Monday, November 01, 2004

on the cusp

Happy November, everyone. November 1st can mean only one thing: tomorrow's November 2nd, and so I have a slightly sick feeling in my stomach from having anticipated this day for so long. I thought I would post a little prediction here for posterity's sake. I'm predicting civil war on Wednesday morning. I have had a foreboding feeling the past few days that Bush might squeak through by way of voter suppression via various dirty practices at the polls, in which case look for all-out mayhem both on the legal front and in terms of people taking to the streets in protest. A lot of people on both sides agree that the Democrats can take the election by even a comfortable margin if they can mobilize people to actually go out and vote tomorrow, because they have registered an enormous amount of first-time voters in this campaign compared with what the Republicans have done. So this leaves the Republicans, as in 2000, with the strategy of trying to keep Democratic voters - especially minorities - from being able to vote, through intimidation, disinformation, and individual challenges that would cause long queues at the polls, thereby discouraging people from staying and voting. All I can say about that is that it is amazing that there is a major party in the US, not to mention the party in control, whose survival depends on a) segregation-era politics and b) keeping people from voting.

In less bleak news, most of the polls are either breaking for Kerry or holding even at the moment.

1 Comments:

Blogger Gabriel said...

Yeah, in Ohio at least this issue of challenging people at the polls was in the courts until early this morning, when an appeals court ruled that Republicans can send thousands of workers to the polls in that state to challenge individual voters inside the polling stations. Now it is time to wait and see what kind of effect this has - the world is watching, and the Republicans probably can't get away with everything they got away with in 2000. And you are right about the role that lawyers play in American life, and another election decided within the legal system rather than the electorate would be too much for the American public to stomach.

November 2, 2004 at 4:15 PM  

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