Score!

Hallelujah! It all turned out as I’ve been expecting for a long time (except for fairly short periods of doubt), that is that we'd get a Bush victory, with no litigation. I based my assessment that there wouldn’t be a Florida 2000 style quagmire on simple “engineer’s intuition”. The odds of anything resembling a repeat of 2000 happening a mere 4 years later are just not very good. I was expecting a bit more of a lopsided result than we got, but no matter. It is clear to me that the media delivered Evan Thomas’s famous 15% in spades for Kerry this year. Underneath the media dereliction of duty, I think we actually have a 60-40 Republican nation, and the 51-48 result along with that 15% number bears this out.

It is not hard to see that the 15% number is about the right magnitude. It’s been said by others elsewhere, but let’s think about how it would have been if the tables had been turned, that is if the Republican candidate had had many of the key biographical features of Kerry. How would the press have treated him? Let’s see: a “war hero” who won’t release his records, and bugged out of combat after only three months by way of some highly suspicious Purple Hearts (I won’t even mention the near-sedition and treason after the war. We are, after all assuming a Republican here). He’s married to an eccentric billionairess who won’t release all of her tax records and the records that she has released shows that she paid less than 13%. He’s a blue-blooded playboy who obviously has no affinity for the common man. He’s a droner and puts everybody to sleep. He’s poll driven and stands for nothing. He has a record in which he has accomplished next to nothing. He’s got fake white teeth and a face full of Botox! If a Republican had those attributes, the press wouldn’t have given him a chance. He would have been considered the living caricature of all that is wrong with Republicanism. So, yeah, there’s a 15% skew baked right in there by the press.

Yesterday, I deliberately quarantined myself away from all media between about 2:30 and 8:00 Pacific time. I was also nursing a sore throat and fever. I didn’t want to deal with the emotional roller coaster of minute-by-minute leaks and speculation of only partial exit polling results. Looks like it was a wise choice! If I had my way, no results whatsoever would be reported until all polls in the country have closed. The way things work now, not everyone is voting in the same election across the country. The Eastern time zones know nothing whatsoever about “how things are going” before the polls close, while the Western time zones do, sometimes to the extent that the election has already been won or lost before the polls close. This, of course, distorts the hell out of motivation for the western part of the country, so we don’t really get an accurate snapshot of what the electorate thinks.

But there is some more important motivation to be thought of here. The sword of American withdrawal that has been hanging over the head of the Iraqis has been removed. Expect renewed vigor, enthusiasm, and dedication from the Iraqi people as they use this four-year window to establish a new, peaceful, democratic Iraq. The hope of American withdrawal that had been energizing the jihadis has been crushed. They tried to scare us out, and it didn’t work. Instant glory is one thing, but a four or eight-year grind against the American military is quite something else. And the American military is one whose morale has just been given a tremendous, tremendous boost.

Viva Bush!