Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Hey Doc --As Mo Udall once put it, the people have spoken, goddamn them.
They showed up. The Republican base, that is. The people who believe that their marriages are threatened by those of gay people, the people who believe there were WMD in Iraq and that Saddam waved a hankie at Mohammed Atta, the people who believe His eye is on every embryo. They all showed up, and there are more of them than there are of us. This was a faith-based electorate and, for whatever reason, their belief was stronger than our reality. This is a country I do not recognize any more.
The kids didn't vote. African-American turnout seems to have stayed pretty much the same as it was in 2000, despite all the talk. We lost seats in the Senate and in the House. (Daschle is a pretty momentous beat, despite the fact that he's not a wartime consigliore and never was.) They elected a polite David Duke in Louisiana, and someone who doesn't believe gay people should teach school in South Carolina, and a creep in Oklahoma, and somebody who's fairly obviously drifting into the fog in Kentucky. The pretty clearly indictable DeLay tactics in Texas worked like a charm. These are all victories won on grounds on which we cannot compete. When gay marriage trumps dead soldiers in Iraq, how do you run a race without dissolving into fantasy?
I don't know this country's mind any more, let alone its heart.
I started getting worried when my friend inside the Kerry bunker stopped calling, and then the nets were so damned slow about calling anything. (And NBC was precipitate in calling Ohio, no matter how it turns out, so little Russ and Jack Welch can congratulate each other this summer on Nantucket.) They had to know about New Hampshire sooner than they called it, and Minnesota and Michigan, neither of which was very close.
So, truly, no concession, no matter how much Russert wants one. Lawyer it up in Ohio to the very last second. Make them sweat. Make them bleed. But know that you ran this time for the president of a very different United States.
Later, that same day...Hey Doc --OK, now I'm starting to feel the gorge rise. Let us content ourselves with this. The country voted for these guys with its eyes open. Let us hear no complaining about "bait and switch," and a "uniter, not a divider," and on and on and on. It even returned a national legislature consonant with the incumbent's agenda. There will be permanent tax cuts that will institutionalize a national debt that will force some sort of evisceration of Social Security and Medicare. There will be continued military adventurism in the Middle East. There will be Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Chief Justice Antonin Scalia. There will be more lying and more vengeance.
So let there be no whining when your husband's National Guard obligation leaves him under fire for six extra months, or when Granny and Gramps are eating cat food, or when it become increasingly impossible to meet the economic needs of the middle-class family.
No complaining. None of it.
You wanted this guy. Now you have him, unleashed.
Hometown: Newton, MA
Hey Doc --As Mo Udall once put it, the people have spoken, goddamn them.
They showed up. The Republican base, that is. The people who believe that their marriages are threatened by those of gay people, the people who believe there were WMD in Iraq and that Saddam waved a hankie at Mohammed Atta, the people who believe His eye is on every embryo. They all showed up, and there are more of them than there are of us. This was a faith-based electorate and, for whatever reason, their belief was stronger than our reality. This is a country I do not recognize any more.
The kids didn't vote. African-American turnout seems to have stayed pretty much the same as it was in 2000, despite all the talk. We lost seats in the Senate and in the House. (Daschle is a pretty momentous beat, despite the fact that he's not a wartime consigliore and never was.) They elected a polite David Duke in Louisiana, and someone who doesn't believe gay people should teach school in South Carolina, and a creep in Oklahoma, and somebody who's fairly obviously drifting into the fog in Kentucky. The pretty clearly indictable DeLay tactics in Texas worked like a charm. These are all victories won on grounds on which we cannot compete. When gay marriage trumps dead soldiers in Iraq, how do you run a race without dissolving into fantasy?
I don't know this country's mind any more, let alone its heart.
I started getting worried when my friend inside the Kerry bunker stopped calling, and then the nets were so damned slow about calling anything. (And NBC was precipitate in calling Ohio, no matter how it turns out, so little Russ and Jack Welch can congratulate each other this summer on Nantucket.) They had to know about New Hampshire sooner than they called it, and Minnesota and Michigan, neither of which was very close.
So, truly, no concession, no matter how much Russert wants one. Lawyer it up in Ohio to the very last second. Make them sweat. Make them bleed. But know that you ran this time for the president of a very different United States.
Later, that same day...Hey Doc --OK, now I'm starting to feel the gorge rise. Let us content ourselves with this. The country voted for these guys with its eyes open. Let us hear no complaining about "bait and switch," and a "uniter, not a divider," and on and on and on. It even returned a national legislature consonant with the incumbent's agenda. There will be permanent tax cuts that will institutionalize a national debt that will force some sort of evisceration of Social Security and Medicare. There will be continued military adventurism in the Middle East. There will be Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Chief Justice Antonin Scalia. There will be more lying and more vengeance.
So let there be no whining when your husband's National Guard obligation leaves him under fire for six extra months, or when Granny and Gramps are eating cat food, or when it become increasingly impossible to meet the economic needs of the middle-class family.
No complaining. None of it.
You wanted this guy. Now you have him, unleashed.
