Woodstock, New York

I’m sitting here shell shocked - like so many Kerry supporters who believed that we were on our way to victory last week - trying to understand exactly what hit us last Tuesday and dreading all that it seems to imply. On the face of it, we are confronted by a national victory for the Bush/Rove team that gave them a total of over 59 million votes and a comfortable three and one half million margin of victory in the popular election. Increasingly this looks like an historic defeat for the Democratic Party - even though the progressive coalition managed to increase its absolute vote by some 5 million votes to over 55 million compared with 2000. While the Bush Rove victory of 286 to 252 in the Electoral College isn’t exactly a landslide, it certainly is a decisive win.

The most significant aspect of this Republican triumph is that their popular victory was achieved despite an historic jump in turnout. Over 119 millions voters participated in last Tuesday’s election, giving us the highest turnout in any election since 1968 with a participation rate of close to 60% of the voting age population. For political scientists, this kind of jump in participation usually means only one thing, that we have just witnessed the kind of “realigning election” that redraws the boundaries between majority and minority coalitions for the foreseeable future. If this interpretation is correct, then Karl Rove has won his gamble ; put an end to decades of unstable parity between the two parties and established the Republicans as the national majority party for the coming generation.

In this new electoral map, the Democrats are left as the minority party isolated within three “Blue State” enclaves : the Atlantic America that stretches down from Maine through Washington DC ; the Northern States around the Great Lakes, the West Coast corridor from Los Angeles to Seattle and the Pacific state of Hawaii. Much the rest of America has been coloured in red and when we look at the vote map at the county level, the result seems even worse. Everywhere the Democratic “Blue States” are spot-marked with dozens of rural and suburban counties that have turned Republican red. When we look at turnout and voting, we see that for 22 % of Tuesday’s voters “moral values” was their most important issue - a code word that covers a basket of issues from Gay marriage to abortion to presidential “character.” The other winning issue for Bush was “terrorism,” which means that Bush’s macho posturing made many suburban and rural voters feel safer. In addition to mobilizing 100 % of their white evangelical base, the Rove/Bush team reached out to mainline Protestants, devout Catholics, conservative Jews and Afro American evangelicals - eroding the Democrats hold over these groups and squeezing out a narrow 48 to 51 % majority.

Now Mr. Bush tells us that “I have some political capital and intend to spend it.” Far from moderating his policies in order to repair our alliances and secure his “legacy,” Mr Bush and Cheney seem likely to take an even more radical policy direction. They will push to abolish the welfare state and income taxes at home and intensify our cold war with the European Union and our hot war with global Islam abroad. In short, we could be looking at an extended period of one party, Republican dominance that will combine corrupt corporatism and assertive militarism with authoritarian populism. The “moral majority” is back with a vengeance as our war against Radical Islam reinforces the impulse to identify America as a Christian republic. Woe then, to the cultural elites in Hollywood, the University enclaves or the East Coast media who oppose this tide of religiously inspired nationalism. While I can still feel at home in the Atlantic America that remains “true blue,” I can’t recognize myself in this new America the media wags dub “Jesusland.”

My feelings of despair are mixed with anger stemming from my doubts about the integrity of last Tuesday’s vote. All across the “blogosphere,” there’s mounting speculation that the winning formula for the Republicans last Tuesday was two parts evangelical mobilization in rural America and one part massive voter fraud in Florida and Ohio. The root of this suspicion lies in the glaring discrepancy between last Tuesday afternoon’s exit polls that showed a Kerry win in the making in Florida, Iowa, Ohio and New Mexico and the final results early Wednesday morning. Exit polls usually don’t lie to this degree. In addition to the “spoilage” of a million minority votes that were invalidated in Florida, Ohio and New Mexico, there are anomalous results from Florida in the numerous Democratic counties that reported overwhelming majorities for Bush. Experienced observers like Greg Palast and Thom Hartmann now argue that the final vote count may have been “hacked” at the county level. If so, this probably won’t alter the final outcome, but will tarnish Bush’s “mandate,” and diminish fears that we’re facing a long-term realignment of American politics.

Note de temPS réels - lors d’une soirée-débat avec John Mason à Paris le 22 novembre, il nous a recommandé entre autres lectures sur la campagne présidentielle et l’élection les documents suivants :

Sur http://www.Truthout.org
Steven Freeman, "Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancies"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111...

et une réplique de Ruy Texiera à l’article précédent :
"With Exit Polls : President Dukakis,"
http://www.alternet.org/story/20530

Bilan provisoire de la défaite sur http://www.democracycorps.com par James Carville et Stanley Greenberg,
"Solving the Paradox of 2004 : Why America wanted Change but Voted for Continuity," http://www.democracycorps.com/repor... (PDF, 13 pages)

La ventilation des votes, une nouvelle perspective sur les "Amériques Bleues et Rouges"
http://www.uselectionatlas.org