I’m sitting here waiting to watch Kerry’s concession speech. I’m going to jot down some thoughts before wandering out onto the Net and checking the pulse of the rest of the universe.
First thought: On NPR this morning they were talking about Bush now claiming a “mandate,” though it was unclear for what. It seems to me that this sort of result for an incumbent — a squeaker of an electoral college win based on a thin margin in Ohio, and a 51-49 popular vote win — is only viewable as a “mandate” if you apply the same scale that judged the even thinner Bush win in 2000 as a mandate. That scale, of course, is exactly what Bush and Cheney applied.
Bush did better this time around, and those of us who dislike him and his policies have to deal with that. But there is still just about half of this country that opposes him and what he stands for. We’re Americans, too. We have jobs and kids and beliefs and values, and we’re not going away.
What’s disturbing is how clearly split the country is geographically. The red/blue split first noticed in 2000 looks less like an anomaly of a tight election and more like a long-term alignment of the American people: The coasts, the Northeast, the Midwest — almost anywhere that people are gathered in big cities — for the Democrats; the West and the South for the Republicans. The last time the nation faced this kind of split, in the mid-19th century, we ended up shooting one another. I don’t think we face an actual civil war this time around, thankfully, but we do face something like its cultural and political equivalent.
So let’s remember that we’ve just lost a big battle, and that hurts, but it’s not the end. Richard Nixon won a gigantic landslide in 1972 and was out of office two years later. Ronald Reagan swept the board in 1984 but we survived and regrouped and recaptured the White House in the 90s.
The good news is that the country’s split still leaves the Democrats within a stone’s throw of winning an election. The bad news is, we couldn’t win it — even with a stagnant economy and Americans dying abroad in an ill-conceived war. Now the important thing to do is figure out why, and learn from our mistakes.
Bonus link: Sid Blumenthal’s reflections on the dark fears that fueled the Bush victory.
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