BUSH'S BOHOS. I've been hearing a lot of stories lately, here and elsewhere, of hard-working, decent people of cosmopolitan tastes whose votes for Bush I am invited to respect.

These folks read The Onion, they go to the theatre (except when they don't like the director's politics, then they abstain -- hey, I guess my going to see Team America proves that Democrats have no moral center!), they listen to both C&W and indie rock (and would probably refuse to believe that I, an unrepentant Kerry voter, can appreciate and have even played in both C&W and indie rock bands), and all that good stuff.

But they couldn't vote for Kerry because he betrayed the Democrats' "old, Kennedyesque liberal ideals (anti-authoritarianism, tolerance of other Americans)" (while their vote for Bush was a vote "for the ideals that once formed the Democratic party’s base"). And because he demonized the rich, talked about his Vietnam service, etc.

They are full of advice for their ex-comrades, as are their readers, but while the readers' advice tends to be of the fuck-off-and-die variety ("No compromise with a collection of DEFEATISTS headed by Kennedy,Pelosi,Dean,fueled by Michael Moore insanity is acceptable... For one world view to prosper the other must wither and die"), the kinder, gentler Bush voters advise more in sorrow than in anger. In fact, some claim to have "more respect for Kerry than do many of the people who voted for him." (With respect like that, who needs contempt?) But there was all that "shameful hetero-bashing." How can you vote for a guy like that, much as you respect him?

And they allow as how they might vote Democratic sometime if Democrats become more Republican.

They all sound like perfectly reasonable people, and I appreciate the time they've spent telling me how reasonable they are. But my response was written long ago:

Yes, that's very pretty. I heard a story once. As a matter of fact, I've heard a lot of stories in my lifetime. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlor downstairs. "Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid," it'd always begin. Huh. I guess neither one of our stories was very funny.

Typical liberal me, invoking discredited Hollywood morality.

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. New York, I love you more than you'll every know. That is why I compare you to a woman babbling to herself in a public place.

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES. A very bright commenter to this site says my previous post is "snotty and condescending." Well, she certainly passes the reading comprehension test.

But I must respectfully (yes, I can do things respectfully) push back on this part of her response:

Kevin Drum has a good recent post on the stupidity of indulging in sneers at the expense of people whose votes we'll need next time out. Perhaps, living in NYC, you don't have much contact with any kind of cross-section of Bush voters; the ones you see on TV and quoted in the papers are no doubt selected for their colorful boobishness. Tho' I live in a blue area (SF Bay) I have dealings with many Bush voters, and while some are insufferable, others are fine people (and far from stupid). I don't understand why they vote the way they do; but I think they are reachable. For sure they are not contemptible.

First things first. I was raised in the Outland and know many outlanders. As with most people's generalizations, I here made an unstated but (among literate people, I would think) tacit exception for those people who do not fit the bill. That's why I said the flyover was "mainly... Jesus freaks and neo-Rotarians," rather than exclusively so. I mean, why should Chapel Hill suffer for the rest of North Carolina?

Now, I can understand why some people would want -- no, need -- to figure out why the Bush people voted the way they did. Take, for example, Democratic Party operatives or fans -- people who have faith, people who think that yes, dammit, the system can work. Their goal, and in some cases their livelihood, is to try and get some of those Bush folk to vote Democratic next time.

Snotty condenscension certainly won't work for that. So you have to have sit and talk to them, try to "reach" them, get to know their feelings -- whether in a tavern or in a focus group - to find a way to address their feelings the next time you run a candidate...

...who, if you really want to sway this crowd, will probably resemble Joe Lieberman. Except, of course, for the Jewishness.

Fortunately that ain't my job.

I do know why these guys voted the way they did. They're pissed/scared about gay marriage. They think rampaging deficits, disappearing job security, and an increasingly feudal relationship between boss and worker are all fine so long as Uncle Sam sends them a $300 tax rebate every so often. And they think John Kerry would do a worse job of the War on Whatever than the author of the Iraq catastrophe.

Now, there are all kinds of words you could use for people who think that way, and "Jesus freaks and neo-Rotarians" are among the more polite options. You should really be applauding my restraint.

This isn't a disagreement on political beliefs, this is a disagreement on the direction of up and down and the color of black and white. These people think that the marriage of homosexuals imperils their own marital vows, for Chrissakes. That's not a (harrumph, harrumph) issue on which intelligent people may disagree. That's lunatic bullshit.

And you can't talk that away. Kerry sold out so much on the gay marriage as to closely resemble Bush, and still the yokels waddled into town to vote against him because they knew he didn't mean it -- that he still had a soft spot for them queers. Despite the comical assurances of guys like Michael Totten that the Bush base comprises cosmopolitans such as themselves, anyone who's been paying attention over the past 20 years knows how the term "moral values" translates in this context. (You'll get a more honest assessment from Stanley Kurtz, who has no cool factor to defend, nor any latte-drinking pals to defend it to).

Meanwhile we have guys like the Ole Perfesser telling his congregation that Snarky Carboard Signs in San Francisco = Entire Democratic Party. If I spent the next four years knitting lace doilies for my Republican friends, if we all did, come election time Misha would post a picture of a guy in a gold Speedo holding a BUSH = HITLER sign and all the yahoos would come running again to vote down whatever variant of the gay menace is in fashion that year.

So fuck it. Politics is over this season. I'll just have to settle for the truth.

A HOUSE NEAR THE ZOO. Being a positive sort, I can come up with all sorts of silver linings:

• Inevitable "Who needs stem cells anyway?" article by Perfesser Reynolds.
• Fewer young men competing for jobs and women, thanks to Iran War and related draft.
• Economic collapse finally brings Manhattan rents down to affordable levels.
• Wider Second-Amendement franchise finally allows me the arsenal I need to take a few of the bastards with me during my final rampage.

And so on. While I can't say I'm happy with the results of the election, I'm not shattered. Hope springs eternal, but once you pass a certain emotional age, you learn not to lean on it too hard.

That Rove would roust enough rednecks out of the woods to put Bush over and establish several fag-free zones across the country was always a strong possibility, and when it came to pass it came not as a shock but as an unpleasant reminder that somewhere West of the Hudson there is a large land mass populated mainly by Jesus freaks and neo-Rotarians who are, by some ancient political accident, our fellow-countrymen. We have managed to insulate ourselves from most of their depradations pretty well; though we do have to send them far larger tax revenues than we ever get back, it is all in all a pretty good deal.

Of course, we may have to throw up a few more sandbags twixt them and us when Fred Phelps ascends to the Supreme Court or the Anti-Witchcraft Amendment sails through the new Congress, but let's worry about that later. For now we'll just return to our vantage point and continue taking notes for our natural history of Boobus Americanus. Our predecessor at that task, Mencken, when asked why he remained in a country whose citizens he considered imbeciles, replied, "Why do men go to zoos?" For those of us with functioning frontal lobes, there is always some amusement to be gleaned from even the most desperate of situations, so long as the wild animals are kept in their cages and the home to which we return after a day's entertainment is sufficiently far upwind of the smell.

LET'S GET PARANOID! Start vomiting before you start drinking -- TAPped is posting "voter suppression" updates from around this wonderful country of ours throughout the day. Or you can pick a state and worry about it: Ohio Voter Suppression News will suppress your appetite for sure. And then there's Florida Watch Out -- wait, that's actually a letter from some dude on a road trip to the Sunshine State ("I hope I see some titties!"). Well, that's kind of nauseating too.

And the dogs and hoses haven't even come out yet.

UPDATE. On a lighter note, Suburban Guerrilla is posting some lovely election-day stories. No, I can't vouch for their authenticity. But they are a nice alternative for those of you who are not poised with torches, waiting only for the cry of "Tilden or Blood!" to spring into action.

UPDATE II. I'll be too busy biting my nails. Blog's off till tomorrow. There'll still be plenty of election news then, I'm sure.

YOU KNOW, SOMEDAY THIS WAR'S GOING TO END. As mad as it has all seemed, the real madness starts in a few minutes in Dixville Notch and will continue for, oh, who knows how long.

It is eerie to see all the supers, promos, and ads for toll-free voter help lines, which, circumstances strongly imply, are to be availed when black-sunglassed thugs inform your poll workers, "This man/woman is a felon/illegal alien/Canadian/dead person, have him/her fill out a provisional ballot which will mysteriously turn up in a landfill seven weeks later." Electoral fraud has a long and distinguished history in this country, but I can't remember a time when it was so much and so widely discussed before a national election.

I have some dark thoughts about this, but let us, as they say, give the system a chance and hope that the swarms of lawyers, observers, and operatives out there will mainly serve to intimidate each other rather than voters. I take comfort from this story (found at Atrios) involving some bollocksed Daytona Beach ballots: "When the error was discovered Monday, representatives from both parties were notified. Both sides then witnessed the removal of the ballots and their storage in the vault. The canvassing board will meet Monday to discuss how to recount the ballots."

Which will be accomplished, one hopes, under public scrutiny, with no bourgeois rioters allowed to disrupt the process. If they are, though, we'll all know about it sooner than last time.

The early warnings we've received wrack the nerves, true, but forewarned is forearmed. This time, the whole world is indeed watching.

KEEP GRANDPA AWAY FROM THE KEG. Newsday reports:

[Novelist Tom] Wolfe, known for his trademark white suits, has a new novel out, "I Am Charlotte Simmons," about youthful hedonism on a college campus.

Wolfe said he went to campuses including Stanford, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the University of Florida in Gainesville and attended fraternity parties as part of his research.

"Very few of the students had any idea who I was," he says. "I was so old, and I always wore a necktie -- I must have seemed somewhat odd to them."

I'm sure Wolfe was just taking in the lingo and day-to-day manners, but I would really like to think he was seeking out examples of "youthful hedonism":

"That young lady seems to have passed out. Is one of you going to have non-consensual sex with her?"

"I'm just resting my eyes. Jason, doesn't your grandfather have a hotel room or something?"

"He's not my grandfather! Mr. Wolfe, we're trying to study, please stop bothering us."

"Don't mind me, I'll just take a few more notes and head off to the Hilton. (Pause) Has anyone a dose of Ecstasy?"

"No."

"Ah well. (Pause) That detergent bottle would make an excellent shotgun. Has anyone a bit of weed?"

"No."

"Would you like some?"

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. I show my confidence in the Republican cause by demanding concessions from little children before I give them candy.

ANOTHER MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Redstate.org was created to effect, according to its mission statement, "the construction of a Republican majority in the United States. We hope to unite serious, innovative, and accomplished voices from government, politics, activism, civil society, and journalism to participate in this work." Let's see what they're up to in the closing days of the 2004 campaign.

"Erick" challenges the ancient myth that the Washington Redskins' pre-election performance decides the fate of the incumbent. "Well, what if the rule tracks with the popular vote winner?" asks Erick. "If so, shouldn't Bush win? After all, Gore won the popular vote last time." He cites Ramesh Ponnuru, and later provides a thoughtful update ("Let's destroy the rule"). He is also cheered by a Bush endorsement from the New York Daily News, which he perhaps believes will deliver our notoriously divided swing state to the President, and muses at great length on the justice of the red vs. blue designation of states. "Given the flirtation of the left with communism, however," says Erick, "I suspect some on the right will think it only fair to make the Dems red." He adds, "If there is something out there you think I need to pick up on, please email me at msnbc-at-erickerickson-dot-org." The temptation is great.

Neil Cavuto recently said on-air that Osama bin Laden was all-but-endorsing Kerry. "California Yankee" approaches the story from this novel angle: "Kerry Campaign Threatens Fox News."

A Democratic operative predicts a Kerry victory "if every vote is allowed to be cast, and every vote is counted," from which Pejman Yousefzadeh infers that Democrats presume "some kind of divine right to be in charge." A commenter adds, with apparent wistfulness, "In most other countries, tanks would roll in the streets to keep Kerry out of the White House."

"streiff" says Kerry isn't a regular guy ("born to privilege," he scoffs -- then, perhaps remembering the pedigree of his own candidate, adding, "and who has assiduously married his way to even more privilege"). He relies for confirmation of his insight on a typically scabrous New York Post article. There is some discussion of an incident in which Kerry's motorcade failed to stop and greet supporters, and the absence or presence of snow on that occasion. It makes for scintillating reading, and if those of you so inclined would be so kind as to fax it to Bush headquarters in Ohio, the President's reelection is all but assured.

Site founder Tacitus has not been seen in several days, and is presumed to monitoring the treatment of Bush/Cheney lawn signs somewhere east of the Brazos.

Thank God the creators of alicublog had the foresight not to promise you folks anything more than a few laughs. Come to think of it, we didn't promise you that, either. Damn, we're really smart.

UNRELIABLE NARRATOR. Today's episode of "My Liberal Friends" comes from Roger L. Simon:

The people had come together through our children -- we were all parents from the same school -- and the kids played in the next room while we ate, drank and talked. Naturally, the subject of the election came up and I decided -- maybe it was the vodka -- to let it rip and say I was voting for Bush. One woman shrieked at the top of her lungs. The others just looked at me in incredulity.

I don't think it's bragging to say I knew more than these people about politics. (I have to -- I am the one putting out opinions in public.) But that didn't stop me from shrieking back at the woman. Others joined in and it became for a few moments a battle of who could yell the loudest. But after a bit it quieted down and they stared at me curiously.

Maybe it was the vodka, though it sounds more like 'shrooms. One also wonders if the dining room furniture was padded.

The Simon report is of course of a piece with other such narratives, and includes the obligatory narrator's assurance that his opponents are all stupid ("Their view of the world was heavily influenced by the Six O'Clock News, a Dan Rather vision of reality" -- why, they've probably never even heard of Mark Steyn!). Still, we might give Simon's more credence than others. It happened in Hollyweird, after all.

IF I HAD KIDS THIS HALLOWEEN... ...well, maybe I wouldn't even. (Hat tip: Dorian.)

SHO' NUFF. Surreptitiously kicking the Stroh's bottles under his couch, Jonah Goldberg offers an alternate explanation for his irrational exuberance:

I can't shake the feeling that one of the reasons Bush might be underpolling is that he's underpolling. Besides from all the technical stuff, I suspect that a small fraction of Americans might be embarrassed to admit that they're voting for Bush. All of Hollywood and elite media say you're a fool or a fascist to vote for Bush. Isn't it possible that a handful of Americans don't want to tell a stranger that they're voting for the candidate all the sophisticates call a cowboy-dunce-warmonger?

"Zebediah! Ole Judge Smoke sez the whole district done gone fer Bush! That means yew musta voted fo' him too."

"Shore did, Clem, an' ah'm plumb glad to hear it, cuz if Skunk Holler goes fer Prezident Bush, the nation is sho' to follow! Yee-haw!"

"But, Zebediah, you-all said you wuz votin' fo' Kerry. Yew tole it to that poll-takin' feller, too, jes' afore we strung him up."

"Ah gotta be honest with you, Clem. I was jes' afeard you-all would think ah was a cowboy-dunce-warmonger."

"Why, Zebediah Beauregard Crump, wherevah did you get such a idear?"

"Wahl, when I went up t' the county seat to get mah young-uns immunizzizzized, they was magazines an' newspapers all ovah the place talkin' 'bout how Prezident Bush was in cahoots with this feller Halley Burton. Now, I lahks Halley Barbour fine, but the way they talked about this here Halley Burton, he seemed a mite oily. An' then ah had some time on mah hands while the young-uns was gettin' immunizzizzized, so went to take in a movin' pitcher, an' it was all about how Prezident Bush was a Ay-rab, an' yew know ah don't lahk them no-how ever since Cousin Zeke come back fum Prezident Bush's Daddy's war all tetched in the haid."

"Wahl, why did you-all vote fo' Prezident Bush then?"

"Shoot, Clem, ah didn't believe them movies an' magazines no-how -- you know ah gits all mah news fum Perfesser Reynolds' website -- but ah started to feel ashamed-like o' mah Prezident, an' ah started havin' dreams where this Frenchman was laughin' at me an' hittin' me with a big loaf a' bread. Ah wuz afraid you-all would think ah was unsophistercated."

"Yuh crazy galoot! Come on, let's cel'brate this heah victory proper, by whaling tar outta some funny-boys!"

(Cue Flatt & Scruggs)

IN CASE OF POTENTIAL DEFEAT, BREAK OUT CULTURE WAR. As the end draws nigh, some conservatives who had heretofore been chest-bumping one another into a frenzy seem suddenly to have absorbed the message that Bush might lose. Alas, this results not in mind-blasts of Zen enlightenment, but in a more paranoid form of magical thinking -- the notion, as one commenter at Roger L. Simon's site put it, that "Kerry has about 30% true believers and should he win, the vote will have been delivered by the MSM."

Yes, the American people, whom conservatives credit with great wisdom whenever the tide is rolling rightward, become, once the tide turns, credulous dopes who cannot even be said to vote, as "the MSM" delivers their votes like so many Domino's pizzas.

I wonder if this idea that votes for Kerry are solely the result of media manipulation will become the countercharge du jour when Dems scream about the inevitable Republican vote fraud on Tuesday: "The votes of Times subscribers must be considered invalid due to media bias."

About the nuttiest such thing I've seen lately is, unsurprisingly, by Stanley Kurtz. In his commentary on the closely-divided state of our nation, he starts with a more-sorrow-than-anger tone: "But what does it say about the changes in this country that the battle is so close?" Yes, the sane reader of any persuasion might mutter sympathetically, yes, things sure have changed; though most of us will start tiptoeing gingerly away as Kurtz denounces "the fact that a candidate who called America’s soldiers war criminals and threw away his metals could get this close" to the Presidency.

What has caused this catastrophic change in the minds and politics of half our citizenry? You guessed it -- The Media! Kurtz tells a long anecdote about the treasonous Sulzbergers. Its relevance is not clear at first -- one guesses Kurtz just likes repeating such stories -- until he heaves this up: "The reason John Kerry and his 'global test' have even a ghost of a chance in this election is because Sulzberger and the folks who thought like him are now in charge of the media–and much of the rest of our culture... That what this election is all about."

One wonders what Kurtz expects from whatever narrow victory Bush might manage to achieve. Because, it would seem, the very fact that so many Americans disagree with the President is what makes it so desperately urgent to Kurtz that agreement -- on his terms -- be reached. So how will that treasonous 49+% be brought back into conformity with basic American values? Kurtz declines to say, but if it thinks it's so important, and that those who oppose the President are just brainwashing victims, one can imagine few methods he couldn't justify.

Winning big makes them insufferable, and winning small makes them paranoid. The only solution is to keep them from winning at all.

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. To all my new readers, a disheartening number of whom have sent abusive emails, I insist that I am a middle-of-the-road Joe who just wants you perverts to stop indoctrinating my widdle girl with your sex-talk, and who is obsessed with Star Trek and other nerd sh*t.

SHORTER JIM LILEKS.My little girl is cute. Now remember, I'm not to blame for the flabby condition of the following statement because I have to watch TV right afterwards: If you liberals had anything to say about it, we woulda lost WWII. Be grateful that I could even find the time for that, folks; 80% of my brain is devoted to deep contemplation of consumer goods. Besides, my heart's not really in it without Glenn around to link me.

Kerry speaks French! Bye!

DERBYSHIRE DOES DIALECT. Negro dialect, at that!

You goin' have nothin' to listen to but Pat Boone an' Merle Haggard, know wha' I'm sayin'? 'Cause they is down on the black man, they is down on the urban youth -- they an' them white record company executives...

This would qualify as a Most Embarrassing Moment, were anyone at National Review Online capable of embarrassment.

INSIDE CRICKET. Christopher Hitchens is a very smart man, but you don't see much of that intelligence turned toward the Bush cause in his ostensible endorsement -- it's really just a column-length nyah-nyah at his old comrades on the Left --

...I can't wait to see President Kerry discover which corporation, aside from Halliburton, should after all have got the contract to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry. I look forward to seeing him eat his Jesse Helms-like words, about the false antithesis between spending money abroad and "at home" (as if this war, sponsored from abroad, hadn't broken out "at home")... I assume that he has already discerned the difference between criticizing the absence of postwar planning and criticizing the presence of an anti-Saddam plan to begin with. I look forward, in other words, to the assumption of his responsibility...

It may at first seem odd that Hitchens has so meticulously envisioned the opposite result of his endorsement as -- very like the result he claims to prefer.

"Anybody But Bush"--and this from those who decry simple-mindedness--is now the only glue binding the radical left to the Democratic Party right. The amazing thing is the literalness with which the mantra is chanted. Anybody? Including Muqtada al-Sadr? The chilling answer is, quite often, yes. This is nihilism....

Why, yes, I suppose it would be. What then might we call an essay calling for the election of a President based on personal pique?

Marketing, I think. Endorsements are supposed to be about moving votes -- especially if there is a pretense of independence (as is routinely made by newspaper editorial boards in October) on the part of the giver; Daschle endorsing Kerry is a bore, but Zell Miller's nod is worth a trip to Madison Square Garden. Yet Hitchens, a well-advertised Own Man, seems thoroughly disinterested in any electoral effect his endorsement might have -- and keenly interested in its effect on his reputation as a maverick. "Myself, I have made my own escape from your self-imposed quandary," Hitchens taunts his old pals in closing. "Believe me when I say that once you have done it, there's no going back... I shall be meeting some of you again, I promise, and the fraternal paw will still be extended."

The set-up is painfully obvious. If Kerry wins, nothing much will change. If Bush wins, ditto. In either case Hitchens will be saying he told us so. A better way to go than in the tow of Tweedledee or that of Tweedledum is out of the question -- "that deep-breath third-party vote... of the sort that has tortured some Nation readers ever since they just couldn't take Humphrey over Nixon" is a sucker's bet, at least in the game Hitchens is playing.

I will say that this should do more for Hitchens' prospects than Andrew Sullivan's version of the outrider schtick will do for his. But like I said, Hitchens is a very smart man.

THE NEW LIBERTARIANISM. "We should rejoice every time we see someone who is voting on ideology, rather than merely supporting the candidate who puts the most money in their pocket." -- Megan McArdle, aka "Jane Galt," at Instapundit.

WHAT I SAW AT THE CORNER. From the wishful thinking department:

RE: DISAPPEARANCE & BLAME: Just thinking out loud, but: If what the Times says is right, isn’t that implicitly an indictment of UNSCOM and further proof that the President was right to remove the monstrous Saddam regime?

See also:

If the American electorate were comprised entirely of teenagers watching Channel One, President Bush would cruise to four more years: In a mock election featuring 1.4 million votes, Bush just crushed Kerry, 55 percent to 40 percent.

Ramesh Ponnuru excerpts 616 words from a Bush speech in four posts and then threatens: "I'll probably do a longer piece for tomorrow's NRO." Ponnuru also thinks it's great that tax cuts have led to Americans working longer and harder than the French. Yeah, I'm sure glad I don't get seven weeks of vacation a year, aren't you? Jonah Goldberg adds, "It is very, very, very hard to fire people even for cause in France." Fuck, can I move there? John J. Miller adds, "...one of the comments I tend to hear from Europeans is that Americans work really hard--the subtext often being that we work too hard don't know how to stop and enjoy life. This is clearly a cultural difference between the United States and Europe..." Might it actually be a cultural difference between Corner writers and people who have to work for a living?

Tim Graham deconstructs the mise en scene of the "Today" Show. Coming soon: Graham on the use of deep focus in Stolen Honor.

And who let her in:

I’m looking for witty sayings to use at the opening of a park in our neighborhood, at which I am running the bake sale. I have styled it a "Bipartisan Bake Sale" and my daughter Molly and I will be baking a hundredweight each of Teresa Kerry's pumpkin spice cookies and Laura Bush's oatmeal chocolate-chunk cookies. Other people are contributing "Swing State Brownies" and suchlike. The bleg is for sayings I can put on the signage. Ones I've already made include: "A nation BITTERLY divided still loves SWEET treats!" and "No UNSIGHTLY chads, just BEAUTIFUL baked goods!" and "Vote EARLY…and OFTEN!" (meaning for the cookies we're making). My husband suggests "NO OIL FOR COOKIES... only butter." Billionairess Biscuits? Conservative Crumpets? Winning entries will make the eve-of-election "Fever Swamp."

I nominate "NRO nutcakes."

SHORTER JIM LILEKS. My Democratic neighbors are all stupid. They don't know about what Bill Maher said, or my computer problems. And you know who else is stupid? The English. Screw them. Sure, I once said that we should abstain from lampooning supercilious Brits because Everything Has Changed, but that's off, because Everything Has Changed Again since I got my 12th cold of the year.