Kerry Concedes

Without waiting for the provisional ballots in Ohio. Who knows if this is the right thing to do or not?

It has been a rollercoaster ride, that's sure. Only a few days ago a Kerry victory seemed to hang in the air, there was something different about the way the pundits behaved and Bush looked uncertain and sad. And there was talk about a large increase in new Democratic voter registrations and a great youth movement of new voters, expected to vote for Kerry. What happened to this talk?
Was there a evidence for any of it? If so, what happened to the evidence?

Then the exit polls seemed to suggest that Kerry was doing well. And wham! The reverse in the ride, whiplashing our necks. That's where we are now.

I hear that the new Kerry voters who registered for just this election didn't turn out to vote, but the people who did turn out in large numbers were the Republican base: the Bible-carriers. As many as one in three of exit polled voters stated that they were voting for "moral values", and these were overwhelmingly Bush-voters. It is hard not to conclude that a large number of Americans care nothing about the war, the economy and other such secular questions, but instead worry much more about Christian values, interpreted very narrowly and literally. I'm not happy about that. I like the bits in the Bible which talk about caring for the poor and not ripping people off in commercial transactions, but the Fundamentalists tend not to mention those. You know the ones that they love to talk about.

So it's not hard to conclude that it's perfectly possible to get re-elected (or elected for the first time in a legal way) even if you are the worst president the country has ever seen, even if you attacked Mexico because Pearl Harbor happened, even if you combine pointless blood-letting wars with humongous tax cuts for the rich, even if you are willing to rape Mother Nature and call it seduction by her (the slut), and so on. This is where we stand right now.

The next step is to continue the fight against the radical right for the simple reason that this is what we need to do. The alternative is impossible, unless you believe that a kinder, gentler Taliban in a polluted country with gated luxury compounds among the filthy unwashed masses is just the ticket for you.

So back to work!