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, and finds that Kerry got a post-convention bounce there, if not nationwide. Even though the news seems good for Kerry, the electoral vote count is still razor-close--and, to circle back around to the preceding paragraph, the Bush gang holds lots of trump cards, and will have no shame about playing them when necessary.
The biggest card Bush has--one he's already playing--is the "scared shitless" card. The usual pattern in a presidential campaign is for candidates to move to the middle in order to capture the vast numbers of voters there. Kerry has done it, but Bush hasn't--as somebody somewhere has noted (maybe a commenter to the thread on MyDD), Bush seems to be shoring up his base and trying to scare the middle. Instead of responding to this tactic, Kerry has done little more than nod gravely in agreement every time Bush suggests terrorists want to destroy our way of life and contaminate our precious bodily fluids. In a fascinating piece by Miles Benson, Ohio State poli sci prof John Mueller suggests that we need to get a grip on our "false sense of insecurity." Benson reports that the odds of any given person being a victim of terrorism is extremely slim. Even in 2001, more people died of "complications from medical care" than died from terrorism.
Terrorists simply can't destroy our country, and it's doubtful that they want to, Bush rhetoric to the contrary. They want to terrorize us--and who can doubt they've damn well succeeded?
Recommended Reading: Sheila Samples asks CNN if it realizes just how big a GOP whore it has become. Also, new on The Hits Just Keep On Comin'": No Longer Live or Local.
Quote of the Day: Bush told an audience in Virginia yesterday that high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." Kos reported it as another gaffe--until somebody else pointed out the line is a regular part of Bush's stump speech. And across the country there are people making $14,000 a year who will vote for Bush because they think he represents them.
