Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Ohio again.
I don't mean by that question to trivialize the issue of election fraud. In a nation that required a Voting Rights Act to ensure all of its citizens equal access to the ballot box, few things are more worthy of serious concern. Election fraud — whenever committed, by whomever and for whatever purpose — is a threat to our political system. If we the people lose confidence in the integrity of our elections, we lose pretty much everything.
And if I were convinced that was what moved Kerry to speak out, I'd happily support him. But it seems obvious to me after two months of conspiracy theories that what motivates Kerry and many other Democrats isn't concern over election irregularities in general, but concern over election irregularities that may have benefited the other party.
He's a politician, so maybe it's naive to expect anything else.
Still, the talk has become tiresome. In listening to party loyalists obsess over how the election was "stolen," I'm reminded of something a former colleague, a white guy from the South, once wrote about the Civil War.
"For years after the war," he said, "Southern partisans vainly re-fought the Civil War battles, particularly the crucial second day of Gettysburg, as if trying to get a different answer to a math problem."
And if I were convinced that was what moved Kerry to speak out, I'd happily support him. But it seems obvious to me after two months of conspiracy theories that what motivates Kerry and many other Democrats isn't concern over election irregularities in general, but concern over election irregularities that may have benefited the other party.
He's a politician, so maybe it's naive to expect anything else.
Still, the talk has become tiresome. In listening to party loyalists obsess over how the election was "stolen," I'm reminded of something a former colleague, a white guy from the South, once wrote about the Civil War.
"For years after the war," he said, "Southern partisans vainly re-fought the Civil War battles, particularly the crucial second day of Gettysburg, as if trying to get a different answer to a math problem."
