In these last few days before the election–an election which I’m already heartily sick of, just like everybody else I know, and yet can’t stop obsessing over, because it’s that damned important–I am finding myself being filled with a slow and perhaps irrational confidence that Kerry is going to win in a landslide.
A landslide, in my terms, for this election, is perhaps an overstated word. A landslide, from my perspective, would be a solid enough lead that bringing the election to the Supreme Court would be pointless. An act of desperation. Frippery. A landslide would be enough of an edge that even this Supreme Court, which enthroned Bush in the first place, would have to look at a lawsuit for re-instating Bush as being frivolous.
I have no particular basis for this belief. It could be that I can’t bear the other possibility. I know that many of Bush’s supporters still believe Iraq had WMD, that Bush is doing the right things for the country, and that the rest of the world supports his election as President. I can barely concieve of this, even though evidently about half the voting public seems to feel that way. I know that not all the unprecedented numbers of new voters are going to vote Democratic on November 2nd (appalling disenfranchisement stories aside). I know that the new Bin Laden tape is going to cause Bush’s people to insist that the country cannot afford to change horses in mid-race, although I honestly do not understand how anybody at all could continue to support Bush when Bin Laden, our number one public enemy, has effectively endorsed him:
We did not find it difficult to deal with Bush and his administration, because it is similar to regimes in our countries, half of which are governed by the military and the other half of which are governed by the sons of kings and presidents; and we have a long experience with them.
Of course, Bush supporters probably see that as vicious lies on Bin Laden’s part, or something, but I truly don’t see how anybody with the capability of grasping anything beyond his own ass could miss the point. Or this point, for that matter:
The events that influenced me directly trace back to 1982 and subsequent events when the United States gave permission to the Israelis to invade Lebanon, with the aid of the sixth US fleet. […]
While I was looking at those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the unjust one in a similar manner by destroying towers in the United States so that it would feel some of what we felt and to be deterred from killing our children and women…
Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands.”
These are the words of a man who’s been at war with America for more than twenty years, and I believe him. I believe that our security does lie in our own hands, and I believe that the first, desperately important step we have to take in order to assure our security is to get George W. Bush out of the White House. I believe that Bin Laden means it when he says Kerry isn’t the answer to security issues, but I also believe that Kerry is a step in the right direction. I do not believe that Bush will ever accept that the attacks on September 11th may have had a root cause in U.S. foreign policy over the last decades, nor that he will ever take steps to correct that policy; his having begun a war of aggression for fictional reasons is, I think, proof enough of why I believe that.
I believe Kerry at least has the insight to grasp Bin Laden’s none-too-fine point, and that he will work toward remedying the absolute and unbelievable mess that the United States is in right now. I don’t think he’ll solve all the problems, nice as that would be, but I do believe he’ll put a lot more effort into trying than Bush ever would.
And I believe the voters are going to put him into office in such a decisive way that Karl Rove won’t be able to play the games he did in 2000.
I believe I could be hideously wrong about all this, too, but at least this sense of serenity that’s settled over me will get me through til Election Day without giving me an ulcer. :)