Friday October 29, 2004 at 3:15 PM
Is This Election Winnable?
Appearing in Politics
- American politics is so polarized today that there is no center, only sides.
- Thomas Friedman
A Hole in the Heart
NY Times Oct. 28, 2004
With scarcely four days left before our nation turns out to vote in what is without question the most important election in a generation if not our entire history, I’m worried. Worried not so much about who might win or who might lose, although that’s certainly cause for concern. No, I’m worried about something more fundamental than who’s going to win and who’s going to lose. I’m worried about the very integrity of the process.
I’m worried about whether this election is actually going to be won at all. But mostly, I’m worried about whether the divide in this country has become so deep, the positions so entrenched, the debate so shrill, that reason has so completely given way to passion that we are now facing the very serious issue of whether we as a people will still submit ourselves to being governed or if we are only capable of being ruled.
Consider the circumstances of next Tuesday’s election:
- According to the Washington Post, computer models reveal no less than 33 different ways in which results from the eleven swing states could result in a electoral tie
- In the event of a tie in the Electoral College, the President is elected by the House of Representatives. In that scenario, each state gets a single vote and it’s anybody’s guess how that would work out.
- There are already multiple lawsuits and legal challenges filed in both Florida and Ohio with plenty more to come. As a result, it’s unlikely that the outcome of the election will be legally settled until some time after voting ends.
Given all the maneuvering and manipulation, whoever legally loses the election is going to have some very real grounds for questioning the legitimacy of the winner and as a result, the next president of this country is likely to be seen as illegitimate by some segment of the country and perhaps by large segments of the world.
Simply put, of all the possible scenarios for next Tuesday, the least likely is that the process will yield a clear winner who will be universally accepted as the legitimate leader of the world’s most powerful democracy. And if the process can’t produce a legitimate leader, then we have to ask the difficult and unfortunate question of whether our nation is still governable at all. And if we can’t be governed, how then are we to proceed?
Comments
Yet another strange situation (from Reuters Business Wire) -- the Democrat results in lower prices than the Republican, *according to the financial markets!*:
"Under a Kerry administration we'd likely have a much more interventionist SPR policy," said Jamal Qureshi, market analyst at PFC Energy in Washington. "And when you look out a bit further, Bush is more likely to be aggressive in the Middle East, particularly in Iran."
"A Bush status quo results in somewhat higher oil prices both in the short and the longer term, in my view," said Tim Evans, senior analyst at IFR Energy Services.
PFC is forecasting an average U.S. crude price of $43 a barrel in 2005 should Kerry win, compared with $48 a barrel in the event Bush triumphed. It sees $52 on average in the first quarter 2005 under Bush compared with $45 under Kerry.
Posted by: Nils on Fri Oct 29, 04