Will America's Democracy survive the Bush/Republican ballot-box Power Play

With the last presidential debate and candidate John McCain making, in my view, a hyperbolic and irresponsible statement about ACORN "destroying the fabric of our democracy", the McCain campaign has jumped desperately into the gutter with its only remaining campaign strategy: scare the voters into staying at home on election day. In fact, McCain had been the keynote speaker at an ACORN rally in 2006. McCain = erratic, pretty sad.

Barack Obama is right in calling this election historic but not only is it historic because the country faces an economic crisis and a recession, and two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This election is an historic test of the voting process in the United States. The previous two presidential elections were tainted and many would say illegitimate. In the election of 2000, George Bush lost the popular vote. It was only the electoral college, the state of Florida and a friendly Supreme Court which saved Bush from defeat.

In fact, Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris (and, wouldn't you know, she was Bush's campaign chair for Florida) had, before the election in 2000, begun a massive purge of Florida's voter registry, a purge that was aimed at African Americans, the poor and certain Democratic leaning counties in Florida. The purge was done recklessly, hastily and probably illegally. Then also there appeared a new and strange kind of ballot - the butterfly ballot, surely designed to be confusing and to cause errors by the voters. There were the problems with chads, machines jamming up, long lines and polling places moved and/or inaccessible. It took the Supreme Court to determine the winner of the election of 2000 and the Supreme Court elected Bush in a 5 to 4 vote.

The 2004 election for president was similarly tainted, the only big difference being the site of the theft and shenanigans, i.e. the state of Ohio. Similar to the 2000 election in Florida, the Ohio Secretary of State (overseer of elections) just happened to be a strong supporter of George Bush and, as chance would have it, the chair of the Bush campaign in Ohio (no conflict of interest there!!!). Once again the race for president, between Bush and Kerry, was extremely close, the deciding electoral votes coming down to the state of Ohio. Polls and exit polls had shown Kerry leading in both Florida and Ohio. But in Ohio (as in Florida previously) there were long lines at the polls, missing voting machines, malfunctioning voting machines and electronic voting machines that could be easily tampered with (by someone in the know). Most election officials had little idea how the new electronic machines operated and had to contact private (mostly Republican owned and operated) companies to fix any problem that might arise. The above is just a thumbnail sketch of the problems in Ohio and across the country in the 2004 election.

Here we are in 2008 and the McCain campaign is trying to suppress the vote and intimidate the voters by threatening ACORN. This is the new Republican campaign strategy, which has gone national and high-tech/digital: systematically suppress the vote; make it hard to vote; make it scary and confusing. This tactic is a very close cousin to the disenfranchisement of African American voters in the Jim Crow South. It took the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 to end this disenfranchisement.

Once again, the McCain campaign, the RNC and the Bush administration are going after their favorite target of late - ACORN. We will have to see if the Republican bullying and immoral tactics work and whether democracy can survive in the United STates.

Questions for Peggy Noonan: Is the Republican Revolution dead?

While Noonan makes some interesting observations in her recent criticism of the Republican party - far more interesting observations than say Limbaugh, Hannity or O'Reilly (who dominate Republican rightwing "thought" and "discourse"), I think she is still confused about the brand of Republican conservatism that has been sold to the country over the past 25 years. The main point, I think, is that the "Republican Revolution" has failed. Lowering taxes on the rich has not stimulated the economy or "unleashed" the power of the free market or increased government revenues - the dogma of supply-side economics and low taxation policy. Nor has increasing the wealth of the rich resulted in the "trickling down" of wealth to us regular folks. The far-right conservatism on social issues has hurt the country and dumbed it down - far-right conservatives denigrate science, learning, investigation, innovation, experimentation, curiosity as being "elitist" and "liberal". Now our schools, our students, our technology and our industries are falling behind the rest of the world's.

Quote from Noonan:
She (Palin) is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn't, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn't seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.
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First, let me deal with Joe the Plumber. He is neither thoughtful, persuasive or even honest. He is another rightwing dittohead parroting the dogma of low taxation. Joe is even unfamiliar with Obama's taxation policy. Joe also sounds like a racist, in addition to his lying (about his income) and his failure to pay his taxes.

Second, and more importantly:

What pain is Noonan referring to? And what is the source of this Republican pain? The pain that I see has been self-inflicted: All the Republican candidates running in the presidential primary turned out to be corrupt (Giuliani) or inept (Huckabee, Romney) and the Republicans ended up with John McCain as their nominee - John McCain who the rightwing base of the party never liked. John McCain, in his first important decision of his campaign, picked Sarah Palin for Vice President with little vetting or thought. A terrible mistake in judgement on McCain's part - in fact, unforgivable. Not only is Palin inexperienced and unqualified, but she is corrupt, scheming, vindictive and someone who will not, even with more experience, have the intellect to manage the government of one of the most powerful nations on earth.

Nonetheless, the rightwing loves Palin - that is what is so frightening about the Republican party.