A friend sent this article, about Democrat efforts to use legal procedure to derail the election in Florida, saying “here we go again”. I responded as follows:
It will only matter if it is close.
It is all about turnout and that is a complete wildcard. This year, turnout will be high. Maybe the highest since the 1930s. All the polling models assume a lower turnout than we are likely to see.
The polls are increasingly unreliable for other reasons as well. Numerous writers have emphasized the decaying reliability of polls. (See Dick Morris on this.)
In other words, we are flying blind.
The election may defy predictions and end up not even being close.
I think a solid Kerry majority, or even a blowout Bush majority are both possible outcomes.
Also, the media will almost certainly attempt to spring one or more “scandals” tomorrow, on “dirty Thursday”, the Thursday before the election. So a renewed, last minute attack on Bush by the Democrats’ proxies in the MSM is nearly certain.
Another wildcard is this: Our enemies will equate a Bush defeat with a victory for them.
The Iraqi resistance may try a large attack, a Tet 2004, though I think they lack the combat power to do anything spectacular. Slaughtering 50 unarmed Iraqis is about their speed at this point. Nonetheless, Ralph Peters says “The terrorists are pulling out all the stops to shed blood in Iraq this week.”
The terrorists may launch an attack here in the USA. If they have any assets here and operating, this is the moment to strike, to put all their chips on the table. So we may get our own “Madrid”. A succesful attack would give Kerry a last minute chance to say that Bush failed to protect us, to play the card the terrorists handed Zapatero. Friday would probably be optimum since large crowds of commuters will be available for attack on a workday, and it would give the story a few days to percolate and for Kerry and the MSM to spin it as a Bush failure.
And random stuff can happen. What would the fallout have been if that registered Democrat in Florida had run over Katherine Harris and killed her instead of swerving? What if some significant violence were to occur in the run-up to the election? Can anyone say this is unlikely given the angry and frankly psycho tone this year? What will the response be? Depressed turnout? Increased? It is impossible to say. It depends on the details of the whatever happens.
So it is way to early to rule out “events, dear boy, events” determining the outcome, particularly if the race is actually as close as is commonly assumed.
Here’s my gut. I don’t think it is close. I think it is volatile. Not the same thing. If nothing major happens between now and election day, Bush should win. If something major does occur, he may not.
Still, being cool-headed and conservative, and going by the futures markets and the oddsmakers as the most compact and objecive sources of information, if I had to bet a dollar today, I’d bet that Bush wins with 52% of the popular vote.
But I wouldn’t bet a dollar.
It’s still too early to say what will happen.
Here’s another frinstance to entertain y’all while we all bite our nails.
Suppose, with a couple of days left to go, some major news outlet puts out a lie so blatant that everybody will see through it in a matter of days (but not until after the election), and Kerry jumps all over it and rides it to victory.
Then, after the election, the scandal breaks wide open, on a scale we haven’t seen since 1974, and it becomes obvious to all but the most hopeless of moonbats that the election should have gone the other way.
The electoral college meets next month. What do they do?
Yasser Arafat and the Boston Red Sox may overwhelm any dirty Thursday efforts. One out of two wouldn’t be bad, either.
Ken, I have been thinking along those lines. What if the afternoon before election forged pictures of W snorting coke at Camp David were released? Remember that bogus story that was floated for a while? All the Dems believe it, of course, already. CBS has shown its willingness to do anything and to expend its reputation to service the larger cause, so their news operation might be the appropriate vehicle for the Donks to employ for something like this.
A two point last minute shift, Kerry wins.
Over the next few days or weeks it becomes clear the photo or video or whatever is bullshit.
What then?
Nothing then. Kerry is president. Bush goes home to Texas. The story is buried by the MSM. Rush. Fox and the blogosphere scream bloody murder. But the public is sick of the election, wants it over and accepts the story that someone seemingly reliable provided the picture and they’ll be extra careful next time.
As to the Electoral College, they will not break ranks.
This is the kind of thing we should be expecting. These guys are looking at a likely defeat and they are not going to go down without trying absolutely everything they can come up with.
Both sides are looking at a likely defeat. And both are attempting everything they can.
The one new wrinkle here being the IAEA. I thought those reports of looted stuff coming back to back three weeks before the election – when this stuff was known months prior – were very strange.
Turns out ElBaradei’s mandate is up, he wants another term and the current Administration doesn’t want to give him their vote.
Pure coincidence, of course.
But a nasty one.