November 3, 2004

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  = State not yet called   = State called for Bush   = State called for Kerry

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Candidate	Electoral	States Won	Vote %	Votes
  Bush	254	28	51%	58,154,413
  Kerry	252	20	48%	54,616,818

  
  

  This is the picture as of 8 a.m. EST, as I awake from a troubled sleep, getting up at least twice through the night to check the Yahoo Election Site. And once, I even had a nightmare vision of the country with Bush at the reins for another four years as I slipped, finally to sleep. I voted at about 3:30 p.m. PST yesterday, and spent merely 10 minutes at the polling place. There were no “long lines” in Lomita. But it was busier than it usually is. Over 120 million  people turned out to vote in the 2004 election. Sadly, Bush has won the counted popular vote, and there are, as the map above shows, three as yet “undecided” states for the electoral count, which determines the Presidency.

  
  

  

  
  

  The morning after. The White House, bathed in the eerie light of November 3rd, when nothing is quite as it seems, and both parties, Bush and Kerry, are still confident they will succeed in their race.

  
  

  From the AP Newsfeed:

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  White House ‘Convinced’ of Bush Victory

  
  

  By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

  
  

  WASHINGTON – Tested by terrorism and a long, bitter re-election campaign, President Bush  crept close to victory against Sen. John Kerry  in a roiling contest that came down to a heart-stopper in the heartland, a battle over Ohio.
  Kerry faced a daunting road to an electoral majority but nothing was settled or conceded as election night slipped away.
  “We are convinced that President Bush has won re-election,” said White House chief of staff Andy Card. But that conviction did not sway Democrats, who insisted Kerry was still in contention for Ohio’s decisive cache of 20 electoral votes.
  And so the nation faced another mystery at sunrise, just as it had in the tangled dawn of Election 2000.
  “We will fight for every vote,” John Edwards (news – web sites), Kerry’s running mate, told supporters in Boston in the wee hours Wednesday in the first stirrings of a legal struggle. “We’ve waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night.”
  Bush himself planned to declare victory before long. Card, speaking shortly before dawn, said the president delayed that statement to “give Senator Kerry the respect of more time to reflect on the results of this election.”  

  
  

  I have the same queasy feeling as I write this that I did in 2000, when my candidate of choice, Al Gore, won the election, and was given the popular vote on television. Then, as we all can surely remember, there was the controversy over the vote count in Florida, and Bush was finally given the state’s electoral votes, even though he won the popular vote. There was even a recount being undertaken, which the Supreme Court stopped. We have all somewhat “survived” the last four years, and the only way I can try to rationalize why so many in this country have voted for the current President is because they are still scared of the events of 9/11, just as the current Administration wants them to be. I believe Bush “used” the attacks on the WTC to “scare” the American public so that he could invade Iraq and finish the job his father didn’t in 1991, during the first Gulf War. I was certainly hoping that the majority of Americans didn’t “fall for this”, but looking at the numbers, it seems that fear trumped intelligence and rationality at the polls.

  
  

  I’m scared of much more now, however, and these events look too eerily similar to November 2000. Bush is declaring victory, and Kerry won’t give up. Ohio is still an “undecided” state. The state has 20 electoral votes. The delay comes from “provisional ballots”, those which were cast by people whose registration was in question. It could be days, or even weeks, before the state of Ohio is “decided”. Bush wants Kerry to “concede” but the Kerry camp, as evidenced by Edward’s statement to “fight for every vote” still believes they are in the running. Republicans now control the House and the Senate.  In South Dakota, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost to the Republican John Thune. The last time a Senate Leader was defeated was in 1952.

  
  

  I was watching a documentary on horror films the other day, and one of the film directors interviewed mentioned that we always seem to be “living” in a perpetual “apocolypse”. That the “end” which has been predicted since a lot of us were children (the A-Bomb, Duck and Cover, etc.) is always hanging above our heads, and this is just the current state of events in the world.

  
  

  I won’t give up my hope that Bush (whom I’ve labeled the “Antichrist” in other blog entries) will be “fired” by the American People. But I don’t feel as well as I should looking at the numbers this morning.

  
  

  It’s going to be a weird few days. That’s for sure.

  
  

  EDIT: 9:43AM PST: Kerry has conceded the election to Bush. So the unthinkable has happened. Now it’s going to be a weird four years. MFN

  
  

  EDIT: 5:17 PM PST. Vote for Hilary Clinton in 08. We’ll take back the country, and make history putting a woman in the White House. Perhaps Bill for Secretary General of the U.N? That’s a cool thought, as far as I’m concerned. Bush all but ignored the advances Bill made in the mideast. I think he’d make a great U.N. Secretary General.

  • 8:26 am
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