NOW PLAYING: the Banana Republic of America 10 November, 2000 Since I voted for Libertarian candidate Harry Browne and since the Congress is so evenly divided, I can't care too much who actually ends up in the Oral Office -- neither candidate is going to be able to push through any huge, sweeping changes. It's either "Socialism" or "Socialism Lite" anyway, but if I had my choice I suppose I'd rather have Dubya in charge. At least that would slow down the slide of the country into the depths a bit. But neither of them is going to do much for the cause of Liberty and Freedom. So it appears at this point that Algore has lost the Electoral College battle (and thus the Presidency) but has won the so-called "popular vote." (Though this county-by-county map of the election results gives an interesting view of how "popular" Algore was across the nation...) Well, unfortunately for Algore that's not how the US elects its President. It doesn't matter one bit who wins the popular vote -- it's irrelevent. The Constitution dictates that the States (via the Electoral College) elect the President. Of course, Algore will fight it to the end and I won't be too surprised if he finds some sneaky way to "win." I mean, this is it for him -- Hillary is going to run for President in 2004, regardless of what she's telling people now -- so if Algore doesn't get into the White House this time he's history. He'll have to go back to being a Tennessee slumlord or something, so it's a "win-at-all-costs" contest for him right now. (The fact that if Algore had managed to win his own "home" state of Tennessee, he'd be the President-elect is kinda ironic, isn't it?) Meanwhile, it looks like the United States is seriously and deeply divided on a number of levels. There's not only a "right" vs. "left" ideological divide, but also a racial divide (in many areas of the country 90% of blacks voted for Algore), a financial divide (in general, the folks earning above about $35,000/yr voted for Dubya, the people making less than that voted for Algore), an urban/rural divide (the cities voted for Algore, the outlands voted for Dubya), a geographical divide (every state in the South voted for Dubya, along with most of the Mountain and Midwestern states, while the Northeast and the Left Coast voted for Algore) and even an age divide (the wizened old geezers who could actually read directions chose Algore, the people in the 30-60 group mostly voted for Dubya, and the 25-and-under crowd didn't vote [or picked the Socialist Nader]). I don't see a way to easily reconcile these differences. There's not a whole lot of common ground left between the factions. Any "compromise" is going to leave one or both sides bitter and resentful. It's also significant that the voter turnout was essentially the same as it was in '96 (i.e., lackluster at about 50%) and that neither candidate actually got a majority of the popular vote, but they pretty evenly split the total number of votes between them. It would seem then, that half the people in this country don't care (or think that whatever they do won't matter anyway) and the other 50% are of opposite minds from each other. It causes me to wonder if, at this point, it's really fair to force, say, the people in Nebraska, where in every single county the vote was for Dubya, to live under Algore's regime of increased taxes and regulation. Likewise, the folks in Massachusetts who voted overwhelmingly for Algore would be forced to suffer under the rule of Dubya's "Compassionate Conservatism," which they heartily oppose. Is it time to think about splitting this country up? I dunno. Maybe we should just let Dubya and Algore choose their weapons and fight it out in a duel. Works for me. The TeeVee ratings on that one would be huge -- I'd watch, for sure.
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