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Friday, September 03, 2004
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BULLSHIT POLLS AND THE UGLINESS TO COME
As has been widely reported, Time magazine will release a poll over the weekend that gives President Bush an 11 point lead over Senator John Kerry. Such a bounce is common in a normal election year. This is not a normal election year. If it were, the President would most likely have been facing Howard Dean. Kerry enjoyed a four point bounce that lasted for a grand total of about 20 seconds. In an electorate that has been this evenly divided for this long, I have a very hard time buying anyone turning a three point deficit into an 11 point lead. I'm much more inclined to to believe the Zogby Poll from last night,which gives Bush two points. This is still a bigger bounce than Kerry recieved coming out of Boston.
From what I've heard of the contents of the poll, there is one thing that could possibly explain an 11 point bounce. That would be the question "who do you better trust to fight the War on Terror?" In this, Bush leads Kerry by a staggering 27%. 27 points on a national security question 59 days before the election would explain the 11 point lead. It also says something else. If the Time polling is correct (and I maintain serious doubts about that), this is a 9/11 election. Nothing, and I mean nothing else matters. Not the war in Iraq, not the economy, not the deficit, not the prescription drug benefit, not health care, not Vietnam, not even the 7 minutes reading "My Pet Goat" in Florida. This election will hinge on one thing, whether or not most Americans feel that as many al-Qaeda should be killed as humanly possible.
And this is a campaign that George Bush cannot possibly lose.
Of course, politics is never that simple. If these numbers are anywhere near true, the Democratic Party and Kerry/Edwards '04 are truly desperate right now. And desperate people tend to do exceptionally ugly things. Don't believe me? Let's ask Susan Estrich. Most of you probably don't know her. Estrich ran the Dukakis campaign against this president's father. The Dukakis campaign was widely respected for being nice. They're also only remembered for getting humiliated in public.
What does Susan envision?
The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough. Dukakis wasn't. I wasn't. I don't particularly like destroying people. I got into politics because of issues, not anger. But too much is at stake to play by Dukakis rules, and lose again.
That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.
I'm not promising pretty.
What will it be?
Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up? (Bush's Texas record has been sealed. Now why would that be? Who seals a perfect driving record?)
After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment. Could Dick Cheney get a license to drive a school bus with his record of drunken driving? (I can see the ad now.) A job at a nuclear power plant? Is any alcoholic ever really cured? So why put him in the most stressful job in the world, with a war going south, a thousand Americans already dead and control of weapons capable of destroying the world at his fingertips.
It has been said that in the worst of times, Kissinger gave orders to the military not to obey Nixon if he ordered a first strike. What if Bush were to fall off the wagon? Then what? Has America really faced the fact that we have an alcoholic as our president?
Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard. I'm sure there are some mothers out there who are still mourning their sons, and never made that connection. It wouldn't be so hard to find them.
Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. So far, all W. can do is come up with dental records to prove that he met his obligations. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.
Or could it be George Bush's Former Female Friends for Truth. A forthcoming book by Kitty Kelly raises questions about whether the president has practiced what he preaches on the issue of abortion. As Larry Flynt discovered, a million dollars loosens lips. Are there others to be loosened?
Are you shocked? Not fair? Who said anything about fair? Remember President Dukakis? He was very fair. Now he teaches at Northeastern University. John Kerry has been very fair in dealing with the Swift Boat charges. That's why so many of my Democrat friends have decided to stop talking to the campaign, and start putting money together independently.
--Special thanks to The Ace of Spades HQ
Actually, Estrich was only factually wrong on one point. It was Secretary of Defense James Schlessenger, not Kissinger who issued the order against Nixon. That's how a guy named Donald Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense the first time.
And unless the national Democratic Party consists entirely of demented mutants, I have absolutely no doubt that they'll resort to these tactics. They've seen how well it works for Republicans. They've been on the receiving end of them for decades now. If by the second week of October, John Kerry is 11 points behind and doesn't use every weapon at his disposal, he'll prove Bush/ Cheney right in that he really isn't the guy to face truly mean people like Osama bin Laden.
IF and I repeat, IF Time's numbers are even in the general vacinity of correct, and Kerry does not respond with the most barbaric means at his disposal, not only does he deserve to lose, he'll lose in a way that makes George McGovern look like Wiliam the Conqueror.
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