BeldarBlog

Dubya's mandate

USA Today's state-by-state map (screencapped and edited here to remove the javascript bells and whistles) and accompanying text dramatically illustrate the "red-state versus blue-state" breakdown now that the final disputed states have been fairly definitively tallied.  The county-by-county breakdown is even more visually dramatic:

Of course, both of these graphics show the election results geographically rather than numerically, and the visual drama therefore is skewed by the fact that rural and less-heavily populated states and counties trended heavily Republican.  But the numbers — especially when looked at in a historical context — are also quite impressive, as Matthew Dowd's final campaign memo from Wednesday makes clear:

President Bush won a historic victory yesterday by defeating John Kerry by more than 3.5 million votes, 58.6 million to 55.1 million (51% to 48%) and winning the Electoral College 286 to 252. In doing so, President Bush:

• Becomes the first presidential candidate to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988.
• Received the most votes by any presidential candidate in history — over 58 million, even breaking President Reagan’s 1984 mark of 54.5 million votes.  [Updated figures actually show over 59.6 million — Beldar]
• Becomes the first President re-elected while gaining seats in the House and the Senate since 1936, and the first Republican President to be re-elected with House and Senate majorities since 1924.
• Received a higher percentage of the popular vote than any Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.
• Garnered 7 million more popular votes than in 2000 — more than twice the amount that President Clinton increased his vote between 1992 and 1996.
• Increased his percent of the vote from 2000 in 45 out of 50 states, including a 4 percent increase in John Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts.

President Bush ran just as strongly in the key battleground states as he did nationally. In the 14 most competitive states (AR, CO, FL, IA, MI, MN, MO, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, WI, and WV), President Bush won 51% of the vote to John Kerry’s 49% — an improvement of 2 points from his 2000 performance in those states. Yesterday also revealed that the Republican Party has made historic gains with minority voters and women. Exit polling revealed that President Bush won 42% of Hispanics (up from 35% in 2000), 11% of African-Americans (up from 9% in 2000), 24% of Jewish voters (up from 19% in 2000), and 47% of women (up from 43% in 2000). In Florida, 55% of Hispanic voters supported President Bush, an increase of 6 points from 2000.

Just as we predicted, undecided and late-deciding voters went to the President Bush by a small margin. Despite media predictions that Kerry would win up to 90% of late-deciding voters, exit polling reveals that President Bush won voters who decided in the week before the election, 51% to 48%.

Furthermore, as we predicted, yesterday was the first time in modern political history that an equal number of Republicans and Democrats turned out for a presidential election. The Democrats’ 4-point advantage in 2000 evaporated, with Republicans and Democrats both at 37% of the electorate in 2004.

Was the election a "landslide"?  No, it wasn't, either in the popular or electoral votes.  But it was a genuine "mandate" by almost any method of measuring.

By employing that term, I do not mean to suggest that Dubya's mandate gives him or the Republican party a license to ride rough-shod over their opponents.  Nor, despite the gloom-and-doom predictions from the political left and the celebrations from the political right, do I expect them to try to do so.  The reality of the situation is that the Republicans lack a filibuster-overriding majority in the Senate, and the actual working majority that President Bush will be able to command will vary from issue to issue, bill to bill, and nominee to nominee.

Where I expect his mandate to be most significant, however, are on the subjects of the Global War on Terrorism and domestic security.  Sen. Kerry's campaign refrain was that "a vote for Bush is a vote for four more years of the same" — and on those subjects, that is indeed what we should expect.  But Sen. Kerry's refrain was highly misleading to the extent it implied that Dubya's performance since 9/11 has been static, predictable, or one-dimensional.  In fact, while maintaining rhetorical consistency — which accounts for Dubya's so-called inability to "admit his mistakes" — his policies have been quite flexible, varied, and creative. 

The old saying is that "to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."  The United States military is the most profoundly powerful hammer, relative to any other comparable force, that any country has ever possessed throughout world history — and indeed, President Bush has shown himself willing to swing it.  But to extend the metaphor, Dubya has also shown an awareness that this country's mighty hammer is not the only tool in our toolbox. 

There were sound bases in international law for America to act, either unilaterally or with willing allies, to depose Saddam Hussein in 2002; and there were nontrivial arguments that President Bush could have done so without seeking further approval even from America's own Congress.  But Dubya decided to first get Congressional approval, and then to return to the United Nations for a final resolution (No. 1441) demanding that Saddam Hussein comply fully with its prior resolutions or face "serious consequences."  In so doing, he gave Saddam additional months to prepare for war and to hide his wrongdoing.  But it was essential that Saddam, and that other world leaders, fully understand that America is no paper tiger, and that they cannot count on America to give any other country an effective veto over its foreign policy and military options.  Tuesday's election results cannot fail to be understood by world leaders — friendly, neutral, or unfriendly — as anything other than a dramatic ratification of President Bush's overall strategy.

So when Dubya continues to put pressure on Iran or North Korea to reform their ways — when he again enlists the aid of other nations, like our NATO allies in dealing with Iran, or North Korea, Japan, China, and Russia in dealing with North Korea — even though the American President isn't yet swinging the hammer, the leaders of Iran and North Korea must be feeling like potential nails.  This, I submit, is a very good thing.

And even our non-state enemies, like the nutcase Osama bin Laden slinking from cave to spider hole, cannot fail to read the returns from Tuesday's election.  Bin Laden famously counted on America to react to 9/11 as it had to the Cole and Somalia and Lebanon.  I'd readily concede that he would have been wrong even had Clinton still been President, or had Gore been elected in 2000.  But it would not have been unreasonable for him and his ilk to at least think and hope that a President Kerry might have reacted more like Dubya's predecessors (yes, including the Republican ones) to future provocations less massive than 9/11, and that a President Kerry would be more constrained and less aggressive and methodical in pursuing their doom.  They cannot possibly be under any such illusions about George W. Bush.  And both they and whatever new recruits they summon to their banners of hate and terrorism can be under no illusions that the failing will of the American people will rescue them either.

Finally, but not at all insignificantly, Tuesday's election results constituted a mandate from the American people to its men and women in uniform.  Yes, Senator Kerry talked the talk about "supporting our troops" and "staying the course" and not "cutting and running."  But our troops could certainly be forgiven for doubting his sincerity, given his record of conspicuously failing to walk that walk, and the vocal and powerful elements within his party who not only refused to talk the talk, but ridiculed our troops' incredible accomplishments and undercut their ongoing missions at every opportunity.

In the only public opinion poll enshrined in our Constitution, the American public has spoken.  Through the mechanisms specified in that Constitution, the results of that polling have become abundantly clear.  Of course there are risks and uncertainties in the future; that would have been true too even had the result Tuesday gone the other way.  But President George W. Bush does indeed have a visible, demonstrable mandate to back his constitutional powers and his discharge of his constitutional responsibilities.  Without gloating, without belittling those whose votes were for his opponent, that is something that I am proud to celebrate.

Yesterday's big winners in the eyes of future world historians

My prediction:

Twenty-five years from now, yesterday's election victory will be regarded as a key step in the continuing spread of democratic freedom.  Although the indirect benefits from that spread of democracy will certainly be seen to have benefited Americans' domestic safety and security, the long-term big winners — in comparison to what was at risk, and what they will have gained — will be widely recognized to have been people in places like Iran and other repressed Middle Eastern nations, North Korea, and Cuba.

Blowing smoke from nether orifices

Taken from the Ohio Sec-State's website as of this posting:

 

Precincts Reporting: 99.90%
Office Candidate President/Vice President	Party	Votes	% Of Votes
Bush, George W.	Republican	2,780,285	50.98%
Kerry, John F.	Democratic	2,647,121	48.54%
Difference:		133,164	2.44%

Even if one assumes that there were 200,000 provisional ballots, every one of which is ruled valid, and that those 200,000 additional votes went to Sen. Kerry by a ridiculously high 67% margin (134,000 added to Sen. Kerry's total and 66,000 added to to Pres. Bush's), that would still leave Pres. Bush with total of 2,846,285 to Sen. Kerry's 2,781,121, leaving Pres. Bush with a margin of 65,164 votes.

One effect of the incredible closeness of the 2000 election in Florida was perhaps to create a misimpression in the minds of the public that recounts, challenges, and so forth can sway huge quantities of votes. 

Friends and neighbors, I'm no expert in election law, but I'm enough of a lawyer and a student of civics to tell you that no recount procedure is going to change a 65,164-vote margin.

Go ahead and color Ohio red for this election in permanent ink.  No amount of lawyering is going to flip this state.

Update (Wed Nov 3 @ 8:15am):  As of this posting, the Ohio Sec-State website shows a total of only 135,149 provisional ballots cast, but lacks any totals from 10 of 88 counties.  I don't know the names or population sizes of Ohio counties, but I find it hard to believe that the 10 unreported counties, plus whatever else comes in via mail or otherwise, are going to produce enough additional provisional ballots to get to the 250,000 numbers the Kerry campaign was touting last night.

Per CNN,

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell issued orders for counties by 2 p.m. Wednesday to report total numbers of provisional ballots. Counting of those ballots will not begin until Thursday, according to Blackwell's directive.

It is not clear how long the ballot-counting will take. Initially, Blackwell said the counting of provisional and absentee ballots would not begin for 11 days.

He said he could not immediately put an estimate on the number of those ballots but said 250,000 might not be out of the realm of possibility.

While he said the exact number of provisional ballots was unknown, he said it is "trending toward 175,000."

Blogospheric snapshot, from center- to far-left

A predictable continuum:

Gracious:  Andrew Sullivan:

IT'S OVER: President Bush is narrowly re-elected. It was a wild day with the biggest black eyes for exit pollsters. I wanted Kerry to win. I believed he'd be more able to unite the country at home, more fiscally conservative, more socially inclusive, and better able to rally the world in a more focused war on terror. I still do. But a slim majority of Americans disagreed. And I'm a big believer in the deep wisdom of the American people. They voted in huge numbers, and they made a judgment. Not a huge and decisive victory by any means. But at least a victory that is unlikely to be challenged. The president and his aides deserve congratulations. And so, I think, does Senator Kerry, whose campaign exceeded the low expectations of many of us.

FOR NOW: But the most fundamental fact of this campaign - and one of the reasons it has been so bitter - is that we are at war. Our opponents at home are not our enemies. The real enemy is the Jihadist terror network that, even now, is murdering innocents and coalition soldiers in Iraq. Our job now - all of us - is to support this president in that war, to back those troops, and to pray for victory. We saw yesterday, in the cold-blooded murder of a Dutch film-maker for his open criticism of Islamist misogyny, that the enemy is still at large; and aiming directly at our freedoms and security. In Fallujah, our troops are poised for a vital battle against terrorists and theocrats intent on derailing a free future for Iraq. Democracy is on the line there and throughout the world. I've been more than a little frustrated by the president's handling of this war in the past year; but we have to draw a line under that now. The past is the past. And George W. Bush is our president. He deserves a fresh start, a chance to prove himself again, and the constructive criticism of those of us who decided to back his opponent. He needs our prayers and our support for the enormous tasks still ahead of him. He has mine. Unequivocally.

Realistic:  Kevin Drum:

In other words, it doesn't look like the provisional ballots are going to save Kerry. I know that conclusion won't be popular with my readers, but that's the way I see it. We'll know more by Wednesday morning.

Sullenly silent so far:  Joshua Micah Marshall.

Predictably vulgar, deluded, and graceless:  Markos Moulitsas Zúniga a/k/a Kos.  I'm not going to debase my blog by quoting his filthy rant, and only offer the link for those seeking schadenfreude.

Funniest line I've read tonight

From NRO's The Corner:

ISN'T THIS FANTASTIC?! [John Podhoretz]

The media won't call it, even though it's happened. They're graceless. So is Kerry. They are tying themselves to this depressing loser. It's everything I ever wanted.

I so agree. In my view, a Kerry legal challenge in the face of a 3.7+ million popular vote majority for Bush just extends the parade the Vietnam veterans never had. Kerry hung them out to dry; now they get to watch him twist and squirm under torture.

In a victory for (small-d) democracy, Texas voters "re-enfranchised" in Congressional elections

Tonight the tenacious and pernicious effects of a pro-Democratic gerrymander dating back to 1991 were finally erased.  Due to the successful redistricting completed by the Texas Legislature in 2003 — the first and only redistricting completed by that body, in the due performance of its assigned duties under the state and federal constitutions, to account for the results of the 2000 Census (and Republicans have pledged that there will not be another until after the 2010 Census) — Texas' congressional representation in the next Congress will now reflect the Republicans' strong majority-party status in this state.  Republicans will hold 21 of 32 Congressional seats, or 66 percent of the total.  Dubya pulled just over 61 percent state-wide, suggesting that the pro-Republican tilt to the 2003 map is pretty mild and reasonably accurately reflects Texas' overall Republican-Democratic voter proportions.

My title for this post is tongue-in-cheek.  Those who've read my many, many past posts on the Texas redistricting will know that I've consistently objected to Democratic claims that redistricting — even highly partisan gerrymandering — "disenfranchises" voters.  Disenfranchisement means depriving someone of his right to vote.  Redistricting/gerrymandering doesn't do that; under both the old map and the new map, essentially every eligible voter in Texas who wanted to do so, was indeed able to cast his or her vote and have it counted.  One has a sacred right to vote, but one doesn't have a sacred right to have his or her preferred candidate win.

What the 2003 redistricting accomplished — within the limits imposed by the Voting Rights Act, which essentially transformed minority-race Democratic incumbents into untouchable sacred cows whose districts must remain gerrymandered to ensure their perpetual re-election — was to unpack Republicans (who'd previously had their votes purposefully diluted by the pro-Dem gerrymander in 1991) into a larger number of districts. 

The sacrificial lambs of the 2003 Texas redistricting and the 2004 Congressional election thus became incumbent white male Democrats who — stripped of their own gerrymandered advantages — turned out not to be so well beloved by their new mix of constituents as they'd claimed they would be.  Charlie Stenholm, Max Sandlin, Nick Lampson, and (most sweetly, because he was the architect of the earlier pro-Dem gerrymander) Martin Frost took dirt naps.  Another white male Dem incumbent, Chet Edwards, is leading as I write this, and if he indeed wins that will show that the redrawn districts were not entirely uncompetitive.  White male Dem incumbent Lloyd Doggett won, as expected — but only after moving to run in a new district that was created with the expectation that it would be Democratic-leaning and that the Dems would pick a hispanic candidate.  (El Patron Doggett used all of his many advantages of incumbency, fund-raising, and name recognition to squash his Democratic primary opponent, former judge Leticia Hinojosa; I'm still waiting for the Dems to scream "racism" and "sexism," but there's been a strange silence.)

I've consistently maintained that the Dems' resistance to redistricting was profoundly anti-(small-d)-democratic.  Yes, gerrymandering is brutal; yes, we should consider some sort of redistricting reform (although I've yet to see a plan that I could endorse unreservedly).  But tonight's Texas Congressional election results can be traced directly back not to the decisions of Texas voters who in 2002 put both chambers of the Legislature and the Lieutenant Governorship and Governorship into the hands of the Republicans.  Tom DeLay merely guided his statehouse colleagues in using the voting majorities that Texas voters had placed into Republican hands. 

As I wrote on October 18th, I believe that the nominally still-pending legal challenge to the 2003 map will be summarily rejected again by the three-judge panel that approved that map in January, and that the panel's decision will then be summarily affirmed, probably without oral argument or written opinion, by the Supreme Court.  Edwards' win effectively drives a final coffin nail into the argument that the Dems have no chance of prevailing in any of the non-minority-incumbent redrawn districts.

I'm well pleased.  It was a good night for small-d democracy in Texas.

(Footnote for out-of-state readers who remember Ra^thergate:  David Van Os, one-time lawyer for CBS News source Bill Burkett, was soundly trounced (60/40) in his race for a Texas Supreme Court seat by superbly qualified incumbent Scott Brister.)

Ohio Sec-State's presidential voting returns website

The official website is here.

I will state for the record that although protracted legal proceedings in Ohio and/or other states over the next few days or weeks would probably do wonders for my own blog's traffic, I would gladly forego that whole ordeal.

Beldar's nomination for the unsung hero of Election Day 2004

Readers of a certain age will remember the Mennen's Skin Bracer commercial in which droopy and foggy-eyed boxer Joe Frazier stared into his bathroom mirror, and then — after vigorously slapping his own cheeks with the product — suddenly appeared miraculously refreshed, exclaiming:  "Thanks!  I needed that!"

Today Hugh Hewitt (via this post and also, I suspect, some pointed and well-directed private emails and/or phone calls) performed that function for the right hemisphere of the blogosphere during the panic over the hugely misleading exit polling early in the day.  Someone of his stature — someone who'd be immediately noticed and seriously considered by other pundits and bloggers — badly needed to administer those sharp slaps.

And in near Butterfly Effect-fashion — Hugh being able to float like a butterfly (avoid giving offense), but sting like a bee (make his point forcefully) — it worked.  I don't know how many Bush voters who might otherwise have given up based on panic in the blogosphere, but instead took heart and voted — but I believe it was a non-negligible number.

Thanks, Hugh.  We needed that!

Update (Wed Nov 3 @ 8:55am):  Power Line also sings Hugh's praises.

Open election thread

Everything I have to say about the election before the returns come in, I'd already said — probably ten times — before the polls opened today.

But if you have something you'd like to say, here's a new thread for it!  (Please be civil and nonprofane, as always.)

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Update (Tue Nov 2 @ 6:10pm):  Actually, I do have something to say before any significant returns have come in — something that I think may express a genuinely widespread and bipartisan sentiment:

Thank you, men and women of the United States Armed Forces, and of the military forces from our gallant allies in the Global War on Terror, for putting your lives on the line — and in some cases giving up life or limb — to protect our freedom.

 

If anyone had asked me on 9/11/01 what the odds would be that Americans could go to the polls today without having suffered another major terrorist attack here sometime in the interim, I'd have confidently and grimly predicted more disasters.  Certainly our enemies would have attacked us, if they could have.  That they couldn't, and therefore didn't, we owe to you.  Regardless of the outcome of this election, you all have my profound gratitude and admiration and respect.

Michael Moore is proud to have Osama bin Laden mimic "Fahrenheit 9/11"

I cannot adequately express how much it disgusts me to read this, in Michael Moore's own boastful words on his own website, as part of his so-called pre-election letter to the President of the United States:

There he was, OBL, all tan and rested and on videotape (hey, did you get the feeling that he had a bootleg of my movie? Are there DVD players in those caves in Afghanistan?)

Instead of expressing shame or remorse that his bogus talking points have found their way into a pathological maniac's videotaped taunt of and threats to America — instead of emphatically disassociating himself from Osama bin Laden's use of his material — Michael Moore boasts and jokes of it.

I would defend to my death Michael Moore's First Amendment rights to make himself into the most offensive and ridiculous piece of excrement in the United States.  But there is no living American for whom I have more loathing.  That Sen. Kerry has not used Michael Moore for his own "Sister Soulja moment" makes me long for the political cunning or comparative marginal integrity, however you'd like to characterize it, of Bill Clinton.