Number 75: October 27, 2004

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This week in Katydid:

• Fifty Percent Margin of Error
• Fighting the Partisan Hacks
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Fifty Percent Margin of Error
My wife and I have already cast our ballots, which means if on November 1 one of the presidential candidates announces, "I only hope that my candidacy will be pleasing in the eyes of my lord, Satan," I won't be able to change my vote. Arizona, where we live, is one of a growing number of states that allow early voting. In our case, we get to cast absentee ballots by mail.

Recently the polls have narrowed in our state, which may be in play. We vote here by marking paper ballots that are counted by optical scanners, so I have concerns that in some precinct mailroom an activist with a felt-tip marker palmed in her hand will blot my ballot if she doesn't like my choice. Additionally, I miss the satisfaction of watching my ballot run through the reader. Of course, I have to trust that the reader doesn't have a secret program that under-counts one out of every hundred votes for my candidate.

Early voting itself is already influencing the election. This morning, Dean Heller, the Secretary of State for Nevada, appeared on the cable news networks to report on the turnout for early voting. Dean Heller is a Republican and his announcement that the Democrats had a slight lead in early turnout may have been a partisan move on his part to encourage turnout for the party. Of course, the motivation may have been merely to bask in the brief spotlight shining on a potential swing state. Look for more of these early results from both parties over the next week.

All across the country party offices have been hit by vandalism. Political signs have been torn down or defaced. Here's how cynical I've become on the process: I'm inclined to believe that the parties are vandalizing and calling in bomb threats on themselves in order to make the other side look evil or desperate. (The strategist in me says you only have to do this once and your partisans will take over the process – though they can be difficult to contain.)

I thought I would be able to stop paying attention once I cast my vote, but it has actually increased my anxiety. My stress is high because a new poll comes out every day that puts one or the other candidate in the lead. Any day now, I expect to see a poll that puts Michael Badnarik ahead. As I've mentioned before, with the country evenly divided, every poll is within the margin of error. In fact, with an election this close you have to increase the sample size in order to reduce the error. In this case, the only valid sample size is one hundred percent. That result will be out Tuesday (maybe).

You should know who the winner is by the time you read next week's Katydid; however, today's Washington Post puts that in doubt:

"Tuesday's election will probably be decided in 11 states where polls currently show the race too tight to predict a winner. And, assuming the other states go as predicted, a computer analysis finds no fewer than 33 combinations in which those 11 states could divide to produce a 269 to 269 electoral tie."

No matter who wins this election, partisan bitterness stands to make this the longest lame duck presidency in history as positioning begins immediately for the next election. My expert in-depth analysis has crunched the numbers and reduced the number of possible outcomes to four:

1. Narrow victory for Bush
2. Narrow victory for Kerry
3. Landslide electoral win for Bush
4. Landslide electoral win for Kerry

My hope is for one of the last two outcomes, so that the losing party can slink off to lick their wounds and regroup rather than bicker over the outcome. The rhetoric on both sides has become so dark that it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of Armageddon. (Eerily enough, the first sign of the apocalypse is that the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.) Until next Tuesday, you should encourage as many people as possible to vote, but after the election, the best marketing strategy for the losing side is graciousness in defeat.

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Fighting the Partisan Hacks
For those who feel that the partisan spin has reached its nadir, you will love to watch John Stewart's recent appearance (QuickTime) on CNN's Crossfire. The program, which claims to air debate, is just so much partisan invective. Watching Crossfire gives you the same kind of reasoned debate you find down at your corner bar. Civility, which requires that when you interact with others that you at least tacitly acknowledge that they might be right, is a distant dream on this show.

Of the hosts, Paul Begala looked stricken because he clearly assumed John Stewart would be on his side. Tucker Carlson accused Stewart of being a poor guest by not being funny by challenging his hosts. (This is the very definition of disingenuous because Carlson had slides prepared to accuse Stewart of being partisan, which makes Carlson a poor host.) The audience got the joke, which was that Stewart was staging an intervention. He told the hosts that he loved them and he asked them (and the press by extension) to either stop pretending to be journalism, or to live up to their responsibility to hold power accountable.

In effect, Stewart said that not only is the press failing in their duty to report that the Emperor's new clothes are non-existent; they also need to stop patronizing the same tailor. In any kingdom, the jester gets to put power in its place, so long as it's funny. Stewart has made it clear on many occasions that he will satirize whoever happens to be in power, and the fact that the balance seems to be against Republicans has much to do with the fact that the party currently dominates all three branches of government.

Stewart's hosts may not have been laughing, but for those of us who want truth and integrity to prevail even if it costs our party the election, we were rolling on the floor and shouting 'Amen!"

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Kind regards, 
Kevin Troy Darling

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