Weiner: Seismic Shifts for Both Parties on November 2

[kaitykaity]

By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, "The Crisis Papers."
October 25, 2004

http://crisispapers.org/essays/seismic-shifts.htm

Don't know about you, but one week before Election Day, I'm cautiously hopeful and nervous as hell.

It looks and feels like Bush&Co. are going down -- Kerry's momentum is building, Bush's "favorable" numbers remain stuck in the mid- to high-40s, more and more "Bush states" are in play, so many conservative leaders, writers, newspapers and magazines are abandoning the GOP candidate, etc. But, as P.T. Barnum or some other political scientist must have said, don't ever underestimate Americans' tendency to vote against their self-interests when frightened or in reality-denial.

And Karl Rove still has a week in which to launch his V-2 rockets at the Democrats. Whether he is desperate enough to go maximum will depend on his reading of the GOP internal polls. If he still believes he can pull off an Electoral College victory by energizing his fundamentalist/rightwing base and suppressing the Dem vote -- through slime and sleaze and intimidation and computer-fiddling and reducing the number of new registered Democrats by thievery and threatening poll "monitors -- he'll hold back his major weapons.

But if what he's hearing in the various toss-up states continues to sound bad -- Kerry doing well in enough of them to deny Bush victory -- he may go for those extreme measures. Whether that will be an American/Israeli attack on Iran's nuke sites, or rounding up some Arabs and charging them with a new terrorist assault on U.S. soil ("Who's your daddy? We're protecting you, vote for us"), or a simulated assassination try, or declaring martial law and "postponing" the election -- whatever, he'd consider doing it.

These Bush&Co. guys aren't going to give up willingly and just walk away. They feel they've worked too long and hard, decades really, to finally get where they can actually institute revolutionary changes and take what they want at home and abroad -- profit, power, control, "respectability" -- to let loose of those reins.

DEALS WITH THE DEVIL

And so, they'll do what they have to do to stay in the White House, even if it means making deals with the devil. They most probably will initiate court cases challenging the election results in various state courts, to buy themselves some more time to fiddle with the system and, they hope, gain an ultimate victory. They might even try to kick the outcome back into the U.S. Supreme Court. If that's their last-resort plan, they may find their reception there a bit chillier than in 2000, inasmuch as Bush&Co. are trying to reduce the power of the court to interpret the Constitution, and such moves might well be looked at askance by the Supremes. (See here, and here).

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[Mojambo]

1. Interesting piece

I would love to see this election usher in a new era of 4 major political parties.

Left - Greens (or if they can't manage it, how about a New Democratic Party headed by Howard Dean? I have to admit though the only reason I want a party called the New Democratic Party is so that we can call them the NuDies...)

Center Left - The Democratic Party

Center Right - The Conservative Party (former Moderate Republicans)

Right - The Republican Party (Evangelical wing and Neo-Cons)

The opportunity for consensus building and legitimate cross party co-operation would be so much greater.

Of course this cannot happen until we get rid of the electoral college and (much more importantly) implement run-off voting, so I doubt we'll see it any time soon, if ever.

[Lisa]

2. Hey -- there already IS a New Democratic Party!

In Canada. I've never heard them called the NuDies, though!


http://www.ndp.ca/

[Mojambo]

3. Wouldn't it be cool to say

And the distinguished NuDie Senator from California has the floor?

LOL

[WCGreen]

4. It can't happen here...

We are not a parlimentarian democracy and i can't see any reason why people would want to change the whole system of government now.

The place to make effective change is through depolitizing district drawing.

I am going to start working on that as a major issue for the 2008 campaign here in Ohio as soon as I can.

If enough people stand up and fight for a geographic redistricting process without political consideration, then there is more chance for turn over in the COngress and the 50 state houses.....