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November 6, 2004ELECTION NIGHTRob: I stayed up until about midnight to watch the election on Tuesday. You have to be real political junkie to think this stuff is fun to watch. George W. Bush: It's hard work. Rob: In the early going, there’s no real drama, unless you care that George Bush was extending his lead in Alabama. Watching the results trickle in and listening to the pundits talk about them is like watching paint dry while someone’s hitting you in the head with a hammer. All that matters are the swing states, and once it was clear this was going to be all about one state, I went to bed. I figured I’d seen this episode before. Jeff: I watched the Daily Show coverage and then switched over to Chris Matthews and his buddies on MSNBC. Matthews seems to be the political analyst with the most common sense; he never made a big deal out of any of the obvious early returns. I don’t think I could stomach someone using “And big news coming in” to lead into a report on Bush’s being projected to win Oklahoma. I switched off around 1:30 when it looked pretty obvious where Ohio was going. But with how gun shy everyone was after the 2000 election, even with 99% of the precincts in and Kerry down by as many votes as there were ballots left to count, none of the networks had the balls to make the call. John: The Daily Show mocked election night pretty effectively. With their reporter playing Halo on stage and the Al Sharpton and William Weld debate, the misinformation was abundant. I liked that. The Ghost of Gorilla Monsoon: Those fountains of misinformation! John: I was most impressed by the woman they had interviewing people leaving the polls and asking to see their penises. She had balls of steel. She even surprised that guy leaving the porno store. The last thing you expect or want to have greet you as you leave a porno store is a woman with a microphone and a camera pointed at you. Not that I know how that feels ..yet. FULL DISCLOSURERob: I should probably say, before it becomes obvious, that I was pulling for Kerry in the same way I was rooting for the Marlins against the Yankees in last year’s World Series. I thought it was preferable than the alternative, but by no means was I going to be happy with either outcome. I figured I knew I wouldn’t like what Bush would do, but with Kerry there was at least a chance that he’d happen upon a position I agreed with while he’s flailing about for politically expedient options. Jeff: I was pretty much in the same boat. I thought Bush really deserved to lose his job for screwing the pooch in Iraq and deficit spending us into oblivion. Mike Tyson: I guess we’ll just fade into Bolivion. Jeff: No doubt. But it was kind of hard to get behind the guy who voted for the war in the Senate, voted for the Patriot Act, lied about wanting to repeal the DMCA, and had next to no natural charisma. And yes, I know he only voted to “authorize the war,” but 1) the President shouldn’t have that authorization, that’s what congress is for, and 2) giving a Bush authorization to declare war is like dropping your son off at the Neverland Ranch. Is it really Michael Jackson’s fault that little Timmy knows what his bleached-white cock looks like? John: It’s hard to rationally look at the job George Bush did as President and say, “Aw, give him another run at it.” But that’s what 51% of voters did. The rest of America was left wondering, “What the fuck?” The problem is despite the population of the northeast and the west coast outnumbering the Midwest and the South, the fact is a lot of us city slickers just don’t care and aren’t motivated enough. We’re the non-Bible-thumpin’, stem-cell wantin’, freedom-likin’, gay-toleratin’ disenfranchised. JEFFERSON DAVIS'S REVENGERob: Suddenly the Civil War doesn’t seem like such a great idea, does it? It’s kind of shitty that the South gets to decide who the President is every four years. Of course, Ohio swings a different way, and then a bunch of rednecks are bitching about California and New England controlling the whole country. It’s a little disturbing how reliably divided the country is. I probably have about as much in common with someone from Alabama as I do with someone from Thailand. Jeff: I think I have more in common with someone from Thailand. I’m far more likely to pick up a Thai whore than go to a NASCAR race. I knew a girl who spent a semester in Thailand and she said the girls there were working for the equivalent of less than $10 American. You can’t pass up a deal like that. Dr. Zoidberg: What a bargain! I’ll take eight! Jeff: I don’t know if the founding fathers knew how divided the county would become, but their idea of keeping the states fairly autonomous and leaving the federal government to deal mainly with national security was pretty on the ball. The Alabamians can require daily prayer while we have mandatory gay marriages and everyone’s happy. John: If you look at the election map, with all that red in the middle with the blues on each side and above, if you are any good at Risk, well then, the blues have a pretty good flanking position, don’t they? They have the reds covered on three sides. The only place the reds can retreat to is Mexico, and they’re not going there. Plus the blues have control of the oceans. They can cut off their water supply, drought them out. Just put the squeeze on the reds, and the blues can have America back. Whose got the dice? KERRY ONRob: I don’t know if another Democrat could’ve won, but I really can’t believe that Kerry was the best guy. There were concerns about his record, concerns about his liberalism, concerns about his flip-flopping, but what it boiled down to was that pretty much nobody in this country really liked Kerry. Basically, you had two douchebags running. All of Bush’s opponents though he was a douchebag, but only a small minority of his supporters thought he was a douchebag. Whereas, all of Kerry’s opponents thought he was a douchebag, and most of his supporters did so as well. You’re just not going to win an election like that. Jeff: It really shouldn’t matter that a candidate’s a douche. Sure, you’d prefer him or her (hopefully him) not to be an unlikable dick, but when did it become a requirement that a President be someone you’d want to hang out with? If you’re going to think like that, you’d be better off voting for the one with hotter daughters. Talk about a landslide victory for George Bush. John: While Kerry was getting his ass thoroughly handed to him on election night, there were 30,000 odd people gathered outside in Copley Square waiting to see him. Sure, they had Springstein, the Black Eyed Peas, and Sheryl Crow to entertain them, but here was the unusual case of people not wanting to stand around and listen to shitty music as much as they wanted to see and hear from their shitty candidate. So what does Kerry do? He let them stay out there all night in the cold and rain; he never took the stage to talk to them. What a dick. Thousands of people assembled to see him and he couldn't even go downstairs from the Westin Hotel and speak to his faithful for five minutes, just to give them a pep talk, or even tell them to go home, it's late, we fucking lost. John Edwards: Well, I took the stage and gave a speech.
John: Big deal. Rousing words at 3am from the runner up to the runner up of a two-man race. And then the next day, instead of finally taking the stage that he spent a million bucks to build, Kerry goes to Fanueil Hall to concede. He's a class act. I'm glad I didn't for that douche.
George W. Bush: Thanks for voting for me.
John: I didn't.
Ralph Nader: Well, then thanks for--
John: Wrong again, Ralph.
P. Diddy: Damn. What I tell you? You a dead man. FOUR MORE YEARSRob: I think people are being a little over-hysterical about the next four years. I don’t think it’s going to go well, but I also don’t think we’re going to be living in a fascist, imperialist police state for the rest of Bush’s term. Bush doesn’t have the resources or the popular support to sustain his wars in the Middle East. So, we’ll come back home, and terrorists might be slightly less inclined to kill us if we don’t have a massive military presence on their holy soil. Sure, Iraq will be a horrible mess, but hey, you gotta break a few eggs if you want to egg someone’s house and run away. Jeff: There’s very little Middle Easterners like less than American troops on their soil (or sand, as the case may be). Maybe the idea of the existence of Israel, but it’s close. But it’s going to be really hard to remove any troops any time soon. You can’t just blow up someone’s country and then take off. The one good thing about the America-funded destruction and reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq is that nobody can ever complain about the price of the Big Dig again. They’re already up to 13 Big Digs worth of cash in the operation with news of another five going soon. The people of Baghdad are going to be totally psyched when their trip to the airport goes twice as fast. Even more psyched when there’s an airport there to drive to.
John: Look at it this way: the coming of a new President always carries with it a degree of uncertainty. No one really knows what Kerry would have done had he not failed miserably to win the election. But now that uncertainty is gone. There's no need for anxiety. We know exactly what Bush is planning and now we can all just sit back and watch him put those plans into action. I'd sure hate to be a gay, stem cell-researching, freedom-hatin' terrorist right about now. Your time is up! CLEAN SLATERob: Bush winning this year guarantees that the 2008 election will be interesting. Not only will it be a brand new field, but the current Vice President probably won’t be running since he could have a heart attack and die at any second. So, it will be new and fresh, with names we haven’t heard before, like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. The Democrats or going to either have to figure out how to break the stranglehold the Republicans have on the South. John Edwards with his used-car salesman/special-needs child grin? Yeah, maybe. Until the next Bill Clinton comes along, I think they should forget about the South and run a black guy. That should mobilize the urban centers in Ohio enough to cancel out the Kentucky border hillbilly vote. Or a Hispanic guy, even better. Then the Democrats win Florida and hopefully we never have to worry about another Dominican pitcher being late for Spring Training because of visa problems. Jeff: I don’t want to see John Edwards again until he gets that thing removed from his lip. One of the biggest problems both parties will have is that a redneck won’t vote for a non-redneck. Unless you’re a good ol’ boy who has headache powder in your medicine chest and the ability to distinguish George Strait from Travis Tritt from Tim McGraw, you’re not winning Texas. As a result, there’s very little chance of my Presidential Dream Match pitting Howard Dean against Bill Weld.
John: The Democrats need someone who can speak to Bush’s supporters they way Bush can. What Bill Clinton had going for him was that he was very bright and he knew how to explain complicated matters in simple terms for the rubes, being a rube from Arkansas himself. Bush shares that ability, only without the very bright part behind it. Bush appeals to rednecks because they like his folksy drawl, one of things we smug New Englanders like to mock about him. But it’s really no secret that plain-speak is where it’s at. For instance, the Middle East. Just try to explain the basis of the hatred between Israel and Palestine, how America’s association with Israel and her own corporate interests in Middle Eastern oil complicates matters, and what that had to do with Saddam Hussein, Iraq, and the circumstances which lead to terrorists attacking the United States on its own soil. Just boil it down to a few words.
George W. Bush: What we have here is a bunch of folks who hate freedom.
John: Couldn’t have said it better myself. Really, I couldn’t. Because it’s so overly simplified, misleading and lacking in any type of substance. But that’s what America wants to hear. Rob: The Republicans should be interesting too. They could nominate Jeb Bush, causing riots and votes for secession from the Union all across the Northeast. Or they could nominate a moderate Republican like John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, who would probably most accurately represent the interests and perspectives of the average American. The problem with moderates is that they typically don’t screech the loudest, or lie the bestest, which ends up screwing them come primary time. Jeff: That’s just the thing. You can’t win the primaries unless you’re a radical, but you’ll never appeal to the other side in the general election unless you’re more centrist. I’m betting on another 51% to 47% either way next time. Oh, and now that both sides figured out that God gets the people to the polls, they’ll both be sending out their Bible-thumpingest best in ’08.
John: Our own Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney also has his eyes on the White House. Though it’s difficult at this point to weigh his or anyone’ chances in 2008. But now that the Red Sox are World Champions, perhaps the national politics can be the new arena in which New Englanders can assert their ‘lovable loser’ persona. There’s Dukakis in ’88, Kerry in ’04. Call it the Bush curse. Or don’t do any of it, because that’s just stupid.
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