I think it's more than plain from what I have written for chez Nadezhda so far that I badly want George W. Bush to lose the upcoming election. That means not just that I won't be voting for Bush, but also that I'm not going to be voting for Ralph Nader or for that Libertarian guy or anyone else that doesn't have a chance of winning. But I haven't given much of a hint as to what I think about the guy I will be voting for.

So now I'd like to talk a little bit about Senator John Forbes Kerry, the man I very much hope will soon become the 44th President of the United States. I'm not going to talk much about his platform or his biography; I think Kerry has done a decent job of introducing himself and his program with his campaign, and if you want to know more about those things, there is plenty of information for you on the Web. What I want to do is talk honestly about my sense of John Kerry the man, born of watching with some interest his entire career on the national political scene, and especially from watching him closely over the last 15 months or so.

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In thinking on what is at stake on Tuesday, I was struck by coming across the same allusion to "careless people" by two very different bloggers:   more »

"The person that sits in the Oval Office will determine the outcome of the war on terror and the economy."

-George W. Bush, speaking to supporters in Michigan yesterday

And unfortunately, he is employing some highly manipulative rhetoric.

As an American, I'm of course deeply worried about new terrorist attacks on my fellow citizens. As a partisan Democrat, I'm dismayed that Osama's surprise resurgence will undoubtedly help re-elect George W. Bush, who in my opinion has greatly damaged America at home and abroad and does not deserve a second chance. Fear of external threats always helps the right wing in any country. I'm also embarrassed that Bin Laden is using tropes from Farenheit 9/11 (which I did not like, for the record), thus providing some unhoped-for ammunition for the GOP.   more »

[UPDATE 10-29-04] by nadezhda

From Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED:

SITES TO SEE. There are a number of Web sites that you'll want to look at if you're hoping to keep up on the many, many Election Day controversies. A few to note:

* Election Law @ Moritz -- the Web site of the election law division of Mortiz College of Law at Ohio State. This site is simply indispensable for following the legal challenges around the country.
* Election Protection's Election Incident Reporting System -- Election Protection is logging all complaints received by their call center; they've already registered more than 200 calls for Miami-Dade County alone, ranging from the innocuous ("Wants to know where to vote") to the troublesome ("She reported that Haitian immigrants had been intimidated by 'Republican' lawyers").
* Equal Vote -- The blog of Dan Tokaji, one of the professors behind Election Law @ Moritz.
* Election Law Blog -- The news-clipping blog of Rick Hasen, Loyola law professor and co-editor of Election Law Journal.
* Vote Watch 2004 -- An ever-growing list of news clippings about vote suppression, voter fraud, voting irregularities, and the like.

I'm sure I missed a couple sites, so please email me if you know of any resources people might want to check out.

--Jeffrey Dubner

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[original post 10-25-04]
You may have noticed a new nifty button at the top of the sidebar that shows the current projected tally for the electoral college. As of Sunday nite, Bush is up by one, but yesterday it was Kerry by two.

It's a link to Electoral-Vote.com, which has wonderful maps and graphics if you're into that sort of stuff. And they're trying to beef up their servers so they'll be fully prepared for election night.

I wasn't planning to put anything election-related in the sidebar, but the more we learn about extension dates for returning overseas ballots, electronic voting machines crashing, voter registration cards being trashed, and assorted hijinks in GOTV and poll-watching by both parties... well we may need an electoral college vote counter around for a few more weeks or months, not days. And anyway, it's cute.

"Vast amounts of weapons-related material missing, official says." -- seems Knight-Ridder also has inquiring minds

In addition to getting help from some military folks who are defending the guys on the ground from the Washington decisionmakers, K-R seem to have found some folks in the CIA to help them with their inquiry.

The CIA has convened a "mini taskforce" of experts to assess precisely what equipment is gone and what threat it could pose if it fell into the wrong hands, said two U.S. officials.

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Back to politics -- hey, it's less than a week to go. And this is relevant to our ongoing investigation of the prospects for a return to a reality-based US foreign policy. Right?

DonkeyRising has a fascinating piece with internals showing why Bush isn't doing nearly as well with white college-educated men this time around. It's pretty much enough to account for Bush's substantial slippage (down 9 points) with men overall:

In 2000, Bush lead Gore 54-42 among men. Today Kerry lags Bush among men by only 3%, 46-49.

From the analysis by Democracy Corps (the Greenberg Democratic polling firm):

Republican strategies, centered on the war and the military, cultural politics and ideology were meant to solidify the base, but it created a series of problems among the educated men. First, college educated men are increasingly skeptical about the situation in Iraq. Second, educated men question Bush’s approach to the economy, which remains sluggish while the deficits explode. Finally, the cultural politics that are so important to shoring up religious voters have no impact with these socially moderate voters.

White college educated men prefer Bush on foreign policy by only 4 points, down from 15 points in the spring and summer, while white men without a college education prefer Bush by 28 points. White educated men favor Bush on Iraq by only 8 points (down from 20 points) while white non-college educated men favor him by 29 points. Only 45 percent of white college educated men say that Bush has good plans for Iraq compared to 61 percent among white non-college educated men.

Knew those white boys had to be good for something! Now if we could just do something about those security moms.

I know this guy!

Fellow Eli, Glee Club Alumnus (bass section), Virtual Lifelong Republican, Former Ambassador and general Man of the World Dan Simpson descends into Shrill Unholy Madness as he contemplates the wreckage wrought by George W. Bush at home and abroad:

I have looked among all the other reasons that Bush's people have put forward for the United States to invade Iraq. None hold water.

Our own people have crawled all over the place now and found no weapons of mass destruction. I am particularly resentful at having been hooked by that argument. All I can say is that I was not used to being systematically lied to by an American government that was cooking the intelligence on the basis of which it was supposed to be making serious decisions, such as to go to war.

The al-Qaida-Iraq link claim was bogus. The idea of the United States bringing democracy to the Middle East was silly and a vicious hoax as well as arrogant. The idea that attacking Iraq would make Israel safer was false; instead the United States pounding Arabs in Iraq has become totally associated with Israelis pounding Palestinians in Gaza, increasing Arab and Muslim hatred of the United States and Israel, to the long-term disadvantage of the Jewish state.

Virtually all other aspects of U.S. foreign policy have been damaged by the Bush administration's total focus on Iraq. America's traditional allies for the most part want nothing to do with us.

My own experience overseas during this administration is that they hate President Bush. They don't hate Americans, and we can hope that with him gone, the alliances can be mended without too much effort. Foreign policy areas that have suffered from neglect include Iran, the Koreas, China, particularly Latin America, and, of course, Africa, except to drain its oil.

John Kerry can fix all of this. George Bush couldn't, even if he wanted to. So I am voting for Kerry. America can't live in this world with a busted foreign policy.

Welcome to the Order, Ambassador.

Please collect your vestments and assorted occult paraphernalia here.

Aaaiii! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Ambassador Dan Simpson R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaiii!!!

John Kerry is a douche bag but I'm voting for him anyway.

I'm surprised that neither of these are getting big play.

1. Tonight's vote in the Knesset on Sharon's pullout plan. Haaretz thinks he's going to win. It seems that Sharon has given the speech of his lifetime, a deeply emotional appeal from a longtime backer of the settler movement. ThisisRumorControl explains Israeli politics for the uninitiated.

2. Musharraf's diplomatic initiative on Kashmir. Al Jazeera says it was "welcomed" in Kashmir, but the boys over at Acorn think it's a nonstarter.

What are you folks watching?

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[UPDATE 10-26-04 3:00PM] by nadezhda

JC has a comment that points us to Eminem's just-released GOTV video of his new anti-Bush song. Salon's got some remarks here.

[UPDATE 2 10-27-04 11:30PM] by nadezhda

"Mosh" is now No. 1 video on MTV.