Hope/fear

Hope.
There was strong voter turnout and more people were involved. Halley Suitt writes

Call me Pollyanna, but I compared it to being a person who was out of shape, decided to run the Boston Marathon, had never run any long distance and then didn’t manage the 26 miles but ran a very impressive 10 miles.

That’s how I feel about my experience. I started to be involved in politics and learn about being a net citizen and get right in at a grassroots level like I had NEVER done before.

Okay, I didn’t run the whole marathon. We didn’t win. But I can run 10 miles now! And I couldn’t do that before.

The election was close. 1% nationwide, a bit more ground organizing in Ohio. Youth polled for Kerry, but still had low voter turnout. Many Americans are not well informed. There are things to improve, that can be changed.
Fear. After four more years of mistaken war against nation-states, based on misunderstanding the nation of non-state terrorism, what damage will the US have created in the world? How much riskier will the world be? After four more years of reckless spending, how bad willl the US economy be?
Fear. 51% of voters voted for Bush. But 75% voted for the amendments restricting rights for gay people. The campaign’s gay-baiting has won the election overall on “moral issues.”
Two women friends of mine, a lesbian couple, are about to have a baby. These laws deny them rights to visit each other in the hospital and give parental custody to a parent who’s raised a child.
This is a moral issue, with good on the side of the loving family. The size of the opposition to this moral view is deeply chilling. It makes me worry about whether we’ll face a flood of pro-Christian fundamentalist legislation, and what constitutional protection will mean in four years.
(Interesting… this is the first election that I can remember in which Republicans abandoned Willie Horton/welfare queen race-baiting, and used gay-baiting to fill that rhetorical niche in the campaign.)

4 thoughts on “Hope/fear”

  1. Deconstructing the “Bush won with theocons” argument.
    http://andrewcoyne.com/archives/004035.php
    That story never passed my smell test. I know too many liberal former Gore voters who voted for Bush this year. F2F and online. Sure, it’s anecdotal, but there must be many more I never heard about, plus the various op-eds supporting Bush on issues far removed from gay marriage, specifically Iraq/War on Terror.
    The article
    http://andrewcoyne.com/archives/004035.php
    blows that exit poll methodology out of the water.
    Talk about fear and stereotyping: “Those nasty bigoted heartland evangelical Christian fundamentalists put Bush in the White House to oppress gays!” It’s not true, but the NYTimes op-eds are already starting, comparing evangelicals (who are about 15% of the vote) to jihadis. Moral equivalence anyone?
    The last bit of nasty smearing from the Dems, their parting shot. And then, after 4 years of vilifying the president, his party, half the country (“there are two Americas!”), all his initiatives, in coordination with the media, with more vitriol than the Clinton-haters of the 90s, they have the gall to lecture Bush about “not dividing the country.” They need to go home and look in the mirror. (Vigorous debate and loyal opposition is needed, but conspiracy-mongering and smears isn’t that.)
    A lot of the Bush liberals I’ve met were lifelong Dems, and now want nothing more to do with the party, and this is a good example why.

  2. Also there were states such as Oregon and I think Michigan where a gay marriage ban was voted in AND Kerry won the state. Given that both needed majorities, there must be some overlap.

  3. Those anecdotes don’t pass the sniff test either. Of course you spend more time with disaffected Jewish democrats in New York than zealous fundamentalist Christians in the bible belt.
    Also, Kerry won a majority of self-defined moderates — and Bush won anyway, due to turnout among the Christian right.
    The Democratic perception of the strength of the Christian right in this election wasn’t propoganda and vitriol — it was surprise. The strength of the turnout — driven by code words like “Dred Scott”, wedge issues like gay marriage, and weekly preaching — suprised Democrats who had been campaigning on Iraq and the economy.
    I think the confidence in Republican moderation is misplaced – Bush is likely to advance social policies that are far from the values you’ve expressed.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *