Jethro vs. Fraser
If you're reading this, you probably don't like country music. Not real country music like Johnny Cash or George Jones, but today's country like Brooks & Dunn or Toby Keith. You probably don't like NASCAR either. And you think those Jeff Foxworthy comedy specials are corny.

And you probably didn't vote for Bush either.

Well, guess what? There are millions of people who love those things. And they voted on Tuesday too.

One of the handicaps Kerry faced was his long windedness, his tendency to use 20 words where one would have done. Also, oddly, the indeptitude of the Bush team made it harder to craft a simple message why he shouldn't have been re-elected. There are so many egregious examples that it's hard to sum up.

How many times have you been arguing with a conservative and you knew what you wanted to say but it came out like this, "But he led us into an unjust war and 1,000 American troops died and 100,000 civilians, and the Patriot Act is taking away our rights, and Cheney's secret energy task force meetings, and Bush was AWOL, and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are nuts and Lynne Cheney wrote a book about lesbianism on the prairie and those guys had all those deferments..."

Not pretty right? Conservatives just say, "Kerry is a liberal who wants gays to marry and won't protect our country from terrorists."

It's nice to be concise. The slogan for Coke isn't "The excellent soft drink that is really tasty with bubbles that sometimes go up your nose and tickle..." You get the point.

To liberals, Bush was like Jethro Bodine, running around barefoot with a piece of hay in his mouth. To conservatives, Kerry was like Fraser Crane, long-winded, self important, and pompous.

Guess what? Jethro won.

Lots of questions
I'm listening to Kerry's concession speech. He's relaying his conversation with the President and how they agreed that the country needed to be healed. I wish he had told Bush to screw. The divisions in this country have been caused by this hideous Administration. Arrogance, needless war, disregard for the Constitution, and fiscal irresponsibility are the hallmarks of the Bush team.

I'm left with a lot of questions:

* Can a Democrat from the East Coast ever get elected again as President? In the last 40 years, the only Dems elected president have been LBJ, Carter, and Clinton. Are we nearing some sort of litmus test where East Coast Dems should be eliminated from consideration for President? I'm thinking so and that goes for Hillary too. Who will they put forward next time? Hopefully, someone with a drawl.

* How dumb can people get? Recent surveys indicate that almost 3/4 of Bush supporters think Saddam was behind 9/11 and that we had discovered WMDs. These people are the definition of gleefully ignorant. They like being lied to. Their children and grandchildren will thank them when there's no Social Security or Medicare. And the God of so many of these avowed Christians will hold them to account for supporting a man who has killed more than 100,000 innocent civilians in Iraq.

* Can the Democratic party come back? Maybe, if people stay organized or motivated. After Goldwater got pummelled in the sixties, the conservative dug in their heels until they cam back to power. It took decades but they did it. Left leaning types need to do the same.

* How crazy will the next four years be? Get ready for Bush Unchained. Hell, Bush might even start drinking publicly and snorting lines of cocaine off the Constitution. Get ready for more dead soldiers and civilians, more debt, fewer jobs and civil rights, and more arrogance. Get ready for Colin Powell to resign, thus taking the breaks off the wagon as it rolls down the hill. Party!

Something wicked this way comes...
I'm going to bed. The networks are edging towards calling it for Bush. There's something really weird going on. Go back to when Saxby Chambliss beat Max Cleland in Georgia, despite exit polls that showed the opposite. Of course, there was electronic voting there.

The sad thing is, we'll never know. Tens of millions of people vote and are left with nothing but questions. And we're stuck with four more years of incompetence, war, and secrecy.

I'm assuming there are going to be multiple legal challenges, but who knows if they'll go anywhere? If they're going to fight this, the Dems better have a legal and pr strategy they can unleash tomorrow morning.

Just past midnight
Looks to me that whoever wins Ohio wins the whole enchilada. And of course, Ohio is the place where the Republicans were screwing with people's right to vote.

What do they know?
At this point, Bush is leading Kerry 193-112 in electoral votes. Something weird has been happening all night. Many of the pundits -- including those on Fox News -- seem to think Kerry is in a good position. Bill Kristol just said he'd rather be in Kerry's shoes than Bush's. I'm wondering what he knows that we don't.

I think Bush is trying to give off the air of inevitability. Seems the exit polls were way off. You have to wonder about the electronic voting. None of us, sitting our homes, know what is really happening, but I feel like something screwy is going on. I hear many of the Democratic counties in Florida haven't been counted yet and might not be until Thursday. Also, something weird is going on in Ohio.

I guess I was way off on my 9 o'clock prediction.

Is Novak dead?
Holy Guacamole! I just saw Robert Novak on CNN and man, did he look terrible. He looks thin and his combover is getting blown around a little bit. Outing undercover CIA agents must be more exhausting than I thought.

It's about 8 p.m.
Earlier, I was musing about how a Bush loss wouldn't just mean the dismissal of the disinterested, lazy GW. It would mean we would never have to see Laura, Dick and Lynne Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. unless they're appearing on a Fox News panel.

I felt pretty confident going into the election today. Still, these hours are nerve wracking. I think by 9 p.m. we'll have a pretty clear idea of what's happening.

At least, I hope.

Compare
This is from Charles Pierce, posted on Erik Alterman's MSNBC website. Compare it to Bush's behavior when he had to be shamed into coming out to see members of the Congressional Black Caucus who had demanded to see him.

"It occurred to me over the weekend that I haven't given a good reason why I will vote for John Kerry, and why I would vote for him even if he were running against, say, John McCain. (And even if McCain still had a political soul, which I've come to doubt.) Once, in Iowa, Kerry dropped in on a group of Vietnam veterans. Some of them liked him. Some of them didn't, largely because of the whole VVAW thing. (And, trust me, this was my first beat at the Boston Phoenix, and I discovered that the politics within the various Vietnam veteran's groups were desperate and bloody.) Kerry dismissed the staff, locked the door, blew off the rest of the schedule, and sat there and talked and argued with these guys until they were all exhausted. He wanted to talk to the people who disliked him more than he wanted to talk to anyone else. He gave them the respect of open debate.

Imagine the incumbent doing that. Imagine him sitting down in a room where half the people truly loathe him and everything he stands for, him and his ticket-only rallies, and his coddling staff, and his use of the Secret Service as cheap sidewalk bouncers. Imagine him hearing them out, debating them, giving them the respect of his knowledgeable disagreement. It is inconceivable. One can more easily imagine C-Plus Augustus's flapping his arms and flying to the top of the Washington Monument. Imagine that "character" is even at issue between these two men.

Somebody who was there in Iowa told me that story, and told me I couldn't use it, but that's too damn bad today. I am voting for John Kerry because it is a time for serious people who are strong enough in their heart to listen to anger and slander and calumny and to respond to it, not with the tinny bombast of an unearned office, and not with the cheesy legerdemain of concocted eminence, but with the strength to stay long enough to try to redeem it."

The night before
Last week, a Republican friend of mine who knows better than to discuss politics with me brought up an Ohio case where there were question marks about a number of new registered Democrat voters. You know, the usual, "They registered Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Mary Poppins."

So I asked him, "And how are these fictitious people going to vote?"

Silence. Then, I asked him about the heinous voter suppression and chicanery taking place across the country, from Ohio to Florida. Nice tricks like flyers in black neighborhoods telling them they might be arrested if they go and vote or push polling in Michigan where voters are asked over the phone, "How do you feel about John Kerry's support for gay marriage?" My friend didn't know anything about that, I suppose, because Matt Drudge didn't post anything about it on his website.

It's all over the internet and even some of the mainstream media, these incredibly un-American acts. Tonight, I heard that people who asked for absentee ballots in Florida weeks ago just received them today. Now they have to fill out their ballots and get them to the central post office by 9 p.m. tonight or their vote won't count.

Let's be honest: there is one side interested in repressing the vote. There is one side that doesn't believe Americans should choose their President.

It is sickening. Still, some people love Bush. I guess they like being scared. I got an e-mail today from a guy I used to coach kids' basketball with. He knows my political preference, which I assume is shared with all the other people who were included in the e-mail. He wrote an impassioned letter spelling out why we should consider voting for Bush. He thought Bush was best prepared to deal with the threats North Korea and Iran pose. I thought to myself, "Do you have your head up your ass? Haven't you seen what a disinterested, lazy, easily led President can do in one country? Why on Earth would you want more of the same?"

I didn't bother e-mailing him back. The chances of me changing his mind are about the same of me changing his.

Today, I saw footage of Curt Schilling on the stump for Bush. I couldn't get mad at the guy who helped the Sox win the World Series. While Schilling, a true tough guy, spoke, Bush stood to the side with that weird stance of his, like a gunfighter ready to draw or a kid who just lifted weights for the first time and is having a hard time putting his hands back to his side.

If you're someone who makes over $200,000 and you care about your money more than what goes on in the world, you should vote for Bush. In reality, what happens in Iraq doesn't affect you personally unless you know some poor bastard who is blown to bits over there. It's a sick mindset to have -- this total divorce from a shared society -- but some have it.

I have two Republican friends and a cousin who all are voting for Kerry. They may be holding their noses while they do it but they are nonetheless. I know one Democrat who is switching over to Bush and that is because she believes God speaks through him. That's what David Koresh's followers thought too.

I'm proud to be a liberal; I think the military's philosophy that a unit is only as strong as its weakest member translates to general society too. I have friends who are proud of their conservative roots. The ones who are truly conservative -- in matters of worldview, government intrusion in our lives, fiscal responsibility, and in fighting the real terrorists -- are voting for Kerry.

And that's just one reason he'll win.

The night before
Last week, a Republican friend of mine who knows better than to discuss politics with me brought up an Ohio case where there were question marks about a number of new registered Democrat voters. You know, the usual, "They registered Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Mary Poppins."

So I asked him, "And how are these fictitious people going to vote?"

Silence. Then, I asked him about the heinous voter suppression and chicanery taking place across the country, from Ohio to Florida. Nice tricks like flyers in black neighborhoods telling them they might be arrested if they go and vote or push polling in Michigan where voters are asked over the phone, "How do you feel about John Kerry's support for gay marriage?" My friend didn't know anything about that, I suppose, because Matt Drudge didn't post anything about it on his website.

It's all over the internet and even some of the mainstream media, these incredibly un-American acts. Tonight, I heard that people who asked for absentee ballots in Florida weeks ago just received them today. Now they have to fill out their ballots and get them to the central post office by 9 p.m. tonight or their vote won't count.

Let's be honest: there is one side interested in repressing the vote. There is one side that doesn't believe Americans should choose their President.

It is sickening. Still, some people love Bush. I guess they like being scared. I got an e-mail today from a guy I used to coach kids' basketball with. He knows my political preference, which I assume is shared with all the other people who were included in the e-mail. He wrote an impassioned letter spelling out why we should consider voting for Bush. He thought Bush was best prepared to deal with the threats North Korea and Iran pose. I thought to myself, "Do you have your head up your ass? Haven't you seen what a disinterested, lazy, easily led President can do in one country? Why on Earth would you want more of the same?"

I didn't bother e-mailing him back. The chances of me changing his mind are about the same of me changing his.

Today, I saw footage of Curt Schilling on the stump for Bush. I couldn't get mad at the guy who helped the Sox win the World Series. While Schilling, a true tough guy, spoke, Bush stood to the side with that weird stance of his, like a gunfighter ready to draw or a kid who just lifted weights for the first time and is having a hard time putting his hands back to his side.

If you're someone who makes over $200,000 and you care about your money more than what goes on in the world, you should vote for Bush. In reality, what happens in Iraq doesn't affect you personally unless you know some poor bastard who is blown to bits over there. It's a sick mindset to have -- this total divorce from a shared society -- but some have it.

I have two Republican friends and a cousin who all are voting for Kerry. They may be holding their noses while they do it but they are nonetheless. I know one Democrat who is switching over to Bush and that is because she believes God speaks through him. That's what David Koresh's followers thought too.

I'm proud to be a liberal; I think the military's philosophy that a unit is only as strong as its weakest member translates to general society too. I have friends who are proud of their conservative roots. The ones who are truly conservative -- in matters of worldview, government intrusion in our lives, fiscal responsibility, and in fighting the real terrorists -- are voting for Kerry.

And that's just one reason he'll win.