I think this cover from Thursday’s edition of the London Daily Mirror sums up the election results very well. I’ve seen plenty of claims that this election was stolen, but unlike 2000, I don’t believe it this time. It’s an undisputed fact that there were problems in some areas that resulted in incorrect vote counts. But I think those problems were honest technological failures, not deliberate fraud. The folks that are responsible for them should be strung up for failing their duty to give each citizen an opportunity to have his vote counted. But I don’t think the votes that didn’t get counted were numerous enough to have an impact on the presidential election, although some local races may be in question. I honestly believe, for whatever it’s worth, that in this election, more people voted for GW Bush than JF Kerry. Which leads to the question asked by the Mirror.
How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb? Okay, that’s probably not the right number. Actually, it’s probably more than that, because it’s very likely that some of the lost votes were for Bush. So even more than 59,054,087 people voted for him. On the other hand, they’re probably not all dumb. Recently, a cousin, when asked why anybody would vote for Bush, said “Well, you either have to be rich or stupid”. There are people who stand to gain financially from four more years of a Bush administration. Putting their own selfish interests ahead of the benefit of the country, and the whole world, doesn’t make them stupid, just evil and immoral.
But, by and large, the Mirror has it right. The bulk of Bush’s support comes from people who have nothing to gain, and a lot to lose, from a Bush presidency. So how could these people be so dumb?
One big reason is that a lot of people just don’t want to believe bad news, so they accept promises (lies?) from Bush that they’re really smart enough to see through. They don’t like paying taxes (neither do I, but I don’t like the alternative either). So they believe Bush when he says he won’t raise taxes and Kerry will. They just ignore the astronomically expanding deficit. They just won’t admit that if Bush keeps spending hundreds of billions of dollars on wars, without raising taxes to pay for them, eventually somebody will have to pay for it, and it won’t be Bush’s billionaire buddies. I don’t know where these people think the money is going to come from, but they’d rather believe a lie than think about the ugly truth.
They think Bush will do a better job protecting them from terrorists. But the worst act of terrorism in history happened on Bush’s watch. Granted, some of the intelligence failures were a result of long-standing deficiencies in the agencies that go back to the Clinton administration, or even earlier. But the Bush gang let way too much slip past them, as documented in a critique of one of their campaign ads. But people didn’t want to believe that, because when you’ve been attacked, tough talk is more appealing than the truth.
Some of the drones even bragged about helping circulate lies, like the claims that John Edwards caused the flu vaccine shortage, or Teresa Heinz-Kerry outsourced jobs. Nothing wrong with a few good lies, if they’ll get you a few dumb votes from people who’re too lazy to look for the truth.
“Moral values” were important to a large segment of voters. But voting for Bush required setting aside a lot of “moral values” about corporate fraud, campaign dishonesty, false justifications for war, etc. and focusing on some very narrow, and narrow-minded issues, like gay marriage, and calling that a “moral values” issue. Moral values should dictate the way one lives one’s own life, and not be used to condemn others. If you think buttfucking is immoral, don’t do it. But getting upset about others who do, while ignoring far more serious moral flaws like dishonesty and corruption, is pretty dumb.
I do have to agree with some who criticize Kerry for the way he campaigned. Trying to out-macho Bush (how many times did he promise to kill Osama bin Laden?) was just plain dumb. The people who couldn’t think about anything more than killing terrorists weren’t going to be swayed. There were lots of issues where Bush was vulnerable, and Kerry ignored them to play tough guy. That was dumb. But, mostly, the Mirror was right. We have a bunch of dumb voters.