StudioGlyphic

As the results came in Tuesday night, I started to get depressed as I saw the red sweep across the country. When they finally called Florida for Bush, it was clear that Kerry would only be able to win by winning Ohio and 1 or 2 of the remaining states. Kerry had slight margins in the upper Midwest, but the other states were looking better for Bush and most of the precincts had reported in.

At this point, Bush was already ahead by 2-3% of the popular vote. That's the thing that killed me. This was supposed to be the election where anti-Bush sentiment and anger over 2000 swept millions of people to the polls. And it did. But a slightly greater number of people went to the polls to vote for Bush. After all we've been through in the last four years, the fact that 59 million people thought George Bush should be President was infuriating.

Then again, Kerry garnered 56 million votes, and as Glasstrack pointed out, these weren't people who necessarily loved Kerry. But we can be pretty sure they disagree with the Bush administration's record and agenda. That makes me feel better. It's a base from which we can build.

Furthermore, a big part of that Republican turnout was due to anti-gay marriage initiatives on ballots as well as a generally anti-gay campaign in the states that mattered. The news organizations refuse to translate for us, but the Bush-voters who said that "values" were most important really meant that "God hates fags." According to Jerry Falwell, that's one of the reasons why God allowed 9/11 to happen. If we keep tolerating homosexuals and liberals in this country, we'll see more Blue States attacked by Islamic fundamentalists doing God's will. Funny, that's how they see it, too.

But I digress.

So the campaign sort of boiled down to anti-Bush vs. anti-Gay, in my opinion, and anti-Gay won. For me, gay marriage is not really that big of a deal--I see it as an equal protection issue--and that's why this result completely blindsided me. Talk about stealth! But this makes me feel better because it means that a single issue pushed Republicans over the top by driving evangelicals out to the polls, and a single issue can be defused or sidestepped in the future. Plus you can't amend your state Constitution twice.

But let's get this straight:

If the Democrats are going to be successful in the future, they're going to have to go deep into swing state territory and get some human intelligence about what really matters to people. They've got to contest every seat from the top to the bottom, and run every campaign precinct by precinct, person to person. We did a pretty good job this time, but the Republicans are better at this than we are.

And finally, let's get a graphic that makes our 50-50 split actually look 50-50:

County by county, who voted for whom, and by what number of votes?