Thursday, November 04, 2004

I will serve all Americans, so help me God


My cat just received an email from George Bush himself, thanking her for her work on the campaign (they must be confusing her with another cat). “At every stop I asked you to make the calls, put up the signs, talk to your neighbors, and get out the vote.” What a very Norman Rockwell image of electioneering. Did you notice the major element missing from that description (not counting the deal with the devil and the virgin sacrifices): money. He spent over a billion dollars to buy his “re”-election, no doubt all raised at bake sales, where cherry pies baked by women in aprons were eaten by freckle-faced boys, but he doesn’t mention that billion dollars.

To think we used to be shocked by the Pentagon spending $500 on a toilet seat. Somebody just paid over $1,000,000,000 for George W. Bush. Dude, you were SO over-charged!

Much of the email repeated his victory speech, with the occasional creepy addition: “I will serve all Americans, so help me God.” Somehow I don’t think atheist Americans feel especially served.

Wait... I will serve all Americans... OH MY GOD, IT’S A COOK BOOK! IT’S A COOK BOOK!!

So it was incumbency all round. A WaPo editorial gives these figures: only 7 House incumbents lost, even fewer than last time. 95% of Reps won with margins over 10%, 83% with more than 20. I believe here in Calif., all the state senate & assembly incumbents were returned. I’ll be curious, when the counting’s finished, to see the figures (which are always very hard to find) for national voting by party. And state voting. DeLay’s contribution to turnover was the irregular redistricting of Texas, which removed 4 of those 7 incumbents. But how many Texans voted D, how many R; in other words, did the redistricting increase the distance between votes and representation?

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