America's hidden vote

[Guest guest]

p

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 22:16:30 -0700

Subject:Sidney Blumenthal: America's hidden vote

 

 

 

 

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1332231,00.html\

>

 

Comment

America's hidden vote

 

Sidney Blumenthal

Thursday October 21, 2004

The Guardian

 

Passing almost without notice earlier this month, the public release

of The Civil Rights Record of the George W Bush Administration - the

official staff report prepared by the US Civil Rights Commission -

whose submission is required by federal law, was blocked by the

Republican commissioners. None the less, it was posted on the

commission's website:

" This report finds that President Bush has neither exhibited

leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that

matched his words. "

 

Bush has held the Civil Rights Commission in contempt since its June

2001 report on Election Practices in Florida During the 2000 Campaign.

Then it concluded: " The commission's findings make one thing clear:

widespread voter disenfranchisement - not the dead-heat contest - was

the extraordinary feature in the Florida election ... The

disenfranchisement of Florida's voters fell most harshly on the

shoulders of black voters. "

 

Vast efforts to mobilise or suppress African-American, Hispanic and

Democratic voters have already reached a greater level of intensity than

in any modern campaign. The Republicans in Ohio, for example, have

attempted to toss out new Democratregistrations because it was claimed

they were written on the wrong weight of paper, a gambit overruled by a

federal court. From Pennsylvania to Arizona, a Republican consulting

firm is discouraging new Democratic voters from getting on the rolls.

 

Meanwhile, the Democratic party has more than 10,000 lawyers deployed to

defend against voter suppression, 2,000 stationed in Florida; civil

rights groups are sending out more than 6,000 lawyers. Bush v Gore

remains an open wound; and now the battle over voting rights, over

democracy itself, is being fought again.

 

Since 2002, when Republicans exploited terrorism to besmirch the

patriotism of Democrats in the midterm elections, what can only be

called a new Democratic party has been summoned into existence by

extra-party groups. More than 100,000 activists are tramping through the

precincts. In Ohio alone, more than 300,000 new Democratic voters have

been added, Cecile Richards, director of America Votes, told me. These

registrations of literally millions of new voters did not just happen;

they were organised.

 

The polls, nearly all showing a dead-even race, fail to account for

the new voters, who have no past records. They do not measure those

for whom a mobile is their main phone - 6% of the population - who

will vote Democrat by a margin of two-and-a-half to one.

 

The Democracy Corps poll, however, filters in newly registered voters.

Four months ago, the newly registered made up only 1% of the sample.

One month ago, they comprised 4%. Now they are at 7% and rising. And

they will vote for Kerry over Bush by 61% to 37%.

 

Bush's job approval has fallen now to 47 in this poll; presidents

below 50 always lose. Bush has not campaigned in Ohio for three weeks,

though he plans to stop there this week. Unemployment continues to

rise in the state. " There is no other explanation for his absence, "

says Stanley Greenberg, Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign pollster, " other

than his numbers go down when he's there. His position on jobs is

implausible. "

 

Democracy Corps research shows that best-case arguments for either

candidate shift no voters. The deciding factor will be turnout: the

higher the turnout the larger the vote for Democrats.

 

Since September 11 infused Bush with a mission, he has evoked hovering

angels, crusades, mushroom clouds, evildoers, shades of a universe of

death. His imagery induces a dynamic of paralysis before the threat

and fervour in embrace of his absolute reassurance and power. Dread

without end requires faith without limit.

 

Yet Bush found himself on the defensive when the New York Times

reported on the closed gathering of his campaign contributors, where

he revealed his radical programme for his second term - rightwing

capture of the supreme court, privatising social security, turning

over national land to the oil companies, more tax cuts. Kerry was

prompted to raise these issues. And Bush whined that Kerry was

practising " the politics of fear " . The next day Dick Cheney projected

terrorists exploding nuclear weapons within the US, and offered Bush

as saviour from looming apocalypse.

 

" No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting

and reasoning as terror, " wrote Edmund Burke. But not even the eve of

destruction will stifle turnout.

 

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is

Washington bureau chief of salon.com

--