Warning: Lizard gets political.
I posted this to a mailing list I'm on back on 10/29, and waffled about posting it here, since I try to keep my political ramblings and my personal life (and this blog is mostly personal) separate. However, I like to think I have the courage to air my opinions in public, and, besides, posting a prophecy after-the-fact is lame.
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With days to go, time to put your cred on the table and call it. Lizard will say: Kerry by a nose, followed by four years of Republicans claiming Kerry stole the election. Theyditifirstism will be running rampant.
If I am correct, I will endure the first few weeks of insipid gloating by those fools who think (as they did in 1992) that this narrow victory will indicate some sort of vast left-wing resurgence in the US, and take comfort in two facts:
a)The Supreme Court will most likely be much more protective of civil liberties for the next few decades, with the VERY dangerous exception of second amendment rights. That scares me, but not as much as the likely erosion of 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendment rights under a court dominated by Bush nominees.
b)"No matter who you vote for, the government gets elected." Kerry's most odious left-wing impulses, like those of Clinton, will be constrained by a Republican congress and a mostly conservative electorate. Further, he's a politician, first and foremost, or he wouldn't be in the running today. The Revolution will not be happening.
I base my prediction on the facts that:
a)Despite all his advantages, Bush has not been able to 'close the gap'. He has few concrete achievements to point to. Removing Hussein was good, but the current mess in Iraq and the failure to follow through on Afghanistan hurts him. Domestically, I believe Bush's tax breaks drastically reduced the impact of the recession and probably saved America from depression, but it's hard to sell "The economy is in the toilet, but without me, it would have been in the sewer" as a great victory.
b)The Young Idealistic Idiot factor. There's a lot of morons out there, voting for the first time, who think that it matters. They'll learn better by 2008, but, for now, they provide a few percentage points pollsters are likely to miss. YIIs almost always vote Democrat; when they realize that government is government, they shift to Republican. (OII don't count, except in their own minds, where their inflated sense of self-importance manages to dwarf even my own.)
c)No one who voted for Gore is likely to vote for Bush, but a lot of people who voted for Nader or Bush in 2000 will now vote for Kerry. There are a growing number of "Kerry Republicans", but the only Bush Democrats come from the very small remnants of foreign policy hawks among the left, combined with the pro-Israel Jews who can somehow force themselves to pull the Elephant lever. However, areas of Jewish concentration tend to be areas already solidly in Kerry's camp. Florida is the key exception here, and that remains, as it did in 2000, a serious wildcard.
Comments (3)
The only circumstances under which Kerry would win by a nose is because the Democrats have been united in opposition to Bush and gotten their act on the ground together in sufficient force to anticipate the tactics from the Karl Rove playbook and made it impossible to plausibly control the vote count in the critical states again.
My prediction is for a decisive Kerry Victory, although I'd prefer a Kerry landslide.
Did you vote? Will you vote? Bush will very likely carry your state, but I'm asking because I tend not to value the opinions of those who withhold active participation in elections. I tend to place them in the same category as those who dimly announce, "I'm an anarchist!"
Last night I listened to Gene Burns, an SF bay area talk show host who has voted Libertarian in every election in which a Libertarian was on the ballot, including 1984 when he was the Libertarian party candidate for President of the United States.
A young member of the Libertarian party asked him why he was "betraying his libertarian principles in voting for Kerry." Gene Burns verbally slapped him.
"Because I'm tired of throwing away my vote. Bush needs to be defeated and the only way to do that is to vote for Bush." He went on at great length, which you can hear if you like until it ages off their server 24 hours after it broadcast; listen to the 7:00 P.M. hour on your preferred audio stream.
There are plenty of Republicans who feel that Bush has betrayed the principles of fiscal conservatism and small government. Perhaps Michael Badnarik will appeal to them. If he gets 10 votes, that'll be about one more than Nader gets this time.
Ak. Correction. Gene Burns cast his absentee ballot for Kerry, not Bush.
The interesting result that I'd prefer not to see, and don't expect to see (because I think Bush's incompetence is apparent to all but the evangelicals who stayed home in droves in 2000 also) is Kerry losing the popular vote but winning the electoral vote. That is the only circumstance under which we would lose the Electoral college, a contrivance designed to protect our Republic from voters. Of course, since the Republic is democratically elected, I'm all for manipulating the electorate with as much vigor as the theocrats who have infected the GOP do. It'll be interesting to watch the Democrats as they morph into the party of Rockefeller, whom Goldwater defeated in 1964.