A Handful of Random Post-Election Thoughts

If Bill Clinton had “delivered” Arkansas for the Democrats, and John Edwards had done the same with North Carolina, John Kerry would be the President-elect.
And why didn’t MoveOn give a hand to Doris “Granny D” Haddock in her run for Senator from NH? As previously noted, MoveOn’s rate of success was pathetic: only 5 of their 27 candidates for the House or the Senate were elected.

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MoveOn Candidate Results

Just thought you’d like to know: five of the 27 candidates for the House and Senate endorsed by MoveOn were successful in their election bids.
These are:
House
Allyson Schwartz (PA)
John Salazar (CO)
Melissa Bean (IL)
Senate
Ken Salazar (CO)
Patty Murray (WA)
A number of the remaining 22 candidates lost in squeaker races, which might set them up well for another try.

Take Heart

Liberals and true Conservatives everywhere, take heart: the turnout was still less than 60% of eligible voters. Even with a bare majority of 51.1%, only about 30% of all eligible voters chose Bush.
I can well believe that 30% of the American electorate is homophobic, in favor of school prayer, etc. That certainly doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to pander to them.

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After the Deluge

So, two days after the deluge, the pundits conclude that the Kerry campaign – and the Democratic party – were sunk by bad assumptions about rural/exurban voters; the success of the Swift Boat veterans in discrediting Kerry as a war hero; and the intensity of opposition to gay marriage.
In other words, they couldn’t pull it off with the standard formula for success: a well-funded campaign and a decorated war hero/former prosecutor as the standard-bearer – not to mention the fact that the opposition’s candidate for Vice President has a gay daughter who wears a wedding ring.
Having “blown” yet another election that was theirs to lose, the Dems are already being quoted in the press about yet another exercise in self-flagellation: a Hillary Clinton candidacy in 2008.

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Youth Fizzles, “Morality” Rules, Nader Irrelevant

At 4:35 am ET, it looks like a Republican sweep of the Presidency, the House and the Senate.
The much-vaunted 18-29 vote turned out to be a dud for the Dems. Virtually all of the so-called “moral” propositions – from legalizing medical marijuana to prohibiting gay marriage – passed in favor of traditionalists.
Nader was irrelevant in all but one state, New Mexico, with 5 electoral votes. If NM goes for Bush, assuming he won Ohio, that would, at this hour, put him over the 270: a largely symbolic possibility, given the way the vote is looking in Nevada, which also has 5.

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Election Day Blues

For whatever it’s worth: I’m voting for Libertarian candidate for President, Michael Badnarik, today.
This isn’t just a vote of conscience; yesterday, the Massachusetts Secretary of State Francis Galvin predicted that the Libertarian party (as well as the Greens) will lose its status as an official political party in Massachusetts. We need 3% of the votes cast to maintain this status, without which candidates will have a harder time being listed on ballots in the future.

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The Evangelicals

In spite of their complaints about negative press, Evangelical Protestants have been getting a lot of deferential media attention this election season.
Yesterday, I happened to see both a recent documentary on the subject, as well as the last half hour or so of a famous 1940’s film about a Roman Catholic saint, “The Song of Bernadette”.
The Song of Bernadette won its star, Jennifer Jones, an Oscar for Best Actress. Ms. Jones’s performance was such a perfection of luminous piety that some members of the public castigated her when they discovered that in real life, she was not actually a nun but a wife and mother. This was further compounded by the announcement shortly after the Oscar ceremonies that she and her husband were filing for divorce.

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