A Kerry landslide?
Just maybe.• November 1, 2004 | 11:39 AM ET
Eric Alterman
Well, what is there to say? Nothing, I fear, I haven’t said already. OK, I’ll say this. I predicted a Kerry win about two weeks ago based on new registration numbers and the inability of pollsters to reach new voters, which would go overwhelmingly for Kerry—or more accurately, against Bush. I’m sticking with that one. All that poll-thumbsucking will prove to be a massive, misleading waste of time, just as it did four years ago, as yesterday’s "news" turns into tomorrow’s fish and chips paper.
I’ll go further, I think there’s at minimum, a twenty-five percent chance—maximum, forty-percent chance--of a Kerry landslide. As everything in the news recently—including Mr. bin Laden, who by the way, can apparently run AND hide (at least so long as his enemies are off fighting imaginary terrorists thousands of miles away as he sits pretty among his warlord protectors)--has served to remind voters of what an unprecedented disaster this administration is. Bush, Cheney and Rove have sought to scare people silly—literally—to try to convince them to forget how asleep at the switch they were before September 11th; how panicky they were on the day of the attack, and how mendacious, ideological and incompetent they’ve been virtually every day since. Much of the mainstream media has bought into their campaign of fear, but I don’t think ultimately, all that many Americans will.
John Kerry is well-trained, moderate in demeanor, intelligent and ultimately, competent. Bush is none of these things. While some Americans have genuinely benefited from Bush’s presidency—almost exclusively conservative Christians, Fortune 500 CEOs and the like, and neoconservative Jihadists—the vast majority of Americans are unrepresented by this bunch, and I’m sorry, I just refuse to believe that come tomorrow morning, they will be too stupid to see through the punditocracy muck and vote their own self-interests. Inside the voting booth, voters will level with themselves and realize—it just doesn’t matter who you’d "rather have a beer with." Neither of these guys are coming over to your house for a beer. They’ll be too busy, for starters, attempting to fix the apparently unwinable quagmire that the Bush team created in his hubristic ignorance.
Yes, Kerry in a landslide because I believe in my countrymen and women. That’s my prediction. I’ll eat it if I have to—along with a great deal of the hope I held for my country’s democratic future.
msnbc.msn.com |
