WaxWorks
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Friday, November 05, 2004
God, Gays and Guns
Well, Rove said he was going to find 4 million more Evangelicals to vote and he did, which interestingly is also Bush's national margin of victory. (Remember, he was down 500,000 votes in 2000 and up 3.5 million in 2004). And Rove was able to get them out with gay marriage referenda on the ballot in many important states. (And an abortion referendum on the ballot in Florida).
Now we know why the Republicans reacted so harshly when John Kerry noted that Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. That could have thrown a wrench in their whole strategy. And why their response was that Kerry was "a bad man," blurring the issue as to whether or not Kerry's statement was correct or just a untruthful vicious and hurtful attack, as they clearly wanted to imply. Dick and Lynn sold their daughter out to win. And that sounds pretty bad to me.
And let's not forget Gwen Ifill's question to John Edwards in the VP debate:
IFILL: New question, but same subject. As the vice president mentioned,
John Kerry comes from the state of Massachusetts, which has taken as big a step
as any state in the union to legalize gay marriage. Yet both you and Senator
Kerry say you oppose it. Are you trying to have it both ways?
Trying to have it both ways? Is John Kerry the Supreme Court of Massachusetts? If Gwen Ifill isn't able to grasp the difference, then a voter in a rural area of the South or Ohio probably isn't going to either.
Maybe the Kerry campaign should have made a bigger deal of when Karl Rove openly questioned the veracity of Pat Roberston's statement that Bush told him that there weren't going to be any casualties in Iraq. Or maybe we should have pushed a little bit more on the rumor that Bush paid for a girlfriend's abortion in Texas in the days before Roe. (Hey, sometimes you gotta play tough -- remember, they won by advocating writing discrimination into the Constitution.)
It's being reported now that Bill Clinton, recognizing the problem, even privately advocated to Kerry that he take a triangulated position on gay marriage by supporting state bans. But Kerry said he wouldn't ever do that. History will ultimately prove him right. It just didn't help him on November 2, 2004.
"Fair and Balanced" but Willing to Lend A Hand
One of Rove's main theories for the 2004 election was the bandwagon theory, which is the idea that Bush was always in the lead and Democratic attempts to overtake him would be based on voter fraud or illegitimate ballots. Part of that included Bush holding a steady lead in the electoral college during election night returns. Whoever is leading in the electoral college early in the night is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but it helps to shape public perception.
That is why I found it so interesting that, unlike every other network, Fox News failed to call California for Kerry after the polls closed there at 11:00 EST. Adding those 55 votes to Kerry's current totals would have temporarily put him ahead of Bush. So Fox waited to call California, until it was ready to call Florida for Bush at the same time, keeping Bush in the lead.
It is also no surprise that Fox was the first network to call Ohio for Bush.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
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Monday, November 01, 2004
Rove's Modus Operandi?
Jerome Armstrong at www.mydd.com has an interesting take on his theory that the Republican's strategy is to challenge as many votes as possible in order to create a situation where Bush wins among the unchallenged votes, and then will try to make it seem like the Democrats are committing voter fraud in order to get the other votes counted and overturn a Bush victory. The thing is, Rove has done this before, according to Joshua Green's profile of Rove in the Atlantic Monthly:
Three days after the election Hooper held a press conference to drive home
the idea that the election was being stolen. He declared, "We have endured lies
in this campaign, but I'll be damned if I will accept outright thievery." The
recount stretched on... The race came down to a dispute over absentee ballots...
The matter wound up in court. "The last marching order we had from Karl," says a
former employee, "was 'Make sure you continue to talk this up. The only way
we're going to be successful is if the Alabama public continues to care about
it.'"
Initially, things looked grim for Hooper. A circuit-court judge ruled
that the absentee ballots should be counted, reasoning that voters' intent was
the issue, and that by merely signing them, those who had cast them had
"substantially complied" with the law. Hooper's lawyers appealed to a federal
court. By Thanksgiving his campaign believed he was ahead--but also believed
that the disputed absentee ballots, from heavily Democratic counties, would cost
him the election. The campaign went so far as to sue every probate judge,
circuit clerk, and sheriff in the state, alleging discrimination. Hooper
continued to hold rallies throughout it all. On his behalf the business
community bought ads in newspapers across the state that said, "They steal
elections they don't like." Public opinion began tilting toward him.
The recount stretched into the following year. On Inauguration Day both
candidates appeared for the ceremonies. By March the all-Democratic Alabama
Supreme Court had ordered that the absentee ballots be counted. By April the
matter was before the Eleventh Federal Circuit Court. The byzantine legal
maneuvering continued for months. In mid-October a federal appeals-court judge
finally ruled that the ballots could not be counted, and ordered the secretary
of state to certify Hooper as the winner.
Let's not let this election get stolen again.
It's Funny... 'Cause It's True
By now you may have seen the very amusing video of someone attempting to vote for Kerry in Florida on an electronic voting machine, and the difficulty that entails. Ultimately, the machine casts the vote for Bush instead. Turns out that fiction is based on reality:
Kim Griffith voted on Thursday— over and over and over. She's among the people in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties [in New Mexico] who say they have had trouble with early voting equipment. When they have tried to vote for a particular candidate, the touch-screen system has said they voted for somebody else. It's a problem that can be fixed by the voters themselves— people can alter the selections on their ballots, up to the point when they indicate they are finished and officially cast the ballot.
For Griffith, it took a lot of altering. She went to Valle Del Norte Community Center in Albuquerque, planning to vote for John Kerry. "I pushed his name, but a green check mark appeared before President Bush's name," she said. Griffith erased the vote by touching the check mark at Bush's name. That's how a voter can alter a touch-screen ballot. She again tried to vote for Kerry, but the screen again said she had voted for Bush. The third time, the screen agreed that her vote should go to Kerry. She faced the same problem repeatedly as she filled out the rest of the ballot. On one item, "I had to vote five or six times," she said.
Michael Cadigan, president of the Albuquerque City Council, had a similar experience when he voted at City Hall. "I cast my vote for president. I voted for Kerry and a check mark for Bush appeared," he said. He reported the problem immediately and was shown how to alter the ballot. Cadigan said he doesn't think he made a mistake the first time. "I was extremely careful to accurately touch the button for my choice for president," but the check mark appeared by the wrong name, he said.
