Imagination vs. Reality
Imagine....
It's election night. You've settled in on your couch or favorite recliner with your Doritos and a supply of frosty beverages to watch the returns come in. And, if you're a Bush supporter, the results are very rewarding indeed. Florida is called for Bush; then, in a moderate shocker, Pennsylvania. Soon it becomes apparent that there is a Bush wave sweeping across the country, conquering all but the most irredeemably "blue" states. And unlike 2000, the President is clearly winning the popular vote as well by upwards of half a dozen percentage points. By 8 PM Pacific time when the West Coast polls close, it's already "garbage time."
President Bush emerges onstage to his cheering supporters, proclaiming victory, thanking the voters for their faith and confidence in him, and beginning the futile but obligatory process of bringing the nation back to some semblance of at least surface rapproachment after this most vicious and rancorous of election campaigns. The only remaining question is when Senator Kerry will emerge at his election night HQ to make his concession speech.
As is his habit by now, Kerry stalks out within half an hour of Dubya's remarks, and begins to speak. Only he doesn't concede; rather, he also declares victory, and calls upon the President to concede instead.
Americans turn in thinking that the strains of the campaign and the bitterness of his defeat have caused the Boston Balker to slip into a bout of mental and/or emotional irregularity. Either that or he must have been drunk.
But it's neither. Next day his attorney hordes spring into action. Lawsuits contesting the results are filed in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Bush's margins of victory were relatively narrow. The grounds are dismayingly familiar to anybody who remembers what Al Gore inflicted on the nation four years ago. Only this time it isn't a spontaneous uprising, but the culmination of a long-planned and deliberate strategy.
The Kerryians don't stop there. Lurch announces his new national security team and begins making Cabinet appointments. He starts telephoning world leaders to get a leg up on implementing his foreign policy "plan." His campaign demands that the Bush White House provide transition funding, resources, office space, intelligence briefings, etc., and when the incredulous Bushies balk, Kerry - you guessed it - files suit to get it.
Meanwhile, Big Media is in full mobilization depicting Kerry's Bizarro World version of events, referring to him as "president-elect" and analyzing what to expect and look for from the "incoming Kerry administration." And when Mr. Bush - you remember, the guy who actually won the election - doesn't concede or comply with Kerry's demands, they accuse him of attempting a "coup de' tat" in defiance of the "expressed will of the people."
Okay, now let's return to reality. Not in terms of whether or not the above will actually happen - I think it's guaranteed, at least as long as they can keep enough states tied up in litigation to keep the outcome in the appearance of doubt - but in terms of whether it could actually work and hijack the presidency for Brah-man.
I think that will be a function of how big Bush's margin is. Right now, as I depicted in the scenario above, he's about four or five points up nationally. That reflects the ground he's regained since the first debate. The momentum is definitely in his favor, and Kerry has neither the time nor the opportunity to blunt or reverse it. And even if he did, his Lovie-Howell-on-PCP wife would spoil it like a drunk at the Cana wedding worfing into the wine Christ had just made from well water.
The state polls are beginning to fall into line with the national numbers, which means that states like Florida and Ohio should be moving outside the margin of error relatively soon, and other states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Minnesota will be teetering on the edge of flipping. If that happens, the President's Electoral College number would rise as high (by my figures) as 345, and Kerry suing his way to power just wouldn't be feasible.
That's the thing to keep in mind when reading about the Democrats' ten-thousand lawyer army with lear jets on hot-standby ready to wing into as many closely contested states as necessary to file suit and plunge the country into an even bigger constitutional nightmare. This entire strategy is predicated upon another photo-finish on election night. But remember that Bush was ahead by about the same mid-single-digit margin in 2000 as he is now, and was only run down in the last week because of the DUI story, which raised doubts about Bush (as the de facto challenger) and caused undecideds to break heavily for Gore. As the incumbent, Bush in not an unknown quantity this time, the likelihood of another such "gotcha" is minimal, and if one did surface, its effectiveness after the past two years of vilification would be doubtful. As to external events, it would take something huge - a stock market crash, a Beslan-like massacre here, the collapse of the Iraqi interim government - to overcome GDub's built-in advantages on the central issue of national security/terrorism.
In short, Kerry needed to keep the race where it was when it tightened after the first debate. He has not done so, and that proportionally reduces the chances of a bloodless coup.
In other words, "If it's not close, they can't cheat."
And "forewarned is forearmed."
But that doesn't mean that Senator Botox isn't going to try to bring the whole system crashing down with him.
Proving once and for all that even Richard Nixon was a far better man than he.
It's election night. You've settled in on your couch or favorite recliner with your Doritos and a supply of frosty beverages to watch the returns come in. And, if you're a Bush supporter, the results are very rewarding indeed. Florida is called for Bush; then, in a moderate shocker, Pennsylvania. Soon it becomes apparent that there is a Bush wave sweeping across the country, conquering all but the most irredeemably "blue" states. And unlike 2000, the President is clearly winning the popular vote as well by upwards of half a dozen percentage points. By 8 PM Pacific time when the West Coast polls close, it's already "garbage time."
President Bush emerges onstage to his cheering supporters, proclaiming victory, thanking the voters for their faith and confidence in him, and beginning the futile but obligatory process of bringing the nation back to some semblance of at least surface rapproachment after this most vicious and rancorous of election campaigns. The only remaining question is when Senator Kerry will emerge at his election night HQ to make his concession speech.
As is his habit by now, Kerry stalks out within half an hour of Dubya's remarks, and begins to speak. Only he doesn't concede; rather, he also declares victory, and calls upon the President to concede instead.
Americans turn in thinking that the strains of the campaign and the bitterness of his defeat have caused the Boston Balker to slip into a bout of mental and/or emotional irregularity. Either that or he must have been drunk.
But it's neither. Next day his attorney hordes spring into action. Lawsuits contesting the results are filed in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Bush's margins of victory were relatively narrow. The grounds are dismayingly familiar to anybody who remembers what Al Gore inflicted on the nation four years ago. Only this time it isn't a spontaneous uprising, but the culmination of a long-planned and deliberate strategy.
The Kerryians don't stop there. Lurch announces his new national security team and begins making Cabinet appointments. He starts telephoning world leaders to get a leg up on implementing his foreign policy "plan." His campaign demands that the Bush White House provide transition funding, resources, office space, intelligence briefings, etc., and when the incredulous Bushies balk, Kerry - you guessed it - files suit to get it.
Meanwhile, Big Media is in full mobilization depicting Kerry's Bizarro World version of events, referring to him as "president-elect" and analyzing what to expect and look for from the "incoming Kerry administration." And when Mr. Bush - you remember, the guy who actually won the election - doesn't concede or comply with Kerry's demands, they accuse him of attempting a "coup de' tat" in defiance of the "expressed will of the people."
Okay, now let's return to reality. Not in terms of whether or not the above will actually happen - I think it's guaranteed, at least as long as they can keep enough states tied up in litigation to keep the outcome in the appearance of doubt - but in terms of whether it could actually work and hijack the presidency for Brah-man.
I think that will be a function of how big Bush's margin is. Right now, as I depicted in the scenario above, he's about four or five points up nationally. That reflects the ground he's regained since the first debate. The momentum is definitely in his favor, and Kerry has neither the time nor the opportunity to blunt or reverse it. And even if he did, his Lovie-Howell-on-PCP wife would spoil it like a drunk at the Cana wedding worfing into the wine Christ had just made from well water.
The state polls are beginning to fall into line with the national numbers, which means that states like Florida and Ohio should be moving outside the margin of error relatively soon, and other states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Minnesota will be teetering on the edge of flipping. If that happens, the President's Electoral College number would rise as high (by my figures) as 345, and Kerry suing his way to power just wouldn't be feasible.
That's the thing to keep in mind when reading about the Democrats' ten-thousand lawyer army with lear jets on hot-standby ready to wing into as many closely contested states as necessary to file suit and plunge the country into an even bigger constitutional nightmare. This entire strategy is predicated upon another photo-finish on election night. But remember that Bush was ahead by about the same mid-single-digit margin in 2000 as he is now, and was only run down in the last week because of the DUI story, which raised doubts about Bush (as the de facto challenger) and caused undecideds to break heavily for Gore. As the incumbent, Bush in not an unknown quantity this time, the likelihood of another such "gotcha" is minimal, and if one did surface, its effectiveness after the past two years of vilification would be doubtful. As to external events, it would take something huge - a stock market crash, a Beslan-like massacre here, the collapse of the Iraqi interim government - to overcome GDub's built-in advantages on the central issue of national security/terrorism.
In short, Kerry needed to keep the race where it was when it tightened after the first debate. He has not done so, and that proportionally reduces the chances of a bloodless coup.
In other words, "If it's not close, they can't cheat."
And "forewarned is forearmed."
But that doesn't mean that Senator Botox isn't going to try to bring the whole system crashing down with him.
Proving once and for all that even Richard Nixon was a far better man than he.
posted by JASmius at 10:59 PM
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