Darn you, Michael Barone!
Compare my post from November first, entitled “Love is stronger than hate” with Michael Barone’s most recent column. My pre-election prediction:
Love is far more likely to motivate someone to fight rain and traffic and lines to vote tommorow. Love is far more likely to convince a friend, neighbor or family member in the final hours. Love is far more likely to turn ordinary citizens into zealous volunteers.I say this without fear of contradiction: in every instance where people have the opportunity to get off of their duff and support one candidate over the other, Bush has won handily. Consider the Iowa State Fair Straw Poll, the Weekly Reader, Channel One News and National Student/Parent mock elections. Bush wins all of them by landslides. Speaking of landslides, consider the AOL straw poll, in which Bush won the electoral college 535-3. Bush is even edging Kerry out in the 7-Eleven Presidential Coffee Cup Poll. Or, see Battlegrounders at National Review Online for multiple expressions of “I’ve never seen so many active Republican volunteers!” Love is a motivator.
Polls show the race tight because the pollsters go directly to people and ask them their preference. But elections don’t call you up over the weekend. You have to physically get up and go to the polling station–or at the very least, fill out, stamp and mail a ballot. Love will motivate people to do this far more often than hate will–perhaps not much more. But all it takes is a few.
Barone’s post-election reflection:
Love is stronger than hate. That is the lesson of the 2004 election results. Millions of Democrats and leftists have been seething with hatred for George W. Bush for years, and many of them lined up before the polls opened to cast their votes against him–one reason, apparently, that the exit poll results turned out to favor Democrats more than did the actual results. But Republicans full of love, or at least affection, for George W. Bush turned out steadily later in the day or sent in their ballots days before. They have watched the “old media” –the New York Times, the broadcast networks CBS, ABC, and NBC–beat up on Bush for the past year, and they have listened to the sneers and slurs directed at him by coastal elites for a long time. Now they had their chance to speak. They did so loudly and clearly, giving Bush the first popular-vote majority for president in 16 years.
And do I get cited? Of course not. But I do get a warm an tingly feeling of self-satisfaction, which is good enough for now.
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