the dems are the new sox

the first results didn’t start coming in until midnight in ghana. i had to wake at 7 for a meeting, but stayed up till 1:30am when new jersey came in for kerry. it was nerve-racking watching cnn and frustrating knowing i needed to go to bed.

when my alarm went off at 7am (2am EST), i flipped on cnn, and larry king and wolf blitzer were still at it! it was like nothing changed. except the country was now filled in with more color and everything hinged on ohio–and you all went to bed. and i went to work.

i think the country was divided into three camps, which gave bush the edge he needed:

  • the anti-bush camp (who voted for kerry)
  • the anti-anti-bush camp (who voted for bush)
  • the pro-bush camp (who voted for bush)

kerry could never effectively transform the substantial anti-bush camp (apparently 48% of voters) into a pro-kerry camp, and so he inadvertantly created the splinter anti-anti-bush movement, who just didn’t like the idea that so many people were voting for kerry because of some intellectual grudge they had against the outwardly cuddly, though admittingly bumbling president.

so they voted for bush out of spite and in solidarity with the common man. kerry was his own spoiler. such as life.

Wednesday, November 3, 2004 8:15pm
General

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Kansas
11/3/04 3:47pm

that’s what the kids are saying Justin.

justin
11/3/04 4:08pm

it must be a dark day in chapel hill. how are things?

katie
11/3/04 4:33pm

OHIO (over here in Athens)…we(as in all my friends and people i know who voted for john kerry) are angry and frustrated and just plan sad. It is not a good day in america.

jackie
11/3/04 4:52pm

I too am sad….the world seems to have lost its color. I don’t feel physically sick anymore, but very post trauma, like I need a few drinks. I hope I can make it to Friday…

jane
11/3/04 9:11pm

those are interesting ideas about the three camps. granted i live, go to school, and work in democratic, liberal, leftist, progressive (pick your adjectives) enclaves, but i don’t know anyone who fits into the anti-anti-bush camp. that seems so stupid. (people who would do that, not your ideas.) it’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face! have you heard/read about people like this on the news/web or something?

justin
11/4/04 8:40am

i’m not really feeling it too emotionally, which may be surprising because i’m working at a usg organization that definitely sympathizes with the left. but is probably not surprising because i’m not really around anyone who cares very much.

ha, in fact i’ve been enjoying hearing about the upcoming ghana election. hilarious paraphrase of a slogan from one of the candidates:

“walks like a president, talks like a president. so far so good.”

jane, as for the “anti-anti-bush” group. that’s just a theory of mine (that puts my mind at ease). i don’t think it’s a big segment of the people who voted for bush, but significant enough to swing the election in his favor (maybe 5-10 million people).

Tim
11/4/04 10:45am

I don’t really think the anti-anti-bush camp exists either. the anti-bush camp’s sentiment is way more than a mere intellectual grudge and as much as I disagree with the people that voted for Bush, I don’t think they made their decisions in such a lighthearted way. One postgame analysis says that those people voted because of fear - fear or terrorists, fear of gays getting married. Myself, I prefer the Daily Mirror’s flippant analysis:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/frontpages/

Kansas
11/4/04 2:02pm

i heard that a lot of people were more concerned with what Kerry would do regarding the draft than Bush. Thus they went with the known evil.

justin
11/4/04 3:27pm

i would go so far as to say the “anti-anti-bush”-ers told themselves and believed they were in the pro-bush camp, but subconsciously they were actually just empathizing with with their president, who seemed to be attacked from all around the world, from sept 11 to iraq to kerry.

honestly, i really don’t know anyone who falls into the “pro-bush” camp, so i’m assuming that they were just a figment of my imagination and those 59 million votes were generated by an evil computer.

jackie
11/4/04 4:04pm

Oh, I’ce spoken to plenty of real Bush voters at work recently, and they mostly quote Bush campaign talking points to me and have absolutely no factual knowledge of the records of either one. Informed electorate? Not so much.