It's been a long time since I frequented political threads; it really does give a fascinating glimpse into various levels of dementia. I really wonder where all this "Republicans are evil scum" and "Democrats are lazy lying bastards" nonsense comes from. Has anyone ever considered the possibility that most of the people on both sides of the equation are decent, honest, hardworking folk who simply happen to have different ideas on how the country ought to be run? Granted, there are extremist ideologues on both sides, but they can be dismissed as irrelevant raving loonies, like all extremist ideologues everywhere.
And where did anyone come up with the notion that this election represents some deep and fundamental choice between good and evil, or socialism and capitalism, or any two polar opposites? These candidates are creatures of the system, establishment men from the day they were born. Neither is going to cause any fundamental shift in the direction of the country; neither is going to rock the boat in any major way.
We're probably never going to "know" who "won" this election. Like any polling device, an election has an error margin; the result in this case is well within that error margin. Whoever wins will win through a legal technicality; both sides are trying to twist that technicality in their direction. Both look petty and devious. If their positions were reversed, each would be doing exactly what the other is doing now. Whoever takes office will do so with a questionable mandate, and with a fair number of people believing that his presidency is illegitimate.
I wonder... if Bush ends up taking office, as now seems likely, will he and his supporters here be willing to publicly acknowledge the following:
- Bush lost the popular vote, and won the electoral count only by forcing a halt to recounts that showed a trend against him in the pivotal state.
- If Gore didn't have Nader pulling liberal votes away, Bush would have lost cleanly.
- If you take Gore and Nader votes as votes against the Bush platform, you can only conclude that a significant majority of the American populace does not want does not want to be governed under that platform.
My question for the Bush supporters here: should Bush, if installed, respond to these fairly obvious realities by moderating his platform, bringing moderate Democrats into his cabinet, and generally trying to develop an administration aimed at reconciliation? Or should they take advantage of their luck and impose a platform distasteful to most Americans?
If the pendulum starts swinging back Gore's way, I'll have some very similar questions for his supporters. |
