a little political...


2000 election results

bush - 50,456,002
gore - 50,999,897
nader - 2,882,955

now i understand about the electoral votes and the way that works, and why it is that the president that won the popular vote did not win the election.
(well, other than the whole hanging chad, katherine harris, and supreme court thing there...)
but i've trying to look at it this way:
coming into 2000, a lot of people were on the fence. they saw bush v. gore as a "lesser of two evils" race, which has been the case in our two party government for a long time. a lot of people saw this as a good time to give the green party a vote, just to let their dissatisfaction with the two party system be known.

here's a tiny sampling of what has happened since november 2000:

9/11. i thought that bush, as much as i couldn't stand him, handled this as well as anyone could have
...for the first couple of weeks.

record deficits, still declining at a rate of two billion dollars plus per day.

a president that ran on a platform of no nation building and smaller government invades iraq, initiates the USA PATRIOT ACT, and is now seeking a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, among hundreds of other bullshit decisions that i don't have the time or patience to detail here.

we have an america that went from a 6.10% unemployment rate in '94 under bush sr, to 3.98% after 8 years of clinton in 2000, and is now back at 6%, after only a few years of bush jr.

howard dean got a lot of people excited about politics in a way they hadn't been in the past. now that hes out of the race, a lot of these people are still going to vote that didn't vote four years ago, and they are going to vote for an end to bush.

bascially, what i see when i look around, and turn off fox news, is a country of people that are more aware politically (when they aren't distracted by shiny nipple rings or nba ballers balling) than they were four years ago, and they have been shocked out of the complacency that came with years of surplus and new jobs under clinton. a lot of people feel railroaded by the 2000 election, and now want more than ever to have their voices heard.

i think that a huge number of the people that voted for nader will want bush out of the white house as soon as possible, and do whatever it takes, meaning voting for kerry or edwards, to get this done. nader will still get some votes this year, but it will be nothing like it was in 2000.

i hold out hope that many people that were on the fence and sided with bush in the last election can now see that they voted for the greater of two evils, and will go to the polls this year to try and change that.

just ask yourself, what exactly has gotten better in the past four years? i come up with a very, very short list there. i believe that a lot of people will be asking themselves that come november, and the results will hopefully show they feel shorted as well.

so i'm feeling a little hopeful about the upcoming election.
by the way, hopeful = the door hitting bush on his lying ass on the way out.

dubya had his shot, and he blew it. it's time to get the greater of two evils out of there, and see what a lesser demon can do for us.


posted by scott 11:32 AM