3 November--Then What?

We know it's coming...finally...Tuesday night we're glued to our TVs and CNN calls this state for ? and NBC calls that state for ? And finally it's far into the night and far from settled so we go to bed and hope that the morning paper will bring much-needed finality.

Maybe, maybe not.

I am on the one hand scared to death. The Corporate Media keep spinning the polls for Bush and present him as The Inevitability and dismissively maintain Kerry as the long shot. There's certainly been no attempt at balance in the reporting so far. David Brooks appeared hyper-giddy on The News Hours today, even for him. I don't know if he truly believes that Bush will prevail, or if he's programmed by the spin chip that Rove had installed in all Right Winger talking heads...the spin is to present Bush's victory as inevitable to pump up the Big MO! Kind of like they did in Florida in 2000.

On the other hand, my gut still whispers "landslide" to me in unguarded moments. I keep doing the math. The economic voters + minority voters + liberals + disenchanted military families + on and on and I just keep smelling a sea change coming. But my brain just can't deal with another four years of BushCo.

There are two possible outcomes as we all know. And how should the Liberal/Progressive community deal with either outcome?

If Kerry wins, there will be no time to celebrate. The Right Wing propaganda mill is probably building up steam as we speak. The Mighty Wurlitzer will begin blasting out discordant tunes as soon as the polls close on Election Day. The Progressive community will have to take the challenge and present a solid front. We can't let them disrupt another Democratic Presidency like they did Bill Clinton's. And to that extend, I recommend everyone read Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars. He gives a detailed account of how right wing operatives dogged the Clintons every step of the way. The Clintons were often not effective in fending off the attacks because at that time this type of political action was simply unthinkable and totally unprecedented. How could they have known? Now there is no excuse. We should expect an even worse assault on the comfortable world that we have all grown to know and love.

If Bush wins, the Progressive community will have to present an aggressive face to Bush's headlong rush to implement Right Wing policies and appoint Right Wing fanatics to the Federal bench. If this is the outcome, I would hope that Kerry is far less conciliatory to Bush than Al Gore was in 2000. I was deeply troubled at the ultimate results of that election, but I was horrified at Gore's capitulation and "gentlemanly" concession speech. Given the circumstances, I felt that he should have registered his disdain for the despicable intrusion of an egregiously partisan Supreme Court into a process where it had no constitutional business being. I further felt that Gore did himself and all of us on his side a disservice by completely vanishing from the scene and taking no part in monitoring Bush's actions after inauguration. I'm sure that he was emotionally and physically depleted, but after getting his bearings, he could have provided a useful service by becoming the voice of the shadow opposition.

Should John Kerry not prevail, I hope that he will remain out front and assume the mantle of The Opposition.

Osama to the Rescue?

It looks like Osama bin Laden jumped in to boost George W. Bush's stature once again. Without the catastrophic bin Laden-sponsored events of 9/11/2001, George W would have remained the trivial mediocrity that he certainly was.

He remains a trivial mediocrity to this day, but his hagiographers finally got the material they needed to pump up his stature. Judging by the polls, they have largely succeeded in taking the witless ne'er do well and transforming him into "The Commander-in-Chief." None of this would have been conceivable without Osama's assault on the World Trade Center.

Today the Corporate Media is telling us that Osama's latest video tape is a pre-election Bush support booster. We won't know if that's true until next Tuesday, but how the chickens come home to roost. I think that everyone will admit that OBL's latest shows a whole new side of Osama. He almost apologetically explains his decision to unleash his gang of hijackers. I haven't heard the whole tape yet, but if the rest of it is as weird as the part that I've already heard, then something is definitely new.

Now is that good or bad? I guess that if we get through the next several months/years without significant terrorist incidents, then it's good. However, to date, Osama's tapes have frequently been the prelude to some kind of attack.

So is this tape a signal to embedded cells to initiate an attack? I don't think any of us would put it past him. And with a heretofore wholly evil figure like bin Laden, I don't think that the US or the non-Islamic west would ever think to give him the benefit of any doubts.

The question remains, what will the impact on the Mother of all Elections be? Tune in Tuesday, 2 November for the exciting conclusion, or at least the beginning of the conclusion.