Month: November 2004 (Page 3 of 3)

This is my random notes section from Tuesday night’s events. Not quite a running log, but the highlights of my notebook entries for the night. I watched the election from our basement, with a 40 oz. bottle of Miller High Life that I worked my way through slowly throughout the night. I primarily watched NBC and MSNBC, although I stopped on CNN frequently, and even CBS and ABC from time-to-time. A little C-SPAN coverage too. I make no effort to be fair and balanced, so just call me the Fox of the Left.

Indiana is one of the first states to go to Bush. Shocking. I later learned Marion County (Indy proper) went for Kerry, the first time a Democrat has won that county in at least the last four elections. That’s interesting on many levels, if only to me.
The first reference to the gay marriage bans comes when discussing Kentucky, where it’s called a definition of marriage initiative. S., “Definition of marriage in Kentucky?” Affects a very hick, southern accent, “Don’t be marryin’ your sister no more!”
All networks report that voting in Florida was relatively uneventful this time around, with few reports of crazy ballots, interference with voters, etc. Chris Matthews, “South Florida is clean.” All over the nation, NBA players rejoice!
I’ll say it, MSNBC’s panel was absolutely awful. Andrea Mitchell is utterly worthless. She’s got a huge conflict of interest, being married to Mr. Greenspan and all, she’s a straight reporter sitting in an opinion setting, and she seems afraid anytime shouting starts. Willie Brown was speaking a language only die hard politicos could understand. Pat Buchanan was brutal as ever. Ron Reagan, bless his heart, seemed content to sit back and let everyone else talk. Matthews endlessly interrupts others. I’ll get to Joe Scarborough in a moment. Dee Dee Meyers was the only bright spot. I wish more partisan hacks could be like her. She clearly has a point of view. But she’s willing to discuss issues from both perspectives without getting into shouting matches. She needed to be on more.
Back to Scarborough. You never really know what you’re going to get with him. One moment he’s a smug political insider who looks at anyone who dares share an opinion with an arrogant glare. Next moment he’s a partisan hack. And then he’ll launch into an explanation of a process that is insightful, clear to the average viewer, and extremely balanced. I wonder if he’s bipolar? His thoughts on gerrymandering and the bad effects it has on politics were outstanding.
One of the worst lines of the night: “Bush needs Ohio, but so does Kerry.” Ron Reagan. I bet he got a fat check for offering insight like that. Most 15 year olds understood the significance of Ohio.
Chris Matthews after the polls closed in Ohio and they spent five minutes talking about it: “We don’t have the numbers to tell you anything, really.” Can I have the last five minutes back then?
I didn’t catch what state it was in, but somewhere there was a congressional race between Goode and Weed. Turnout was reported as high.
A local note, Marvin Scott was running as the Republican against incumbent Senator Evan Bayh. We were driving around last weekend and saw a series of yard signs for Marvin. I wondered aloud, “I need to ask Nicole if she’s related to him.” S. busted out laughing. “What?” “They may be related, but Marvin is black so the odds are pretty low.” Oh.
Andrea Mitchell on the alleged voter fraud in Philadelphia (which was later reported to not exist), “It will only be a problem if the popular vote is an issue.” I understand what she’s saying from a national perspective, but don’t you need an accurate measure of the votes to figure out who won Pennsylvania? Come on, Andrea.
Not sure how they did it where you watched, but our local NBC affiliate shrunk the network image so they could run a ticker of local races across the bottom of the screen. That distorted the NBC feed so much that you couldn’t read any graphics they showed. The popular vote, percentage, and electoral vote numbers NBC was scrolling in the bottom right corner were impossible to read, even on a 52″ TV.
Gubernatorial. That word makes S. laugh every time she hears it.
Props to NBC for working with their partners at Microsoft to get Tim Russert a tablet PC to replace his whiteboard from 2000. We truly are in a new century!
Around 9:00 EST was when the race shifted. Numbers that we expected from the afternoon exit polls did not seem to be appearing. Possible steals for Kerry were staying Red. Swing states he was rumored to have strong leads in were remaining uncalled. Spokespeople for the President were appearing on every network saying that the exit polls weren’t matching the numbers they were seeing. Is that the truth, or are they just setting the expectation that something is wrong with the vote so they have grounds to challenge any close states?
Chip Reed on MSNBC discussing the provisional ballot fiasco in Ohio, “There’s some creative judging going on in Ohio tonight.” If you’re going to expose your own personal bias, at least come up with a better sounding term than “creative judging”. He continued to use it and it made me cringe each time.
Thank goodness the networks finally started to explain how most states have provisions automatically extending voting hours if there are people in line when the polls are supposed to close. You could hear howls from every corner of the country each time word that voting had been extended in one state or another. “Bertha, did you hear what those goddamn Republicans/Democrats are doing in Ohio/Pennsylvania? They’re stealing the election, plain as day!”
Keith Olbermann, regarding a ballot initiative in Florida labeled Teen Pregnancy. “No, they’re not trying to outlaw teen pregnancy.” Why not? That would solve so many problems if we just made it illegal for teenage girls to get pregnant!
OK, I’ll ask the question: Why aren’t absentee votes required to be received by the counties no later than election day so they can count them with all the other ballots? Is it really that hard to give people a deadline 7-10 days before election day so their ballot has plenty of time to make it back to the county commissioners? I understand provisional ballots needing more time to verify then manually count, but there’s no excuse to not make absentee ballots be included in the regular vote count. Apparently Iowa makes every effort to do exactly that. Props to you, Iowa!
10:10 EST, Joe Kernan concedes the Indiana governor’s race. Joe seemed like a good guy. He was put in a tough spot when Frank O’Bannon died a year ago and he assumed the role. Believe it or not, Democrats have held the governor’s office in Indiana for 16 years. He planned on retiring after this year, and instead was forced to defend every government scandal (since the buck stops at the executive’s desk when a Democrat sits in it) and compete against the former president of Eli Lilly. Even if I don’t like them, I always feel bad for politicians who have to conceded an election. Is there any greater let-down than spending a year, if not more, running for an office, trying to convince people that you have their best interests in mind, and then they vote against you? A losing politician could go on to fight hunger, campaign for world peace, or play a significant role in solving out health care problems, yet they’ll always be known as “the man who lost Ohio” or “the woman who couldn’t win her home county” or whatever. Tough business.
10:52 EST. Tim Russert says the election is down to Ohio and Florida. He’s been waiting four years to say that! I imagine most Americans, from all political perspectives, feared we would hear that again.
A quick pass by CNN shows Robert Novak talking about the divisiveness of the election. Hello, Pot!
Wolf Blitzer seemed distracted by CNN’s big board approach to results all night. He’d be frantically searching for what he was talking about when it was right in front of him. Half the time, the windows dedicated to a particular state or race didn’t offer the viewer any substantive information. C- for CNN.
One more CNN note, each time I saw Larry King, he looked totally and utterly confused. I think he’s like those Red Sox fans who were waiting to die until the Sox won a World Series. He was trying to get through one more election before he kicked it. “So let me get this straight, whoever wins the most votes in Ohio wins all that state’s electoral votes, and thus the election?” That’s only a slight exaggeration of a typical King comment.
It was sometime after 11:00 when I first heard that there were 11 gay marriage bans on the ballot across the country. I think that’s the time I started to feel really bad about Kerry’s chances.
11:40 EST ABC calls Florida. The water starts circling the drain. I didn’t watch much of ABC, but when I did, I was impressed by their coverage. NBC and CNN seemed to be focused on giving us lots of poll numbers since they couldn’t project winners in so many races, but they never really gave us a context for those numbers. ABC seemed to be diving into the big issues and explaining why they were significant. I should have watched them more.
Are Norah and Kelly O’Donnell related, or are Irish women just taking over NBC?
The buzz word of the night was “moral values”. What exactly does that mean? Don’t we all have moral values? More brilliant framing of the issues by the Republicans. If you don’t accept the far right party line on moral issues, you lack moral values. Truly one of the most important aspects of the election, as it allows the R’s to poach voters who’s economic interests are closer to the D’s, but feel a moral affinity with the right. In a time when the President doesn’t have much to run on economically, it was an ideal moment for this shift to occur. Karl Rove is truly the shrewdest politico in the nation.
12:20 EST. There are still people waiting to vote in Ohio? What the hell is wrong with election officials in Ohio? Props to the college student interviewed on NBC who complained about people “taking too long” to vote.
12:55 EST. I think Robert Novak is drunk.
12:59 EST NBC calls Ohio. Crap.
1:00 EST TV turned off, I head to the computer to read political blogs in hopes of finding some massive irregularity that gives hope that there’s a 2000 scenario out there. There does not appear to be one.
2:00 PM EST, November 3. Kerry gives an excellent concession speech. He did the right thing, both in waiting and in conceding. There were probably scenarios that gave them <1% chance of finding enough votes to turn Ohio around, but it wasn’t the right time to go that route. When it became obvious that the chances were that slim, it was the right thing both for the nation and for the Kerry campaign to pull the plug. He’ll go out as a gracious, valiant loser rather than a Sore-Loserman (No matter how unfair that characterization was).

Part three, which will be written from more of a political science perspective than a personal one, will come over the weekend. I promise no more politics for awhile after that.

I’m going to split this up, perhaps into as many as four entries over the next two days, both for ease of writing/editing and to try to make it easier on those of you who are interested in reading through all my accumulated thoughts. As I said earlier in the week, if this bores you, you hate everything I stand for, etc, please be patient for a couple days before I return to less divisive subject matter. I encourage you to share your thoughts, theories, observations. Feel free to argue with me and with other people who comment. This blog is largely a vehicle for me to remain in constant contact with my friends around the country. I know many of you have very different views from me. I respect that but ask that you realize that I, and others who share my views, are depressed, irritated, and upset by the national results. Since most of us know each other, I know we’ll all be respectful of our friends with different viewpoints. But if I, or anyone who comments, says something that drives you insane, I would suggest e-mailing the offending party privately rather than turning the comments into a flame war. We don’t generally have enough comments here to worry about that, but with emotions frayed it’s easy to cross the line. Remember, we’re all friends and we’re all on the same team again today.

This first post will look at what I thought were the dominant themes Tuesday night.
1) The insane cautiousness of the networks in calling presidential races. Not unexpected nor unwelcome, but it was funny to see Rather, Jennings, Brokaw, Blitzer, and Matthews going to great lengths to explain how even some states where 80%+ of the vote had been counted were still too close to call. Brokaw kept talking about “voting models” they were looking at. I’m sure they were, but couldn’t they just say, “Because of the confusion of four years ago, we’re going to wait until we’re absolutely sure this race won’t tighten up before we call it.” Adding to the entertainment was how quickly they called Senate races. Almost every incumbent outside of Kentucky and South Dakota was awarded their seat with 0% of the vote counted. So much for consistency.

2) Exit polls are crap. We should have learned our lesson four years ago. But as Chris Wallace told John Stewart Monday, “We’ve just changed the name this year. It’s still the same process as in 2000.” I know some lawyers read this; do voters of all parties have grounds for a class action suit against the good people at VNS for pain, suffering, and exceptional annoyance? I’ve got a lot of free time. I’d be happy to lend my name to the cause.

3) Christian Conservatives. There have been many great moments in the modern Christian Conservative movement. Helping Ronald Reagan win in two landslides. Facilitating the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Tuesday may have been the movement’s finest moment. There were rumors that the war in Iraq and President Bush’s lack of fiscal conservatism might cause CC voters to stay home this year. We couldn’t have been more wrong. Between the gay marriage ballot initiatives and the desire to at least get out and vote for local and congressional candidates, even those CC voters who weren’t sure about Bush made it to the polls and then managed to give him their vote. As the night wore on, we kept hearing how counties in Florida and Ohio that went for Bush four years ago were going even bigger from him this year. Those were the CC voters making sure their friends and neighbors who sat 2000 out got to the polls this time around. Not only do CC voters control the south, they’re sucking up the old Reagan Democrats by getting them to vote on culture rather than economic issues. There is no voting block as powerful as the CC is today. Bush owes them, something that I’ll touch on later.

4) The 9/11 effect. Where was it? The race was largely the same as it was four years ago. Bush flipped New Mexico and Iowa, which were both narrow losses in 2000, and lost New Hampshire, which was a close win last time. In an electoral college sense, 9/11 had no effect on the race. Most of the raw vote increase in Bush’s total can be attributed to the CC voter effect. I would imagine some of his cushion, though, came from swing voters who voted for him simply because of homeland security/war on terror issues. I’m sure the pollsters will figure out what that number is in the next few weeks.

5) Although Bush won Florida easily and had a phenomenal GOTV effort to hold Ohio, as I said above this race wasn’t much different than the last election. Bush got a few more electoral votes, and a clear majority of the popular vote. But the nation is still sharply divided between secular and religious, urban and rural, progressive and conservative, coastal and interior. Most enlightened commentators expected the race to be very close. It’s just amazing to me that with everything that’s happened in four years we’ve had such little movement. Democratic visions of capturing Florida proved to be a pipe dream. But Ohio was achingly close. If Bill Clinton had been healthy enough to travel more, perhaps he could have flipped Arkansas and Nevada. One wonders if John Kerry sounded like he was from Austin rather than Boston, if the Virginias would have been in play. We were incredibly close to having another president win by capturing the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. Strange days indeed.

6) Tuesday night was unlike any election experience I’ve ever had. It was more like watching a sporting event. The exit polls made it seem like a Kerry win was in the cards. As the night wore on, states that were rumored pick ups were staying red. The upper Midwest took entirely too long to get results from. Then Florida broke, followed by Ohio (according to NBC and Fox) and the six hour epic was over. Four years ago, when Gore was initially awarded Florida, I still didn’t think it was over as we had no idea how Washington, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, and the upper midwest would go. That night felt very different, at least to me.

OK, that’s my overall theme entry. In the next one (perhaps tomorrow) I’ll look at things from more of a political than personal perspective. It will be focused on what happens now rather than what I saw last night. After that, I’ll have bullet point account of other things I found interesting, upsetting, uplifting Tuesday night to wrap up my coverage.

The much anticipated and hyped youth vote didn’t show up. It’s that simple. 1:17 AM EST and Mr. Bush appears to be a lock to gain a second term. I’ve got three pages of notes to work my way through tomorrow but I’m calling it a night for now. Congratulations to my friends who voted red today. We’re all on the same team again tomorrow and even an out-of-touch, godless, immoral, gay-loving liberal like me has to hope the President has more success in the next four years than he’s had in the last four.

It’s too cloudy here, I can’t tell. I’m working on something like three hours of sleep, and shitty sleep at that. I had to get up at 7:30 to take S’s car in for an oil change. So hang in there, I’ll work through my notebook at some point today. I just want to make sure I give an honest effort, rather than use it as my coping mechanism. And in the future, if I make any political predictions, assume exactly the opposite will happen.

A few quick notes left over from my trip to the voting booth yesterday. First, despite several signs stating that all voters must show their IDs when checking in, none of the four volunteers I encountered asked me for my ID. The lady handling the sign in book never even glanced at my signature to see if it matched the one scanned in from my initial registration. A clear sign of rampant voter fraud!!!! Actually, I just found it fascinating that after everything we heard about four years ago, and everything that was expected to happen yesterday, they wouldn’t be a tad more vigilant. In Indiana voters are not registered by party, but I would imagine Hamilton County is 60-65% Republican, and my precinct has a similar ratio. I suppose when one party is that dominant there’s no real need to worry about who is actually voting. The cynical, reverse-racist, liberal side of me wonders that since I saw only two non-white faces out of nearly 300 that were in line, if that’s not the real reason they don’t care about who votes. Something tells me if I was in a precinct where a racial minority had a majority of registered voters, things would have been different.
Second, and I may have mentioned this on my audio post, my ballot didn’t line up perfectly with the voting buttons. In our booths, a ballot rotated under a glass plate and each candidate had a button and a light next to their name. To vote for John Kerry, you pushed the appropriate button and the light came on. Easy enough on most of the ballot, but since the screen was at an angle, roughly the bottom third was off by about a quarter inch. There were several selections where I had to lean down to make sure I was selecting the right button. I can only imagine how long it took the old lady next to me to discern which button went with which candidate. Not an issue that can throw an election, obviously, but one of those little things that you wonder why they can’t make as simple and easy as possible. But I’m a black hearted, persecutor of the religious right liberal, so what do I know?
Third, there were no I Voted! stickers at my polling place. That’s the only fucking reason I went! I still have the book Clinton and Gore put out in 1992 with their Covenant for America, or whatever it was, with my voting sticker on the cover. I’ll bore my kids for hours with that when they’re old enough! I was going to slap this sticker on the today’s paper and throw it someplace safe to rediscover at a later date. But I’m just an evil, cat and dog hating liberal, so none of this matters.
Finally, I always find the moments after voting a bit disappointing. Call me a bleeding heart, pie-in-the-sky, utopian liberal, but I get excited about going to the polls. I enjoy the opportunity to make my voice heard, to be part of the process, to participate in the most basic act upon which all that is unique about America is based. For some strange reason, I expect to hear patriotic music from the Revolution (As in independence from Great Britain, not Prince) and see the Founding Fathers hanging out on a bench waiting for me when I leave the polling place. But in the five or six times I’ve left a voting booth, everything always seems just as it was before.
I’ve yet to dig up all the local results, but as far as I can tell, I voted for only three people or initiatives that won. I may increase that number once I see the county results, but it’s still going to be pretty pathetic. That’s what I get for being an America-hating, ivory tower, overly educated liberal, I suppose.
Postscript: it looks like Dale was right re: the youth vote. As the numbers have been crunched, it appears that the kids did vote in large numbers, if not quite as large as Kerry had hoped. People in the 40s and 50s also came out in much greater numbers, though, which at worst off-set the Democratic advantage from the kids, and at best surpassed that total. My apologies to the kids. It was late and I was upset. I needed to lash out at someone. And anyway, I’m just a totally out-of-touch liberal, so anything I believe lacks merit.

I’m starting this at 1:05 AM, EDT. Election eve and sleep is elusive for me. A tumbler of Glen Livett to my left. My notebook to my right. A slumbering 13 week old on the baby monitor. I’m now voting not just for me, but for the hopes and dreams I have for my daughter. I’ve mistakenly said throughout the year that my vote for president won’t count, since I live in Indiana, which always goes overwhelmingly for the Republican candidate. That’s not true at all. The state and local races are much closer, and the odds of my vote mattering are much higher. In every election, some county clerk or district dog catcher race takes 30 days and five recounts to determine a winner. I might be the person to decide that race! There are always ballot initiatives to contend with too. My vote might change the way the state government is organized, how tax dollars are shared through the state, or whether same sex marriage is allowed. A ballot in November of a presidential election year is ripe with opportunities to make a difference.
In the current electoral climate, even my presidential vote matters. As you may recall, we had two winners four years ago. President Bush won the electoral college tally. Vice President Gore won the popular vote. This year, every vote matters because it can provide added legitimacy to either candidate. What if all the Democrats stayed home in Indiana and Kansas, or all the Republicans stayed home in Massachusetts or Illinois? The electoral college count might not shift, but the raw numbers would change dramatically. So while I’m hoping for a big John Kerry victory later tonight, I’ll vote knowing that even my vote for him will matter in some small way.
Maybe none of that appeals to you. I’m not a person who says “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” I think that’s crap, since an overwhelming majority of people don’t vote in primaries, off-year elections, and small local elections but we all still complain. I believe silence is a legitimate method of protest. However, there is another route. Almost every ballot has third party candidates listed for most offices. You may have no idea what a Constitution Party candidate stands for, but if you can’t stand Bush or Kerry, go ahead and give the CP candidate your vote. I think if enough people who don’t vote out of disgust with the system or candidates showed up and voted for random minor party politicians, the process just might change a little. Every now and then, a Reform Party candidate might win a local election. If 5% of the population consistently voted for a minor party, it would force the Republicans and Democrats to chase those votes, thus opening up their platforms to different ideas. I think the two party system suits the American psyche and mentality. We like having someone to cheer for and against, enjoy knowing who wins before all our guests depart for the evening, and appreciate the stability our system offers. But there are other options if that’s what you’re searching for.
I hope all of you get out and vote today. You’ll each have your own motivations, whether they be the war against terrorism, fiscal policy, morality issues, health care, or international affairs. I’d be very excited if at least a couple of you vote because you’re afraid P. Diddy is going to show up and kill you if you don’t (Viewers of The Best Week Ever know what I’m talking about). Realize for all the rancor in this country over the last six years, for all the problems and rumors of problems there will be tomorrow, we live in the greatest country in the world where, in theory, every person over the age of 18 has an equal share in determining the political direction of the nation. Take a moment to appreciate that before you make your final selections in the voting booth.
Mmmmm, scotch. Scotchy scotchy scotchy scotch.

Kerry: 299 (MN, WI, MI, OH, , NH, FL)
Bush: 239 (IA, NM, CO, WV)
Kerry wins popular vote by a margin between 500,000 and 1,000,000 votes
Kerry wins Florida easily and early; Ohio is this year’s problem child. Fortunately, Kerry wraps things up without Ohio so the issues there don’t drag the final result out for six weeks.

I wrote this late last night so it may not match what a few of you have seen via e-mail the past couple days. The tone I’m detecting on TV, radio, and the Internet along with a few well placed sources indicates that turnout is going to be massive across the country, which bodes well for Kerry. That means the youth vote, which he gets close to 60% of, is showing up. That means old people in Miami, which are strongly Democratic, are getting out and voting. That means states that have had a large increase in registered voters over the past four years are seeing those new voters make it to the polls. That means the undecideds are breaking one way or the other. The bigger the turnout, the more legitimate the final result. My personal gut feeling tells me the larger the turnout, the larger the margin of victory for whoever wins. Regardless of who wins, I think a nice cushion is good for the country. It gives the winner as much of a mandate as you can hope for in this era, and cuts the legal challenges to a minimum after the election. But I could be wrong.

Senate: Republicans 51, Democrats 48, 1 Independent
House: Republicans retain control by a margin of 5-10 seats.
And for the big Indiana race: Daniels (R) beats Kernan (D) for the governor’s seat by a margin of 51%-45%.