1) "Mandate": Bush and his cronies (including noted moral exemplar William "Casino Billy" Bennett) are crowing about the "mandate" they seem to think their election has given them. They won the election (maybe: see this article), but 49% of voters - nearly 56 million people - prefer that someone else would lead the nation. John Kerry's vote total is higher than that of any other Presidential candidate in U.S. history...except, alas, George W. Bush's. This is not a mandate: it is a bare acquiescence on the part of the electorate.
2) "Reconciliation": One thing the Republicans know well is that it doesn't matter how many votes a polarizing candidate like Bush loses - so long as he ends up with more than the other candidate. The Democrats, on the other hand, seem deathly afraid of losing any voter - and so forget that the first order of business is to gain votes. (I almost think the Democrats would have done better with a candidate who fired people up, like Howard Dean, than with Kerry who, despite his intelligence and statesmanship, comes across like a well-meaning college professor. And yes, I know the type well.)
That fear of losing any voter is evident in the pathetic cries to "reach out" to the evangelical vote...give it up - you're no more going to appeal to feverish Bible-beaters who think Osama bin Laden and John Kerry are going to outlaw heterosexual marriage and start up a fried-fetus fast-food franchise than Dick Cheney is likely to grow dreads, wear tie-dye, and play the Incan flute with a traveling jam band.
Furthermore: "reconciliation" with a man and party apparatus who hold in utter contempt many of the Constitutional principles Americans have fought and died for? A man whose party tried its damnedest to disenfranchise whole swaths of the electorate (on the obvious grounds that that demographic was unlikely to vote for them - an act which reveals further contempt for the concept of democracy)? A man so out of touch with reality and so monumentally unselfaware that he can pronounce that "a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief" - and do so within weeks of multiple reports from committees appointed by his own administration establish that he himself did exactly that regarding Iraq?
No: we don't "reconcile"; we push to win over another two or three percent of people and bring them back into the "reality-based community," and make damned sure that Bush knows we're watching him.
1 comment:
It is almost a shame that Kerry didn't win so we could see the many varieties of bullshit we would have had to endure with his acceptance speeches. I was going to shoot myself if I had to hear the "Wrong war at the wrong time" sloganeering statement.
I would have to agree with you though, Jeff, the Democrats have to fight for every vote and they will continue to enure every vote is counted. Not only did the better man win this election but I think that people across the United States had a reckoning and that scares the Democrats. People aren't being fooled by the Democrats anymore and that is why the Democrats have to fight to keep votes and fight even harder to gain them.
It is ironic that when Bush was in the midst of winning his second term many Democrats were running around in precount denial checking the Canadian Immigration websites to see what it takes to move up North. I was especially moved with Moby's open letter to Canada extending an invitation to join all the Blue States under the red leaf.
I don't recall seeing or hearing any Republicans resorting to this "poor loser" spirit if Kerry was going to win. I could be wrong since I do remember seeing some pretty extreme tantrums at my workplace when Clinton won his second term. It would have been nice, though, to see a BBC paper read "How can XXX people be so stupid and give this jackass another term in office?" But the BBC loves the Democrat president.
I have read a lot of numbers, on both sides, as to the number of votes Bush and Kerry won and how it is of some historical relevance. In fact, we could could both go on a source-posting frenzy to back our candidate up. Provisional ballots, absentee ballots, discarded ballots, bullshit on both sides, it is enough to make me pound my testicles flat with a wooden mallot. While chasing my degrees I found that numbers can be manipulated to tell any story the number crucher sees fit.
Now, I am no political analyst by any definition of the word but it is this kind of attitude towards Bush that will ensure there no partisan cooperation of any kind- by those in elected seats or by the people who put them there.
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