The Cellar - My one and only election rant

I have not been reading election threads. I have not been replying to them. That will probably include this thread, because I'm not interested in a debate. I don't give a damn about anybody else's opinion. (I didn't say you weren't entitled to it, I just said that I'm not interested in reading it and arguing it this week.) But I find I can't resist the urge to spout off about some things I've read.

The mandate. Sorry, Mr. Bush, you won a whopping 51% of the vote and Kerry received more votes than any other candidate in history except for yourself in this election. The winning electoral vote total will be one of the lowest for a sitting president. I'm not saying it's not a legitimate win. I'm just saying, let's not pretend that the nation rose up and elected Bush by unanimous acclamation.
The count. Franklin County, Ohio had an extra 3,000-odd votes credited to Bush in unofficial returns. Cartaret County, NC saw some 4,500 votes lost due to technical glitches. And I'm sure we will have reports of other irregularities popping up. This is a fucking embarassment. Don't get me wrong--I am not claiming that these errors, taken cumulatively, would invalidate Bush's win. And I don't believe they are the result of direct fraud on anyone's part. I think they're the result of shitty voting systems. And while I can accomodate freedom of conscience on most issues, this is one where I will brook no opposition: Anyone who does not believe that our votes should be counted in an accurate, dependable, and verifiable way, and that any voting system that does not allow this to happen reliably should be thrown out immediately, is un-American.
Many people have said that Democrats lost because they don't know how to talk about religion properly. I have to roll my eyes when I hear this one. Yes, maybe there's something in there for the party strategists to work on for next time. But come on. I wish I had a nickel for every time I've seen somebody write that Christians such as myself are not "real" Christians because we don't believe the right [double entendre intended] things--about the Bible, about religious involvement in government, etc.--and that we're headed straight to hell because of it. We saw a Roman Catholic ex-altar boy who regularly attends mass lose (including among Catholics) to an allegedly evangelical Christian man who coincidentally found God right before he was going to run for Governor and who by all accounts has practically never actually set foot in a church since. Simply saying that "Democrats need to 'get' religion" is just a shockingly broad oversimplification of the subject.
Closely related... Democrats are accused of being "condescending" and "insulting" to the Red State Voters (a term which is so breathtaking in its massive reductionism that it leaves me, well, breathless). Well look what I just wrote, there's nothing more condescending than telling people they're evil and they're going to hell, now is there? There is just as much bile flowing from right to left as left to right. All the railing against liberal elites, against the evil and corruption of the big coastal cities, about the moral bankruptcy and lack of patriotism of liberalis, is not insulting. Nope, not a bit. Sorry, pot, kettle, black.
Somebody wrote that Democrats are angry and hurt now, but they can't devolve into using hateful and derogatory language about their opponents... because... it's bad electoral politics. Bullshit. The Republicans have done it for years and by all accounts it's working pretty well for them.
Finally... the Democrats lost because they tried to be (depending on who's talking) too centrist, or Republicans light. They need to go back to our progressive roots... to embrace liberalism as both a label and an agenda. How can anybody say this with a straight face? Do you know how long it's been since the Democrats had a candidate like that? It was what, 8 months? Yeah, that whole Howard Dean thing worked out really well didn't it. I'm sorry, you can't reject the liberal candidate in favor of the centrist one and then say you wish you'd had a more liberal candidate.

All right, go back to your knitting. I'll shut up now. Reply if you want to, but I won't read it. Like I said, just have to vent a bit. It won't happen again.