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10.27.04

Only Six Days To Go: Advantage Bush (on Paper Anyway)

By Mark Grueter

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Okay, here’s the situation: If Bush takes Ohio and Florida, he wins the election (274 to 264) even if Kerry wins all the other battleground states - Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Iowa, New Hampshire and all the states he’s absolutely supposed to win regardless (like Minnesota, which is now actually close). Polls suggest the battleground states are far too close to call, but the ifs for Kerry are bigger than the ifs for Bush.

My sense is that the New England liberal Kerry has a better shot in Ohio than in Florida because of the north/south dynamic. Al Gore (who lost Ohio to Bush) fared well against Bush in Florida because of his southern roots, his preacher-like speeches, and the simple fact that Bush was then a challenger, not an incumbent. Kerry is doing well in Florida, but he is not carrying the black vote as dominantly as Gore did and is not even close in most other southern states (Gore, at least, got close in the south). So, if Kerry makes use of his northern roots and takes Ohio (along with the others needed) he could lose all southern states including Florida, along with Iowa and New Mexico and still actually win the election.

Regardless of how disastrous one believes Bush is, he is still the incumbent, and incumbents, in elections, always have an inherent edge. Voters are simply less likely to vote for change (esp. during war) than they are to vote for the status quo.

This is interesting because Kerry is a more appealing candidate than Gore. Indeed, the Kerry/Edwards ticket is much stronger than the Gore/Lieberman 2000 team. But while Democrats are tougher this time around, so are Bush/Cheney, because of the experience they’ve gained and because of the aforementioned incumbency advantage.

So, all signs point toward another extremely close election; that is, unless you buy into the liberal dream of a massive turnout. 51 percent of registered voters (or 105 million people) came out in 2000. It is believed by some that, because of a renewed interest in politics, millions more will come out this time. We could see a turnout of close to 60 percent. Conventional wisdom tells us that higher turnout rates help the Democrats. For example, it’s no coincidence that Republicans generally oppose bills to make voting easier, while Democrats generally support such legislation.

But this liberal dream too easily assumes that (a) the newly registered voters actually exist and turn out, and (b) they’ll vote for Kerry. The “Rock the Vote” crowd prefers to think that younger people, fueled by programs like The Daily Show and college educations, are much more likely to vote Kerry. This is why liberal musicians sport shirts that unironically read “Vote or Die” (how perfectly foul is that?). But even Jon Stewart himself said, recently in Rolling Stone, that his satire only helps the system and the politicians he’s making fun of. Well, that’s great to hear, Jon, since you’ve spent most of your time targeting the Republicans.

Far more troubling are the underlying and long-term implications of this movement. The Turnout Dictators don’t just want You to vote - they want You to vote for John Kerry. Otherwise, for example, these same people wouldn’t be working so feverishly to kick Ralph Nader off the ballots. The message of “Vote or Die” is sinister because, just as all citizens have the right to vote, they also have the right not to participate. 

And then on the other side of things, we have the Republicans gearing up to send thousands of workers to challenge voter registrations in key states.  This maneuver could deter any number of inexperienced and/or undedicated voters, simply through intimidation and the creation of long lines at the voting booths.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, despite their miserably unfunny movie Team America: World Police, made the additional insight that “if you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, then you shouldn’t vote.” There’s more than a grain of truth in this because a republic can only be just if its voting citizens are informed. So the drive to just push apathetic kids into the voting booths is more than just a little bit cynical and reckless.

The turn-out-the-vote/pro Kerry movement has also led to many humorous asides: “Fuck the Vote” is ostensibly a campaign to enlist good-looking liberals to persuade conservatives to vote for Kerry by, well, fucking them. It begs the question: do these people actually believe they can convert Bush fans by this method or is this just one more outlet/reason for liberals to fuck one another?

And just as religious missionaries believe they can “convert” non-believers to their cause, liberal missionaries, like those at Britain's Guardian, believe they can convert the good-hearted, but misguided yokels of Ohio to see things there way, simply by writing them a bunch of boilerplate letters (Anyone who has yet to read the reply letters must do so immediately). And campaign activists on both sides are randomly calling up people and feeding them a script about how important the defeat of George Bush is. Jesus Christ, do these people not realize how this sort of stuff can only create a backlash? But the prevailing mentality at times like these is to act, not think.

I am personally voting “as if” I lived in a democracy, a free republic where each individual is guaranteed the right to support their favorite candidate without fear of reprisal or intimidation. I see that Democrats are now openly bribing my candidate: an organization called RalphPlease.org is offering Nader $100,000 if he drops out of the race. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to actually believe Nader would jump ship so easily? If that’s not “selling out” then nothing is and if you know anything at all about Nader, you know he’s no sellout.

Bottom line here is that nobody knows who will win - polls are too close and the arithmetic too circumstantial. The only thing we do know is that anyone who claims to know for sure who will win is either a fool or a liar, or both. A would-be prophet is handicapped by contrasting evidence and emotions. On paper, Bush has the advantage, but my gut tells me that Kerry will somehow pull it off.

Grueter's column on the presidential election runs every Wednesday.
Click here to see his previous column.

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Mark Grueter is a writer living in New York City. He can be contacted at grueter@methree.net.

© 2004 Me Three