Posted by
Michael Goodell on Monday, November 03, 2008 11:08:58 AM
After careful and anguished consideration, I have decided to vote for change tomorrow. After eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, I firmly believe that we need new faces in the White House. The only way to achieve this is by voting for change.
That is why I am voting for John McCain. If he is elected, he will represent regime change. He will be a new face in the White House. This is the change we need, and I believe we will be able to believe in the needed change he will be. Of course, this brings up the whole Sarah Palin issue. The crucial question is, can we as a nation afford to have a Vice President with no foreign policy experience? Now some might argue that Barack Obama doesn’t have any foreign policy experience either, but that is a completely different matter. Everyone knows it doesn’t matter if the President has no foreign policy experience, but it is crucial that the Vice President does. (How else will she know who to talk to and who to ignore when she travels abroad to attend funerals?).
By revealing my choice at this late date, I hope to generate a groundswell of support for McCain, that can allow him to come from behind to victory. He is already closing the gap in the polls, and there are a great many independents still waiting in the wings. If they swing McCain’s way, especially in the “crucial battleground” states, it may be enough for McCain to claim victory.
It isn’t likely, and in some ways, a McCain victory at this late date, after the media have virtually crowned Obama victor, is a frightening prospect. Mark Crispin Miller had an astounding article in Saturday’s “Wall Street Journal,” where he stated that Republican attempts to steal this election through fraud are unprecedented. His point is that by pointing at obvious, documented and in many cases criminally charged fraudulent behavior by radical groups such as ACORN, Republicans are trying to distract the public from their attempts to “purge voter rolls.”
Before the passage of HAVA, the Help America Vote Act, purging voter rolls was a legal and necessary act of housekeeping. It was one of the actions taken to avoid voter fraud. It helped keep the total of registered voters beneath the 100% of registered voters threshold. HAVA required registrars to keep questionable voters on the rolls for at least two Presidential election cycles, and more significantly, helped create an atmosphere in which simple, proper and prudent housekeeping became tarred with the brush of “vote suppression.”
There are a couple scenarios in which McCain can win, and neither is good. One is the much ballyhooed Bradley Effect, which purports that racists will tell pollsters that they intend to vote for a Black candidate in order to conceal their racism. In fact, there may well be many people for whom Obama’s race matters far less than his ideology, but who will not admit their opposition out of fear of being labeled racist. In this scenario, which is further complicated by the tendency of pollsters to inflate the number of Democrats and young voters, thereby artificially inflating Democrat support before the election, those on the left who have proven to be invested in shaking the public’s faith in our electoral process, will immediately raise the cry of theft and voter suppression.
Such an outcome is likely to result in civil disorder of nearly historic proportions. Coming on the heels of the stock market crash, a deep recession, and international instability, such an occurrence could have seriously damaging consequences.
The second, and more likely scenario, could see McCain close out all the disputed “battleground” states, resulting in his winning enough electoral votes to gain the White House, while losing the electoral vote, not by the statistically negligible amount that George W. Bush did in 2000, but by several million. Though this scenario might also provoke civil unrest, it will likely not be as severe as the first scenario. One certain result of this outcome would be a Constitutional Amendment to do away with the Electoral College, which will have the effect of the largest cities in the country determining elections from this point forward.
At the end of the day, these concerns should probably remain well within the realm of the speculative. From where I sit, even with the dramatic uptick in McCain supporters generated by my endorsement, it will probably not be enough to alter the outcome.
Should Obama win, my first reaction will be to take great pride in a nation which, within a little more than a generation, went from a country in which Black Americans were beaten and even killed merely for attempting to exercise their right to vote, to a nation in which a Black American could be elected President. Make no mistake about it. There is not another country in the civilized world in which such an outcome is even conceivable. It will be yet another reason for not just Michelle Obama, but for all Americans to be proud of their country.
My second reaction will be to fervently pray that I am wrong about Obama and what he stands for. I hold out little hope for my prayers to be answered. The Obama administration, aided and abetted by the Democrat majority in both houses of Congress, will take as their road map the reign of FDR, and embark upon a “100 Days” of rapid, far-reaching and ill-considered legislation which will alter the fabric of our society for years to come.
Sadly, the best result of an Obama election, that of putting to rest once and for all the pernicious role of race in our society, will not be forthcoming. I boldly predict that within 48 hours of Obama’s election, not one, but many commentators will remark that his election has given our nation a splendid “opportunity to open a long-overdue discussion on race.”