Sunday, July 11, 2004
Will we have an election?
The folks over at Seeing the Forest (the other blog where I've occasionally posted since hanging my old blog up last November) are wondering aloud if we're even going to have an election in November.
John Emerson (aka Zizka) even goes so far as to posit that, if we have one and Kerry wins, we won't get our new president "on time."
Hmmm. If W and the boys are really far behind and the "a vote for Kerry-Edwards is a vote for Osama" argument doesn't work, would they postpone the election? Worse yet, having lost the election, would W and the boys let Kerry and Edwards have the White House?
As a historian, this is an interesting thing to ponder. Even the Federalists, despite their hatred of Jefferson, eventually let him have the election and the White House in 1800. (If you recall, the lame duck Federalist-controlled congress had to decide who won the election because Burr and Jefferson got the same number of electoral votes.) Many in the world were quite surprised that there was a peaceful handover of the White House in 1800.
(And there are, I would contend, a rather uncomfortable number of parallels between the Federalists and the current Republicans -- for more on this, read one of my first columns for the History News Network back in June of 2002.)
As for my current opinion on the question, I'll put it this way: having watched W and his administration reach unparalleled levels of public mendacity for nearly four years now, there really isn't a damn thing that I put past these guys.
John Emerson (aka Zizka) even goes so far as to posit that, if we have one and Kerry wins, we won't get our new president "on time."
Hmmm. If W and the boys are really far behind and the "a vote for Kerry-Edwards is a vote for Osama" argument doesn't work, would they postpone the election? Worse yet, having lost the election, would W and the boys let Kerry and Edwards have the White House?
As a historian, this is an interesting thing to ponder. Even the Federalists, despite their hatred of Jefferson, eventually let him have the election and the White House in 1800. (If you recall, the lame duck Federalist-controlled congress had to decide who won the election because Burr and Jefferson got the same number of electoral votes.) Many in the world were quite surprised that there was a peaceful handover of the White House in 1800.
(And there are, I would contend, a rather uncomfortable number of parallels between the Federalists and the current Republicans -- for more on this, read one of my first columns for the History News Network back in June of 2002.)
As for my current opinion on the question, I'll put it this way: having watched W and his administration reach unparalleled levels of public mendacity for nearly four years now, there really isn't a damn thing that I put past these guys.
