Tuesday’s events have been analyzed to death in all the media, including KVMR, so I’m not sure I can give you any new insight or say anything you haven’t already heard, but I’ll give it a shot. What choice do I have? It’s the only game in town today. All my predictions were wrong, but I’ll try not to let that stop me from making some more.

Starting with the local races. Olivia Diaz didn’t do quite as well as I thought she would, but I’m not especially surprised by Beason’s win with the national picture being what it was. I am surprised, however, that Bruce Conklin didn’t do better. Just a couple of years ago, he lost by a hair in a two-person race. Tuesday, he finished second in a three person race when neither of the other candidates appealed to what I presumed to be Conklin’s constituency. Both county supervisor races seem to demonstrate that the slow growth, environmentalist people have gone back to their old habit of disappearing on election day.

California results reinforce the reputation of the voters for being unpredictable. In the face of a national Republican tidal wave, California reelected Senator Barbara Boxer whose mere existence infuriates conservatives. The right wing is opposed to stem cell research, but California approved a bond issuance to finance it by a substantial margin. Amazingly, however, proposition 66 was defeated. That was the measure to modify the three strikes law to actually apply to violent criminals and not to petty thieves. During the last few days before the election, the TV stations were blanketed with an ad campaign showing photos of famous violent criminals and the governator saying that Prop 66 would result in the release of such people. It’s not surprising to hear politicians telling flagrant lies, but when the politician is already stinking rich, it’s a little harder to imagine what motivates him.

Okay. Presidential politics. For the details of speculation about electoral manipulation and dirty tricks, I refer you to Chamba’s commentary yesterday. I don’t know, but everything that was said there was plausible. Remember, the contractor who supplied the electronic voting equipment in Ohio is the same one who said he would do everything possible to ensure the election of Bush.

I predicted earlier this week that Kerry wouldn’t roll over as easily as Gore. I was right. He rolled over much easier. I heard someone say yesterday that Tuesday’s election rendered the Democrats irrelevant. I’m sure that’s true, at least for a couple of years or until the Bush crowd self destructs. Kerry’s defeat surely demonstrates the foolishness of the Democratic party moving toward the center and maybe even a little to the right on the political spectrum, but reports of its demise are probably exaggerated. It’s only been four years, after all, since the Democrats were in charge. The Democrats presented an unattractive candidate who failed to challenge Bush where he was vulnerable, but the Democrats and the Republicans performed the equivalent of a corporate merger a long time before Daimler and Chrysler. You can still buy a Mercedes or a Dodge, and you can still buy a Bush or a Kerry, but they’re not actually competing with each other. A lot of people who call themselves "liberal" or "progressive" talk about retaking control of the Democratic Party. Okay, that might work, but I suspect there are too many Republicans masquerading as Democrats for anyone to get away with that.

Personally, I’d prefer to see more than two parties represented in the political process, but so far, the Republicrats have succeeded in marginalizing all the alternative parties, and the vast majority of voters never even have considered abandoning two-party politics and geographical representation. It’s obsolete and it doesn’t really represent the people it pretends to represent, but I don’t expect to see its demise in my life.

The Bush crowd moved into the White House four years ago behaving like they had some kind of mandate, even though they lost the popular vote and took power under suspicious circumstances. That’s no longer the case. Notwithstanding any suspicions you may have about how they may have dealt from the bottom or pulled a hidden card or two out of the sleeve, as of Tuesday, they hold all the high cards in the deck. If you’re inclined to think the Bush crowd’s policies of making war, ignoring the scorn of the rest of the world and trashing the domestic economy are wrong, I predict you aint seen nothin’ yet. The US already is viewed by the rest of the world as an imperialist bully. Four more years of this stuff, and the US will be seen as a dangerous international criminal. The UN may be discussing proposals to send multinational armies to take Washington, D.C.

I’ve been saying, and I still believe that whether you’re going to retake the Democratic party or make an alternative party viable, you can’t do it by persuasion with the people who already vote. The only way to do it is to persuade the people who don’t vote to start voting. For the next four years, therefore, the only hope for change at the top is that the Bush crowd will go too far, crash and burn. They definitely have the potential.

On the other hand, the outcome of elections is never as bad as you think it might be. Go ahead and move to Canada, Mexico or Australia if you want to, but I’d advise you to wait and see. No matter how despicable the policies and actions of elected officials might be, they don’t usually affect our day to day lives all that much. When the people sleeping in doorways and under bridges start outnumbering the middle class, that’s when the wheels will come off. The elected officials may be dishonest, inept or corrupt, but it’s in their interest to make sure the middle class stays middle. If you’re traveling out of the country, however, I recommend you tell people you’re Canadian.