Political Paranoia

[bobquasit]

I was listening to coverage of the elections on NPR this morning, and was surprised to hear the reporter referring to the 5% margin of victory for the Democratic candidate in Virginia as "slim". Funny, I don't think they ever referred to Bush's 2% "victory" in 2004 that way...NPR really are a bunch of whores.

A random thought: it crossed my mind that the Republicans may have allowed the Democratic victories this time (if they have control over black box voting machines) because A) these elections don't matter much, B) it'll make the Democrats overconfident, and C) to rally their base.

Paranoia? Who knows?

Comments

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

I'd suppose that a logic behind the different uses of "slim" would relate to expectations; Bush was expected by a lot of folk to lose in 2004 while the Democrat in VA was ahead in the polls the whole time. But that is admittedly poor logic and probably not what's going here.

Thing about the GOP base is, uhh, they seem to have multiple "bases" that are belong to them.

1. Business: Interested in low taxes and low regulation.

2. Libertarian: Interested in small government and their version of personal freedom.

3. Christian Right: Interested in making laws fit their versions of Christian Doctrine (note that Catholics, Evangelical Fundimentalists, Mormons, and so on may well be loosely allied but do not necessarily get along and given many circumstances will turn on each other).

4. Neocons: Near as I can figure they're at this point the Crusaders wanting to remake the world in America's image.

Note that these are my off the top of my not all that well functioning at the moment head. But I think my point is somewhat valid; losses in the elections this year really aren't going to rally these factions together.

The most amusing loss has to have been in the mayor's race in St. Paul MN where the Democrat mayor who endorsed Bush last year for stupid reasons (there's a war and we can't change leaders dufing a war, something like that) was thrown out handily for another Democrat almost totally because of his suppoort for Bush.