alexist

One of the things I really hate about the Christian right-wing (particularly those of the Bush stripe) is the way they distort religion and the Bible: they're very much into selective quotation. So here's a bit of the Bible they would also do well to remember:

Amos 8:4-8

Hear this, you who devour the needy, decimating the poor of the land,
saying, "When will the month pass, so that we can sell grain; the Sabbatical [Year], so we can open the [stores of] grain; reduce the ephah and increase the shekel, and distort scales of deceit,
to purchase the poor with silver and the destitute for shoes; and we will sell the refuse of grain?"
The Lord has sworn by the Glory of Jacob, "I will never forget all their deeds."
Should not the land quake for this, and all its inhabitants will be destroyed? [Water] will rise like the river over all of it, and it will push aside and submerge [the land] as does the River of Egypt.

(From the Artscroll Stone Edition Tanach--items in brackets theirs.)

I swore I would just go to bed and read the results in the morning.

But it's so horribly addictive, reloading the BBC results.

And if I went to bed I couldn't sleep anyway.

This year's best was District 16:

Jose Serrano, Dem (i) 98,824 (95%)
Ali Mohamed, Rep 5,205 (5%)

And District 11 was good:
Major Owens, Dem 130,675 (93.6%)
Sol Lieberman, Con 4,739 (3.4%)
Lorraine Stevens, Inp 4,218 (3%)

Always a good sign when the other party doesn't even bother with a candidate!

(There are a bunch of districts in New York that are so solidly Democratic that the entire election is decided, if necessary, in the Democratic primary in September. Once you get the seat, it's yours for as long as you want it. Given the ethnic/social makeup of the area, it would be difficult to have anything else--though they did draw the 16th to ensure it would be Hispanic-majority.)

*sighs*

Though really, not too surprising. Awaiting 4 more years of anti-Americanism.

Thing is, people aren't necessarily stupid, or reactionary conservatives, for voting Bush. He was the devil we know. Kerry didn't push hard enough to come off as clear and convinced. Nuance works for detailed policy documents; it doesn't work for soundbites. People who mocked Kerry for what he said after the bin Laden tape don't get it--it's a completely artificial, pressurized situation in which you simply have to sound confident and sure. It wasn't enough to rely on being Not Bush. I suspect some of those swing voters weren't entirely happy voting Bush--but couldn't think of a reason to vote FOR Kerry.

The New York Times also had an interesting column yesterday--basically it said that at a national level Democrats came off as coastal, city elites, and it doesn't speak to people who are concerned about values, even if they don't agree with Bush's interpretation of them. The Republicans have taken over "values" and the Democrats are left with a kind of liberal neutrality that doesn't always play in places where people go to church every week. I was actually thinking something along these lines a couple of weeks ago. I'm a Democrat and always have been, but sometimes I feel slightly alienated, as if the party isn't quite sure what to do with married, straight, religious people.

I also think that the "polarization" of America is somewhat exaggerated. New York is considered a solid Democrat state--but we have a Republican governor and our House delegation is very mixed. Texas has Democrat representatives and its governor before Bush was a Democrat. And so on. It's the national parties that are polarized, with the Republicans in particular stuck very much to the right, detached from the liberal Republican tradition of the Northeast and Great Lakes. (Evangelism doesn't really play in states full of Catholics, Jews, and Lutherans.)