It doesn't look good for Kerry-Edwards. With 100% of precincts reporting in Ohio, Bush has a 130,566 vote lead. Those in the know estimate that there are 175,000 provisional ballots. For Kerry to legitimately win Ohio, seventy-five percent of those ballots would have to prove legitimate and all of those seventy-five percent would have to break for Kerry. Not 74%, not 73%, but 75%. If 90% of the ballots prove legitimate, Kerry would have to gain 83% of those ballots to prevail over Bush.
No matter how you slice it, it's a tall order.
So, assuming that the present reality--Bush wins the popular vote by 51% and by more votes than any other president in history (even Reagan), and wins the electoral college 286-252--hold through today and the next few days, what does that mean?
First of all, the war on terror trumped healthcare and the economy, although the present economy is not only not terrible, it's very, very decent. Many of those who voted Bush back in precisely because of the war very significantly disagreed with many of the particulars of that war, but also agreed that his principles and convictions about the war are right.
But what commentators are only now beginning to realize is that moral issues swung this election in Bush's direction. Life and marriage issues clearly gave the president the victory. In all the states where bans on gay marriage were up for vote and won, they won by crushingly clear mandates. The voters said clearly: marriage is between a man and a woman. Bush's pro-life stance also clearly connected with voters.
One thing the commentators will have to come to terms with, though, is that it was not just the "evangelical Christians" who put this in the win column for Bush, but Roman Catholics and Orthodox and Anglo-Catholics as well. As populous as evangelicals are (and what an amorphous term "evangelical" is!), they could not have won so decisively as they did without Roman Catholics and Orthodox and Anglo-Catholics who take seriously the Church's moral doctrines.
In addition, this election was the coastal and upper Midwest liberals (to oversimplify a bit) versus the exurban/suburban and rural conservatives. The three states which are home to the three largest cities in American (Illinois/Chicago, New York/New York, California/Los Angeles) which would almost assuredly give the liberals a popular vote advantage were counterbalanced by "flyover" country. In this election the moral values and commonsense assessment of foreign policy of the "flyovers" won out over the urban "liberals." Flyovers said, "We don't want your moral picture to be our reality, and we prefer a president who is clear in his convictions on terrorism even if we don't always like the way he fights it."
Posted by Clifton at November 3, 2004 06:43 AM | TrackBack