Obviously shock, awe, and amazement. Here is why. The morning exit polling was showing a substantial lead for Kerry in a number of states. These numbers even made it to the president and he was concerned. By the evening though, things had changed. Which means that people went in, voted for Bush, and then lied and said they voted for Kerry to the exit pollers.
Why? I think it's because people thought for whatever reason that Kerry was the right choice in the eyes of their peers and community, but wasn't for whatever reason, the right choice for them in their gut. One of the right wing pundits called this phenomenon early on and he was right (it wasn't Hannity or Limbaugh). My guess is that it is the security issue. The numbers coming out for undecideds who were honest said they were voting on security.
That was the genius of Rove in this election. He knew that security was a gut issue and that they owned it, and he defended it tooth and nail. Not only did we have pundits constantly saying that Bush was the security guy, you had the Swift Vet stuff which was aimed directly at hitting him on the security front. While they had a feint going with the flip-flop stuff. If Bush wins, Roves place as an historic political strategist is secure.
Obviously there was election fraud, rampant on the Republican side, but not 3.5M votes. As to the recount, I think it's a good thing for the healing of the country. We don't have the time pressure we did last time because we had no incumbent, so let the recount go. It will still go for Bush and at least the 49% of Americans that thought we were cheated the last time around will be reasonably confident that we haven't been cheated this time. And that would heal the nation. Of course, I think the Republicans will fight it because the leadership are soulless evil bastards who think that Democrats are morally inferior and have no right to exist.
Where to go from here?
The fight isn't over by a long shot. Bush lacks the capacity to understand that he has not achieved a mandate, and in fact he has shown remarkable instability in the popular support for a sitting war time president. But we understand what winning by a narrow margin in this climate means, and we see how weak his position is.
On a personal note, it was a mistake for me to come out to New Orleans over the election. I wish I were home with Lori and Megan.
Posted by jherr at November 3, 2004 05:53 AM