Thursday, August 12, 2004

Prediction: Bush will lose, and it won't be close

I feel more sure now than ever before that Bush will tank by election day ’04 – in the end, it won’t even be close. Economic spluttering, disappearing healthcare, oil prices, deficits, overwhelming evidence that our middle east/antiterror/you-break-Iraq,-you-own-it policy has gone off a cliff, a few more mini-scandals to come (more prisoner abuse; Halliburton, etc), and the Farenheit 911 effect (enough Americans seeing the emperor with no clothes) will combine to ensure his ouster.

Here’s why: the anti-Bush voters are already totally locked in; more undecideds will break to Kerry when they add up all the bad news; and here’s the decisive part: there’s a slice of the Bush voters who are NOT rock-solid – their Reagan-Republican loyalty is being stretched to the breaking point by Shrubbie’s assininity, and once the momentum moves just far enough against W, that wobbling slice will let him down. Some will abstain; some might even vote for Kerry. Count on it.

Yes, we can expect the terror card to be played with increasing intensity up til election day, and that will pin down the great majority of Bush’s supporters, but it won’t be enough to give him the numbers he needs.

The ONLY way Bush can win is if Kerry asses up his campaign as badly as Gore did four years ago. Well, I shouldn’t put it past him – just yesterday, he out-Bushed Bush by parroting Bush’s dumb certainty: singing in harmony with the outrageous comments Bush made a few days ago, Kerry said that even knowing what he knows now, he still would have voted to authorize the pre-emptive war. This when the Washington Post and New York Times have both issued grand mea culpas, admitting that they should have taken a harder look at the war sales pitch. So, Kerry can be a worm, but still I think he has just enough moxie to use the opportunity before him.

Anyway, I’m on an effort to limit my political obsession: it’s a broken world, and I can’t fix it by dwelling on it. I’m trying to limit my news intake to only those things I don’t already know – and you’d be surprised how that shrinks the field. And I find that news intake is best counterbalanced by some daily form of peace-inducing meditation, to prevent a buildup of excessive bile. I WILL attend the RNC protests in NYC, and I WILL do some voter registration work, but I’m trying not to carry this stuff around with me. Not easy, I admit – but let’s be sure to have fun with our outrage, cuz we’re gonna win.