As I sit here in the aftermath of the 2004 election, I am contemplating many things. What do the next four years have in store for us? Who will run in 2008? What underhanded tactic will the Democrats use is 2008 to dissuade Republican voters?
This year's method of choice was the now infamous "exit poll". I, like many Americans, turned on the election coverage after I returned home from work, sometime in the early evening. At that point, the major networks (Fox excluded) were all but popping the Champagne bottles for John Kerry. It was going to be a landslide! John Zogby, world-renowned pollster, made his Electoral College projection based on the exit polls; Kerry 313, Bush 225. If you were watching CBS, Dan Rather was literally doing backflips, unable to contain his joy.
Now, it is very important to keep in mind the time frame I had mentioned. Early evening. Perhaps even late afternoon. Rush hour had not yet begun, dinner had not yet been served, and most importantly, the polls had not yet closed. Anywhere. I said to myself, "How could this be?!?!? The election is apparently over, and it has hardly even begun...." My head was hung low, and my thumb was poised to push "power" on the remote, but something deep inside refused to let me give up.
And the rest is history. As the evening wore on, we began to see that maybe these exit polls were full of .....well, let's say that they were "inaccurate". And the excuses began to fly. They sampled too many Democrats...They didn't sample enough people...Jupiter was not aligned with Mars...and so on and so forth.
Now, rewind to 2000. The state of Florida, and thus the election, has been called for Al Gore, and Dan Rather is again seen doing backflips. The only problem is that the polls haven't closed in Florida yet. The heavily Republican counties in the panhandle still have an hour left of voting. But why should they vote now? After all, the election is over and Gore won, right? That little miscall is said to have cost Bush at least a few thousand votes, a margin that would have allowed us to bypass the legal three-ring circus that was Florida.
In the aftermath of all this, the major network news agencies grovelled at the feet of the American people, vowing never to let anything like that ever happen again. They promised. Now back to 2004, and I guess technically, the networks kept their promise. They were fair, and didn't call any state before it's polls closed. With the help of the exit polls, they just went right ahead and called the entire election.
Now, I can only think of two reasons for these things to happen, first of which being that there is some kind of "Liberal Conspiracy". Now, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I believe that we landed on the moon, and don't believe that this is a liberal plot to effect elections. That would leave us with the second reason; these liberal newtork news agencies (and their anchors) are so anxious to get a Democratic President in office that they tend to jump the gun. It happened in 2000, and unfortunatly again in 2004.
These networks need to realize that what they spew out effects people's decisions in a variety of ways. After 2000, they said that they were going to be much more careful, and I beleived them. Maybe the liberals are right. Maybe I am stupid.
But that's just my opinion. What do you think?
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4 comments:
Well, I will try to stay away from what I think, that would be opinion, but you are missing one possibility in a purely scientific, logical diagram of the possibilities: Both elections where illegally called for George Bush and quite naturally since both times the other guy really won, the 'liberal' media started calling it for the guy who was clearly going to win - assuming it was a fair election. Bush really really really didn't win, either time, and this isn't a 'we didnt go to the moon' conspiracy theory, this is just a compilation of facts of illegal activities and rampant injustice. Whats even more important than the facts is that SO many people believe that he didn't win. When his father was elected, the first chance I had to vote, and I voted against him (not so much for the other guy but against the ex spook I knew way too much about) and he won, to this day, I have to admit, I still think he won fair and square, he wasn't in a position to need to cheat, nor was Reagan.
So, you might ask, why isn't Kerry doing what Gore did? crying foul? pretty simple, party line republicans hold the keys to the voter boxes, its like when a bully shoves you down in the mud on the playground just to get laughs out of everyone and you want to go to the principal and bust his ass, even the witnesses that laughed would surely not lie on the stand.
one problem: the bully, IS the principal. game over.
To be fair, my only real request is that people start questioning their government more, if you just suspend your total belief for a minute you will find that thing are way less than perfect under the hood. What keeps people from going down that road are the extremists who say crackpot things like we didn't go to the moon, that's way out there but to say that low level republicans and corporate buddies kinda shoved things a bit in the favor of their guy, maybe bent a few pointless civil liberties in the process, not so hard to swallow.
Bush Sr's presidency really threw wrenches in my life, I knew it would, didn't always know how but I knew that he would support policies that would screw me and he did, on the day that I was eligible to get financial aid based on my own income instead of what my parents made years before, who were now broke and one of them dead, one of his laws went into effect saying that somehow I should have forced my parents to save money for my college years ago. I never finished college, still can't afford to. However, that was the way the country wanted to go, they elected him and I saw him as my president, good or bad, thats the way America works, not always about me.
But this time the country spoke as they did the last time and they asked for one guy and got another.
a lot of that is my opinion, can't help it, but I think you would agree, the country would be much better off if we went to the lengths to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the guy in the oval office is the guy that was elected, if we could do that, I would stand by him as my president, whining all the way.
I understand where you are coming from, and I am not against stricter election procedures nationwide. I am all for state's rights, but when one state's procedures effect residents of another state, such as in the case of a national election, I think the federal government has every right to establish a standard protocol for all states.
Having said that, I don't think such a protocol would alleviate the concerns of everyone. There is a percentage of people out there who will be dissatisfied with any result other than the one they voted for. It's like the sports fan who blames the referee every time his team loses. His team couldn't of possibly just lost, the ref must have hosed them.
Such is the attitude of many liberals today. Kerry couldn't have possibly lost. Even in the face of what has now become (with absentee ballots being counted) a nearly 52%-47% popular vote, some Democrats are unable to accept the loss. Even in the face of the higher-ups at the DNC saying that Bush won, some liberals can't accept the defeat. Even in the face of a nearly 150,000 vote margin in Ohio, some liberals can't accept the loss.
I would encourage any one who believes that the Presidential race was "fixed" to examine the other elections that took place that night. Republicans gained in both the House and the Senate, and generally beat the Democratic Party like a rented mule. Taking that into account, is it really hard to believe that Bush won?
Now I realize the 2000 election will be debated until the sun explodes and engulfs the earth, but past practice does not indicate present performance. You can not say that because Bush "stole" the election in 2000 (which I don't believe), that he in turn "stole" the election in 2004, especially in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.
True, more stringent election controls would only appease the reasonable, I for one would be very satisfied with that. But as it stands now, you feel that there is overwelming evidence that he won, when I can just as easily find overwelming evidence to the contrary. The argument that because the senate, house and for that matter governors slots won on the republican side is begging the question, if voters AND votes where tampered with at the precinct level, as is being argued, the fact that republicans won by a landslide across the board is actually MORE of an indictment of fraud. Very true what you say though, when you're the loser its much easier to question the outcome, I have to admit I wouldn't be so zealous about wanting answers if Kerry had won, unless, republicans were screaming bloody murder and I wanted some facts to defend myself with. Statistical analysis has shown that the degree of error between the exit polls and the outcome is not only not within the margin of error but in fact is 250million to 1 against, so you can imagine the 'liberal' media saying to its collective self, hey there's one chance in 250million that I'm wrong here, haven't won the lottery lately so lets go for it. Very reasonable people are left with no choice but to be outraged. We are not flag burning fanatics, we are normal people with children who could be drafted with parents whose social security could be cut, we aren't trying to save the spotted owl here.
I can understand your concern, and I respect the points that you have made. In the end, I believe that you are giving the Republican Party way to much credit, and the Democratic Party not enough. I just don't feel that it's possible for a party to engineer election fraud of the magnatude you have suggested. I choose to see the Republican rout as an indication of the sentiment of the country, where you choose to see it as even more of an indication that the election was tampered with.
As I'm sure you understand, those are very serious charges to be made without a whole lot of proof. You mentioned the exit polling being outside of the margin of error, but most of the pollsters questioned blamed their own sampling techniques, and not tampered voting for that.
Even more than that, I don't think either party would allow the other to get away with a National conspiracy to swing the vote. They watch each other too closely. All I see is a lot of "he said, she said" evidence and no real solid proof of anything. Most of the DNC feel same way, and have chosen not to unleash the dogs of legal war because of it. You see things differently, and that's fine.
If we had some kind of National oversight we might not have to worry about this.
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