It’s not like we didn’t expect it. We in the Kerry camp (or, more correctly, the anything-but-Bush camp) had braced ourselves for a close race, a few weeks of legal wrangling during which we could ease into the idea of defeat like it was too-hot bathwater.
But to lose it all in one night, after so much work was done by millions inside and outside America, revealing Dubya’s lies, getting-out-the-vote in poor urban neighbourhoods, even hiring Bruce bloody Springsteen-it feels like a blow to the stomach.
For anyone who cares about difference, freedom of dissent, or an intelligent international politic, Christmas has been cancelled for the next four years. And the hard part about it is: we really tried this time. What more needs to be done? Where did we fuck up?
Voter turnout boomed, bringing millions of new people to the polls. Many of these new voters, pulling the levers or stroking the touch-screens of democracy for the first time, were from traditionally disenfranchised groups: the under-30s, the Latinos, the rural African-Americans. The way it was supposed to go-the way logic would dictate it should go-was that these neglected masses, looking for a little political agency, would vote for the party that had not systematically dismantled the progressive tax system; the party that had not sacrificed the lives of over 1,000 American soldiers for a fraudulent war; the party that had not roped unsuspecting military reservists-many lured by promises of scholarships-into that war on the basis of baldly manufactured misintelligence.
Having seen these casual atrocities doled out by the ruling party, the ever-more-odious Republicans, they would surely toss the bastards out of office.
That is the opposite of what actually happened.
Given the chance to make a fresh start, the American people instead redoubled their commitment to their own ruination. Having seen-and, we believe, comprehended-the moral myopia, the geopolitical idiocy, and the slick evangelical hucksterism of the 21st century Republican party, 51% of them chose to embrace it as their own.
In 2000, we could write off the W. Bush presidency because it was so obviously installed by the Supreme Court over the wishes of the popular vote. It was a comforting buffer: Bush was president, but he was obviously a pretender without the mandate of the popular vote. His presidency was an accident, a bookkeeping error by the Electoral College. Not this time. Mr. Bush won the Electoral College, he won the popular vote, the Republicans expanded their number in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Americans chose Bush this time, he was not chosen for them by the Supreme Court.
One of the more dispiriting examples of this trend on Tuesday was voters’ enthusiastic support for constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage.
Eleven states proposed specific ballot measures to prohibit gay marriages: not just to privilege heterosexual unions; not just to specify weakened “civil unions” for homosexuals. These ballot measures were, in most cases, explicitly designed to limit and curtail the civil rights of an identifiable minority. If the difference between yeas and nays had been narrower, perhaps we could imagine a silver lining in the result, but this was not the case. The closest vote ran about 60-40 against, and in many states the margin was much wider. In Mississippi, for example, 86 per cent of voters approved an amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Americans in 11 states were asked point-blank whether they wished to actively diminish the legal status of their fellow citizens, and they answered, unhesitatingly, yes. Conservative pundits crowed that the endorsements cut across divisions of party, gender, race, and class, as if the hatefulness of the result was excused by its broad appeal. Clearly, the gay rights movement in the United States has been crippled by the decisiveness of this vote; Americans have transformed their informal distaste for gays and lesbians into constitutional law. The country has made homosexuals an official underclass, unworthy of equality. It is a disgrace.
Their choice speaks of a powerful lack of reverence for humanity in general. People who would willingly curb the activities and rights of minorities are guilty of callousness that knows no bounds. Who’s next?
The voters’ lack of taste is shocking, bewildering, and above all, sad. This editorial may sound like it was written in a rage, and perhaps that was part of it. But we feel mostly that it was written in a mood of tremendous sadness: something important was lost on Tuesday, something more important than the White House.
