TruthNews Commentary, November 8, 2004

With George W. Bush's reelection in last week's election, western civilization is safe for another four years. In the titanic battle between good and evil, good has triumphed again.

Well, enough of the hyperbole^*. George W. Bush won handily. The popular vote was 51 percent for Bush to 48 percent for Democrat John Kerry. While this margin of victory may appear fairly close, Bush won by almost 4 million votes. The race marks the first time since 1988 that the victor has won a majority of the popular vote. Third party candidacies by H. Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 prevented Bill Clinton from receiving a majority of the vote (and may have even given him the election), while third party candidacies by Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan had a similar effect in the 2000 race. Bush also broke the all-time popular vote total. Bush's total of 59.7 million votes surpassed Reagan's record of 54.5 million in 1984. Of course, Reagan won 59 percent of the vote -- the population was smaller back then. In the electoral vote tally, Bush won by 286 to 252.

Republicans also increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle was defeated by John Thune in South Dakota. The last time a Senate party leader was unseated was in 1952, when Barry Goldwater of Arizona defeated Democratic leader Ernest McFarland.

The map showing who won where illustrates the narrow corridors of Kerry's appeal. Kerry won the northeast, four northern states in the Midwest, the Pacific coast states, and Hawaii. Bush won everything else, including the south, much of the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, the southwest, and Alaska.

The big news in this year's election was the role played by the television networks in attempting to skew the election. Until John Kerry conceded the race at 11:00 a.m. on the day following the election, AP and the television networks were claiming that Ohio with 20 electoral votes was still undecided. That's with 100 percent of the precincts reporting in Ohio and Bush with a 130,000-vote lead in the Buckeye State. The issue in Ohio was that the so-called "provisional" ballots hadn't been counted. Provisional ballots are for voters who come to the polls but find their names missing from the rolls, or whose qualifications to vote are challenged. Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell estimated the number could be as high as 175,000, although the Associated Press put the number at 140,00. For Kerry to win the state, he'd have to win 163,000 of 175,000 provisional ballots, an improbable 93 percent. If the number of valid provisional ballots were lower than 175,000, the percentage required by Kerry would go up. Since a high percentage of the provisional ballots were invalid (because the voter hadn't registered, was an illegal alien or a criminal, was attempting to vote twice, etc.) Kerry realized that it was a statistical impossibility for him to win in Ohio. He came to this conclusion long before the networks. They didn't hesitate to call California for Kerry on election night with only 7 percent of the vote counted but refused to call Ohio for Bush with 100 percent of the vote counted.

Of course, the media tried to throw the election in other ways. CBS got caught falsifying National Guard memos to accuse Bush of shirking duty in the 1970s. The New York Times accused the U.S. Army of allowing Iraqi terrorists to loot 377 tons of munitions that UN weapons inspectors had found at a dump in Al Qaqaa prior to the war. It turns out that the Iraqis moved the weapons prior to the war, but the New York Times and the TV networks missed this salient fact.

Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's erstwhile speechwriter, commented,

The biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief--CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's "60 Minutes" attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election--the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts.

The news media also tried to throw the election with false exit polls showing Kerry winning the election. Syndicated columnist Ann Coulter describes the exit poll fiasco this way:

Stunningly inaccurate exit polls released around noon on Election Day convinced news anchors, talking heads and even the campaigns that Kerry would win walking away. But at 9 p.m., when the first actual results began to come in, the election flipped to Bush. It was the first Kerry flip-flop that actually served the national interest.

The U.S. media weren't the only news organizations that openly supported Kerry. London's left-wing Guardian newspaper decided to try a more direct approach to influence U.S. voters. Canadian columnist Mark Steyn describes the limeys' misfired strategy thus:

The Guardian, the fever chart of the British Left, decided to arrange a controlled experiment in the effectiveness of the Bush-hating strategy. They targeted the voters of Clark County, Ohio, one of the swingiest counties in a critical swing state, by getting Guardian readers to send them letters explaining why they shouldn't vote for Bush. Antonia Fraser, John Le Carre and other celebrated Guardianistas put pen to paper and marshaled their arguments.

In return, The Guardian received many responses, saying things like "real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions", which was one of the more polite replies in that it eschewed observations on the defects of British dentistry. In 2000, Clark County went narrowly for Al Gore. On Tuesday, it went decisively for Bush. The local Republican chairman claimed that Fraser and Co. had done a grand job of rallying the county’s Bush voters and getting them to the poll. Thank you, Guardian lefties! Had they launched Operation Massachusetts, Kerry would have lost his own state.

Other comments e-mailed by Americans to the Guardian included these choice bits:

• "We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidential election."

• "If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it."

One of the Democrats' favorite tactics, the get-out-the-vote effort, also failed to provide them an edge. The 60 percent turnout recorded in last week's election is the highest since 1968, and the highest ever since the voting age was lowered to 18. But the Republicans were just as effective at getting the vote out as the Democrats. As Peggy Noonan put it, "A ragtag band of more than a million Republican volunteers who fought like Washington's troops at Valley Forge beat the paid Hessians of King George III's army."

Ditto the youth vote. Mark Steyn said,

The "youth vote" never showed up. Last year, I saw some patronizing BBC documentary claiming that George W. Bush was controlled by fanatical Christian fundamentalists who believe in the Rapture. The "youth vote" is the Left's equivalent of the Rapture: it may happen one day, but not on any schedule you want to put money on.

Hollywood's attempts to defeat Bush fizzled. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 attack film was released on video and DVD on October 5, a month before the election. It was the only video at the local Blockbuster video store that had copious quantities available for rent the week it was released. Usually it's difficult to rent a new release in the first two weeks because demand outstrips supply. In the case of Fahrenheit 9/11, no one wanted to rent it -- presumably everyone who wanted to see it saw it in the theaters. At least Jimmy Carter didn't have to compete with the crowd to rent one of his "two favorite films." Hollywood honored Hitler's propaganda film director Leni Riefenstahl at the Academy Awards last spring. Presumably, they'll honor her spiritual successor Michael Moore at the next Academy Awards.

The Democrats seemed bent on self-destruction in this campaign. After achieving success against Bush Sr. by nominating a centrist southern governor in 1992, they tried to unseat Bush Jr. by nominating a left-wing northern senator who was defined by his contradictions. Kerry voted for the war with Iraq and campaigned against it. He voted for the Patriot act and campaigned against it. He voted for the $89M supplemental appropriation for the troops before he voted against.

Kerry ran a strong campaign, but his supporters had to engage in double think to even support him:

• Voters for Bush believe he's telling the truth when he says he'll continue the war in Iraq
  
• Voters for Kerry think he's lying when he says he'll continue the war in Iraq

• Bush supporters think that Bush is telling the truth when he say's he's against gay marriage
  
• Kerry supporters think that Kerry is lying when he says he's against gay marriage

Finally, the main stream (left-wing) media expressed shock that, according exit polls, moral values topped the list of issues that influenced voters, beating out themes such as the economy and terrorism. Of those who named moral values as the top issue, 80 percent voted for Bush. Of course, the left-wing media figured that the top moral issues for these voters were gay marriage and abortion. But Mark Steyn explained it another way:

As for this exit-poll data that everyone's all excited about, what does it mean when 22 percent of the electorate say their main concern was "moral issues"? Gay marriage? Abortion? Or is it something broader? For many of us, the war is also a moral issue, and the Democrats are on the wrong side of it, standing not with the women voting proudly in Afghanistan's first election but with the amoral and corrupt U.N., the amoral and cynical Jacques Chirac, the amoral and revolting head-hackers whom Democratic Convention guest of honor Michael Moore described as Iraq's "minutemen."

The Democrats' threats to sue their way to victory in this election did not materialize. Bush's margin of a few hundred votes in Florida opened the way to protracted legal battles in 2000. Bush's margin of 130,000 votes in Ohio was too much for even a shyster like John Edwards to try to overturn in the courts.

^* Hyperbole -- exaggeration. Technique commonly used by fishermen, golfers, and liberal politicians. Occasionally used by conservative columnists to make a point.