Now that the election is all over (by the way, thanks, New Jersey, for not electing Tom Kean), some interesting media biases have been highlighted, along with other interesting results.
First, it appears that the people responsible for winning the election for Democrats (as opposed to losing it for Republicans) are moveon.org and Howard Dean, the first for organizing all sorts of local parties and phone calls to remind people to vote; and the second for getting Democrats back into states and counties they had long given up on, echoing the Republicans’ “we don’t give up, anywhere” strategy. Republicans reached out to people who would have to be fools to vote for them: blacks, Hispanics, and Jews. Democrats apparently take those groups for granted…even now. But with Democrats suddenly appearing everywhere in the nation, something we kind of knew became clear ot everyone except mainstream reporters and Fox News.
This country was never as committed to either party – or as liberal or conservative – as newspapers and TV talking heads would like to say it is.
Even in the great Republican sweep that brought chickenhawk/sleazebag moralist Newt Gingrich and his crew into power, the election was hardly a landslide except in terms of who won the elections. Less than half of Americans vote, and only a small percentage of voters determine the outcome of elections. We are about as 50/50 as you can get, and only a tiny effort percentage of people really decide the elections, when all is said and done. That’s why MoveOn.org really won the election for the Democrats – they made tens of thousands of phone calls, and if 10% of those worked, they got enough people elected to swing both houses of Congress. Ditto Howard Dean’s efforts in regions once considered solidly Republican. Even most solidly Republican districts have at least one third of voters going Democrat…and likewise solidly Democratic districts.
Americans are neither solidly neoconservative nor solidly liberal nor solidly conservative. We’re a great big mix, and there are six of one and half a dozen of the other.
