Found my "Gloating" Muse

And it's name is Democratic Underground. Heh. I could laugh about this all day.

They won't let me into the forums unless I register, and I'm not about to do that, but there are some things on the main page that make me giggle like a mad-man. The lack of access means no permalinks, which means even if I felt inclined to link that intellectual cesspool of a site, the links wouldn't be very helpful.

"Skinner" is disturbed. I agree. He is disturbed because he assumed massive voter turnout would automatically translate into Kerry votes, because "You don't wait in line for five hours to vote for more of the same." He's referring specifically to voter turn-out in Florida and Ohio, of course, and by ignoring other states he misses the data which would conflict with his preferred world-view.

Consider Louisiana. We had record turn-out here, and that in spite of the fact that Louisiana was never in play. Kerry gave up this state a long time ago, and he was smart to do it. I could have avoided the polls yesterday with a relatively clear conscience, because Jindal was such a lead-pipe cinch, Bush was going to take Louisiana by a projected 10% margin, and Vitter, well, that was a good race, so it made sense to get out and vote for Vitter.

So to reiterate, Louisiana had very, very little reason to go to the polls. And yet, Louisiana (other than what I saw in heavily Democratic Orleans Parish) voted. In record numbers. And there is no allegation or evidence of fraud. And what do our non-fraudulent polls show us? That people who never vote went out and voted for Bush. Many of them voted in the rain. Many of them stood in line for two hours (not the five hours Skinner says happened in Florida, but still not fun). And they voted Bush.

In other words, Skinner's paranoid delusions about what people standing in line were thinking can only be sustained by ignoring evidence to the contrary. No surprise there, I guess.

But let's get back to the theoretic premise at the foundation of Skinner's complaint - "no one stand in line for five hours to vote for more of the same." Au contraire, Skinner, they do if a) they think the alternative is much worse, or if b) they really are voting against more of the same. More of the same hystrionics coming from you and your ilk. More of the same fraud, race-bating, crack-dealing, violence and intimidation from Democratic party leaders. More of the same fabrications pushed as news on national media sources. More of the same calls for the assassination of a sitting President.

Everyone who was opposed to more of the same of that, who did not want to validate that kind of behavior, who did not want any Democrat to think, "Hey, it worked last time..." had a good reason to stand in line for five, six or seven hours, in heat or pouring rain (in my case, both), in front of screaming MoveOn.org fanatics.

Want another reason? I can think of 25 million of them, all breathing free air in Afghanistan. I can think of 25 million more, looking with hope toward national elections in Iraq. I can think of 5.6 million reasons in Libya.

Just for starters, of course.