Tomgram: Mark Danner on How Bush Really Won

[pinto]

Tomgram: Mark Danner on How Bush Really Won

In a vivid report from the frontlines of Bush's Florida electoral victory, Mark Danner considers the forces that drove the President over the top -- as well as the crippling weakness of Kerry's "presence" in the campaign. This is the second in a series of pieces Tomdispatch will be publishing in the coming months that attempt to put the Presidential election into perspective. The first was Ira Chernus' canny analysis of the "electoral fear factor." http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2068 Others will be posted in the New Year. Danner's piece appears thanks to the kind permission of the editors of the New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/ who are letting Tomdispatch distribute it on-line (as they did Michael Massing's fine piece on Iraq, the press, and the election last month http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2020 ). It will appear in the January 13 issue of the magazine.

Let me just add a note to my own comments on the election in my introduction to the Chernus piece. There I mentioned that the play warriors beat out the real warrior in the presidential contest in part because "Kerry, a genuine warrior, represented the wrong war, a war of surpassing murkiness, the one Americans had been running from for decades, the one that plunged the country deep into every moral grey zone imaginable." In fact, I suspect that no position Kerry might have taken on Vietnam -- forefronting his fighting record there (as he did); highlighting, instead of hiding, his return home from the war (as he didn't); or not emphasizing his Vietnam-era experiences at all -- would have saved his presidential bid.

He simply represented the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place (to steal a line from the Bush camp). For the electorate to accept him as president might have meant, at some semi-conscious level, accepting that Iraq and Vietnam had something in common -- that, in essence, we had plunged into the grey zone once again. It seems that was hard for many Americans to swallow way back in the distant early days of November. What a difference a month makes! A new ABC/Washington Post poll indicates that 56% of Americans no longer believe the war was worth fighting and only 44% think progress toward stabilization is being made in Iraq. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14266-2004Dec20.html

These are breakthrough figures. In addition, 57% disapprove of how the President has dealt with Iraq; while, just reelected, his approval rating has already dipped to 48%; and barely a third of the country approves of Donald Rumsfeld's performance in office. ! Though a significant percentage of Americans (58%) still believe our troops should remain in Iraq, we may already be approaching the cusp of change -- or is it the edge of the cliff? Only a month-plus late and billions of dollars short.

Let me also recommend two other pieces on the election -- a commentary by Todd Gitlin on why Kerry lost that's both simple and sane. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cpu/cpr/issues/4/2/why_democrats_lost.html
("A short answer to the question of why we lost: Bush had more room for error. The Republicans had the stronger hand and played it well… Kerry's challenge was to do everything right. He didn't. So he lost.") And a piece by William Rivers Pitt at the Truthout.org website http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml which raises, via the ongoing hearings of Democratic Congressman John Conyers, one of the more intriguing suggestions I've seen about possible direct electoral fraud in Ohio (as opposed, say, to vote suppression or voter intimidation). It focuses on the voting-machine company that, unlike Diebold, no one was paying much attention to because it manufactures not electronic touch-screen machines but the less high-tech and sexy punch-card! ones. (Pitt's piece also includes an interesting affidavit and, if you scroll down, a New York Times report on the subject.) As most of you have perhaps guessed, I found the almost immediate hysteria over election fraud and e-voting theft less than convincing. To me, it smacked of denial, which doesn't mean that I consider fraud, theft, and manipulation at a state or company level at all inconceivable.

more:

http://www.nationinstitute.org/

[MasonJar]

1. What a bunch of nonsense! In the first place I will never believe

that Bush actually won. The big cheat was on this time. I worked very hard on this election and there was mammoth discontent with Bush. Republicans for Kerry was led by some of Kentucky's most prominent Pugs, most of whom had never voted Dem in their lives and they were front and center on the issues which were anti-Bush. What about the exit polls which do not lie? Kerry was never going to win Florida with Jeb as governor, or Ohio with the crooks in charge of the election there. Quit blaming this on Kerry. We have to get out there and demand paper trails or this democracy is doomed.

[patdem]

2. There were unprecidented lines in Norfolk VA and Kerry took Norfolk VA

home of the biggest Navy base in America and the world!

I believe it was stolen! I agree to say bush** won is to ignore reality and believe in the reality of the 'let's pretenders'!!!

[pinto]

3. This is a compilation of articles from Tomgram, I am not blaming Kerry.

Yeah, I believe there was fraud in this election. And there was a year of campaigning that we need to review, as well, as in any election process. I don't discount either one. Thanks, pinto.