It’s a little after midnight Eastern time as I start, and from
the sounds of it George W. Bush has survived to win re-election.
All night the two most telling indicators were the rather solid
leads he opened up and maintained in Florida and Ohio. In normal
times, everyone would have called those two for Bush much earlier.
But these aren’t normal times, haven’t been since 2000 when
Democrats refused to accept that a near dead heat could amount to a
loss for them, and the greatest robbery in the history of
civilization. So instead of telling it like it is the networks had
to pretend all evening that the pro-Bush Ohio-Florida numbers were
an aberration that wouldn’t stand.
Think of it another way: Bush has just destroyed another 10,000
or so jobs — all those Democrat lawyers sent into Florida and Ohio
to wreck our electoral system suddenly are left with nothing to do
except run up expense accounts. Perhaps they and the unemployed
John Edwards can now go into business together.
Given how election day went, surviving must seem a huge relief.
It’s disconcerting to spend a day among Republican-leaning folk,
all of whom where preparing their concession remarks in the face of
a looming Kerry victory. Their defeatist reaction to the weird
afternoon exit polls betrayed a deep unease with Bush himself — a
sense that he ultimately proved no improvement on his father, that
he’s been cavalier on issues far too many issues that matter to the
right, and let’s not even start about the wisdom of going into Iraq
so late in the game with no particular concern of what would happen
after Mission was Accomplished.
But whatever Bush’s limitations, he has one strength that few
Republicans match: an appetite and aptitude for politics as such.
The energy he committed to this campaign was remarkable by any
standard. In Pennsylvania (the one place the maligned exit polls
got right) perhaps it backfired. His people will say the
president’s frequent trips their forced Kerry to spend their
instead of elsewhere. But it also reminds conservatives of the
rather cynical effort the White House made to support Arlen Specter
at all costs instead of investing in a rising GOP star in Pat
Toomey. The one-sided results in PA suggest Republicans in the
state paid Bush back, Big Time.
On the other hand, I knew Bush had won Florida when the
incomparable Michael Barone on Fox explained how Republicans there
had increased their turnout in remarkable ways — a feat apparently
emulated in Ohio.
A few moments ago on CNN — it’s now 1:03 a.m. — a forlorn
James Carville was licking his wounds, calling it a bad night for
Democrats. He seemed to hold out no hope that the remaining numbers
could break Kerry’s way. Fox already is giving Bush 269 votes,
guaranteeing reelection if only via the House. Carville, of course,
was also reacting to the numerous Republican Senate and House
gains. Nothing in this year’s election suggested an anti-Republican
trend. It’s ironic that a relatively weak incumbent president
didn’t prevent his party from consolidating its congressional
majority.
About time Carville was chastened. Momentarily forgotten in the
fatigue of a long, still uncompleted night is that Carville’s wild
man, vulgar style — which in decades past would have earned him
and his adherents lock-up in solitary confinement — is what set in
motion a politics that culminated in the Democrats’ Bush
hating.
It would have been bad enough for Bush to lose for falling short
as a statesman conservatives could genuinely admire. But it would
have been terminally demoralizing to lose to the Michael Moores,
Dan Rathers, Paul Krugmans, and Bush-Cheney sign stealers of our
fair planet. As luck would have it, not nice guys don’t finish
first.
UPDATE: It’s now past 3:00 a.m. Eastern time, and Kerry-Edwards
have decided to extend their classless campaign another day or week
or month or presidential election cycle. Go ahead, guys, make the
Republicans’ day. Most revealing is that Kerry-Edwards aren’t
acting alone, but with the full support of major networks. As this
night ends, Fox and NBC have Bush at 269 electoral votes; ABC, CNN,
and CBS have him at 249, refusing, along with the Democratic
ticket, to concede Ohio, even though statistically Bush has soundly
won that state. This is an unprecedented outrage, certain to drag
the ticket and the colluding media and whatever Democrats join in
to ever lower lows none of them has yet experienced.
