Election day. I have mostly kept my blog on a Blogstudio site, Invisible Cities. However, they are migrating to a new server and are not allowing new posts at the moment, and I wanted to write something this morning.

I do believe that blogs are changing things in some ways hard to trace. I now get a majority of my news on-line, with NPR (my mainstay for 20+ years) relegated to times when I'm cooking or driving. NPR has had to bend over backwards so much to try to avoid offending Bush partisans and perhaps congressmen that they are generally not satisfying. On the other hand, last week's This American Life (scroll down to "Swing Set,", or search for Oct. 31, 2004 broadcast) offered a very good account of both what voter suppression means, specifically, and of a discussion between Ira Glass and an undecided but leaning-Bush voter. This you should hear (RealAudio).

Re the election: it's hard to say, but I think Kerry will win in a squeaker by popular vote, in a larger margin by electoral votes. But it wouldn't be totally surprising if Bush won. The narrative I see as key in this goes something like the following: Bush was elected in a close, highly contested election in which it is argued by some that Republican voter suppression and dirty tricks disenfranchised enough black voters in Florida to turn the election. (Close votes in NM and Wisc. and other states would have become an issue if Florida hadn't been.) Given the closeness of the election and his declared position as "a uniter, not a divider," he could have governed in a bipartisan fashion, drawing closer to Democrats as well as Republicans and seeking to create polity. This he did not do. Apart from the "No Child Left Behind" act, which is critically underfunded, there was not even a gesture toward bipartisanship or acknowledgment that Democrats had any reason to resent the partisanship of Nov.-Dec. 2000.

A second chance doesn't happen often in American public life, but it did for Bush. As his job approval rating dipped to 45% or so, and as he took frequent vacations away from Washington, Bush passed over warnings of terrorist attack, and was woefully unprepared for 9/11. That event pulled the country together, as always happens in times of national emergency, and Bush led very well in marshaling international cooperation and domestic support to go after Al Qaeda. But he over-reached, first in using the occasion to enact a domestic agenda that has little to do with terrorism (e.g., the Patriot Act, which beefs up domestic surveillance in ways that are still ineffective), and second in seizing the moment to attack Iraq, which was under control. (Maureen Dowd has this one right: there's something Oedipal in Bush's attitude toward his father's policies. He's going to correct his father's mistake in not removing Saddam. Bush the elder didn't even get to speak at the Republican Convention this year! What's up with that?) In doing that, he has reinforced the world's worst opinions of the US, along with many in this country, not just Democrats, and he has shown himself the best friend Osama has.

I've thought this since 2000, and truly George W. Bush is consistent about this if nothing else. The one lodestone of his political career is to reward corporate America. No matter what the topic, he wants to pay his friends back. The tax cuts are skewed toward that class, he consults with corporations about his energy policy, he lets utility companies write their own environmental regulations, he gives Halliburton a five-year, no-bid contract, etc., etc. I don't mean Bush personally does all these things--he farms them out, or if you like, his chosen underlings give them to him to support. But his professions of faith take a back seat to this principle, if you can call "Look out for Number One" a principle (as Calvin and Hobbes says). He's been propped up in this by the American public's apathy and cynicism, and by the news media's willingness to be bought out or intimidated.

If Bush wins, whatever restraints the re-election campaign might have imposed will be gone, and we can look for him to push ahead on conservative judges, privatizing social security (as he says he will do), and power politics. Much more division in the country generally will be the result. But if Kerry wins, there still will be much division, as a Republican Congress and the Republican party fights a rear-guard action, as they did with Clinton. Iraq will continue, as we can't just precipitously pull out of that mess. Expect a draft, with either man. These will not be peaceful years.