Bush Wins!

I'm not surprised but I am happy.

Disclaimer: I was a little bit nervous...after all, I live in an area that is so liberal that I cast my vote with the full knowledge that it was a vote in protest rather than because it could possibly have an effect.

But I did believe that Bush would win...the polling showed it. Also, less factual, but more convincingly to my way of thinking, too many Kerry voters were really just Bush haters. I could not make myself believe that hatred would choose the next president.



So, last night I was primarily watching Fox News and CNN. You know when it was that I knew, that I really knew, that Bush had won?

Not when Fox News declared Ohio for Bush, although that was definitely a step in the right direction. No, it was when I was watching CNN.

CNN hadn't declared Ohio yet and were explaining why they hadn't. The tortuous explanation they were giving for why the Kerry campaign said they hadn't lost Ohio yet* wasn't the reason I knew, although that was pretty pathetic.

No, the moment I knew was when various commentators on CNN began backpedaling. From reasonably straight commentary about counting votes and comparing numbers, commentator after commentator began saying things like "the man who becomes president will have to work with and be inclusive of the rest of the country" and "this election wasn't really about things like economic issues, it was really social issues, like gay rights.** And that is a difficult thing for the millions of people who are now going to feel left behind and will wonder if they recognize the country they're living in."

When they started saying that, they were conceding defeat, even if Kerry wasn't ready yet.



*At the time, Bush was 120,000 votes ahead with ~95% of the precincts reporting. The Kerry campaign claimed that the remaining ~5% of the precincts would diminish that lead to 50,000 votes without offering any reason for believing that (e.g. the remaining precincts were overwhelmingly democratic). Then, they further claimed that the 250,000 provisional ballots (a number that far exceeded any Ohio official's estimate) would result in at least 180,000 counted ballots and that those would break nearly 2 to 1 in Kerry's favor.

**By the way, WTF? Yes, social issues were important--as were economic issues, foreign policy and terrorism. Anyone who claims, especially after the fact, that a presidential campaign which rarely focused on social issues (and certainly not to the exclusion of the other major campaign issues) was solely about social issues is just deluding himself.