I Predict a Riot

The 2000 election was stolen. The 2004 election was probably stolen. But the 1960 election was also stolen. It goes both ways. Stealing elections is what political parties do, especially political parties in which the electoral system is run by partisan administrators. It is how the system works. As Callum might say "Get over it." Now, it's easier to steal a close election. 1960 was very close. 2000 was very close - and Al Gore didn't even win Tennessee. 2004 was pretty close, although Kerry was not a strong candidate and had the Dems won Ohio he'd have the election. The current election is, according to the polls, not close. Obama has had a solid lead for several weeks in the national polls, and, more importantly, he has had even more solid leads in most of the key battleground states. If you had win California, Illinois and New York, you are already nearly 40% of the way there. Of course, that extra 60% isn't easy, but, it seems, Obama has plenty of leeway.

It's going to be difficult for the Reps to steal this one. There is only so far that a "McCain Miracle" can reasonably be ascribed to the McCain Effect and the Palin Effect. On Panorama a couple of Mondays ago, they had some interesting voxpops from Ohio - a wingnut spewing anti-Obama bile - OK, a wingnut, but the bile is out there - and another guy saying he himself would vote for Obama, but that he thought Obama would lose because many people wouldn't vote for a black man. The voiceover made the interesting point that Obama represents a multicultural, multiracial, cosmopolitan, urban, northern, liberal, intellectual, post-industrial (in Obama's America, people don't make things, they make *deals*) America, but that that is an America that doesn't look much like the America that many people living in the heartland see everyday and, more particularly, it is an America that is deeply threatening to them in just about every way that can be listed. Could we see a late surge to McCain in suburban, exurban and rural areas in states like Pennsylvania, where McCain was campaigning yesterday and pretty much a must-win for Obama, or Ohio, definitely a must-win for McCain? This is an election about the future direction of America. Could we see an unusually high turnout, as in 2004, with many values voters turning out to confound the pollsters and casting their ballots for Jesusland over Smartland? Or, at least, could a plausible story be concocted that that was how the vote was delivered for McCain?

There have been Democratic presidents before. There are plenty of Democratic election officials out there. There is surely only so much the Reps can do on the ground. And as I've said, if the Dems were running a different kind of candidate, I would be fairly confident. And if he lived in a different world. This isn't 1992 anymore. We live in a post-911, post-neoliberal economic dispensation world. The old rules simply don't apply anymore. As I said, the markets don't matter any more and, in fact, it would be better for them to be closed for a few weeks or months. We can already see the preparations for the story being put in place. I read over the weekend, in The Economist, I think that the police in the US are expecting large scale rioting if the election is called for McCain. We know that there are now regular army units on active service in the US. Widespread rioting will quickly lead to National Guard and regular army units being called out on to the streets with shootings and mass arrests of anti-Republican elements. Evidence will be adduced that Obama was an al-Qaeda deep sleeper agent. George W. Bush will appear on television to announce that Obama has been indicted before an military tribunal for high treason, tried, found guilty and executed. The Electoral College electors will still meet as scheduled on 15 December to cast their votes formally for John McCain for President (but not necessarily Sarah Palin) with the votes tallied on 8 January and the inauguration on 20 January, which would allow the markets to reopen in late January. By February, we will be able to look back on the events of November 2008 with much the same degree of resigned acceptance as we do the 2000 election and 911. There will be some of us who will still be angry, but the life, political and personal, will go on in some fashion, and we will be encouraged by the bien pensants to look to the future and get on with things. And we will, because there will be no alternative. 

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[Celestial T F H Weasel]

May I take the opportunity to make public my appreciation of Sir's tin-foil hat!