Polarization and Stolen Elections

There is an elephant in the room in the coming election and no one, on either side, is addressing it. Around the periphery occasionally you will hear a reference made to it but it is rare and usually silenced.

George Will wrote an article a couple of weeks ago talking about how far it would mean we have come as a nation, as regards race, if we cannot vote a black President out of office without it becoming a racial issue.

Chuck Todd broke the reporters rule and expressed emotion recently by stating that both sides, right and left, needed to stop disavowing any report, poll, or other piece of information that did not favor their side. This is not a Republican, Democrat issue, this is now a both sides issue.

When Romney trails Fox news says the polls are skewed. When Obama trails the polls must be an aberration. The recent claims by Jack Welch about the unemployment report being manipulated were a new low. Consider this, as a result of that fiasco Welch severed his relationship with Fortune magazine which criticized him and said he he will now publish only in The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ is conservative in it's outlook, this is no surprise, but are we really to the point where a magazine as venerable as this will become a right wing mouthpiece doubting government reports veracity. We are reaching a point just as Todd says that has no good ending.

When one looks back to recent elections we can see that the stage is set for a very troubling November. The 2000 election, Gore v Bush, was well documented and I do not wish to review the whole issue. That Gore won the popular vote is not in dispute, that more people in Florida " meant " to vote for Gore is rarely in doubt, and for those of us who thought of G W Bush as an abomination the Supreme Court placed him in office. The fact is Bush won by the rules that were present, and his side fought harder. Gore could have won that election so easily. Looking back his failure to use Bill Clinton as a campaign weapon and his basically turning his back on him means that Gore got what he deserved.

When Bill Clinton was elected an acquaintance of mine stated that he stole the election and everyone knew it. Perhaps I was naive at the time, I thought the idea of that was foolish. I still do not believe anybody thought that was a real possibility.

If any election has been stolen in my lifetime I think that 2004 was it. Most remember that as the year the exit polls were stating that Kerry would win. In the end he did not and remarkably it was easily accepted that in many states the exit polls had been wrong. Statistically over the last forty years the exit polls had never been wrong by more than a percentage point, and never enough to turn a race. Still John Kerry did not fight the issue , the press accepted the facts as given, and when a few lonely reporters sniffed around the story they were treated with derision by those on both sides.

That brings us to this election. The election of 2012. To me there is a great possibility of a very close race. A possibility of a split between the electoral college and the popular vote is real. In a few weeks we could be looking at a situation with recounts and demonstrations, court battles and accusations. And underneath all of this, whether we like it or not, will be the added bonus of racial tension.

What we should all hope for is that before anybody on either side of this election starts throwing bombs and accusations they should consider all that can go wrong in the aftermath of a disputed election.

It is getting close. Let's all take a deep breath.