I'm not generally a fan of conspiracy theories, but chew on this for a minute: It certainly seems like Karl Rove, Fox News, the other news outlets for that matter, Limbaugh, and the rest of the forces of modern evil put out all the stops in trying to keep their LieberLover in office.
Shouldn't we consider the possibility that they would fudge election results if they could? After all the funny business of 2000 and 2004 -- the result of which is not to whine about how the Repugnants stole our country, but rather to coalesce a resolute response, Progressives are simply naive if we are willing to operate on the assumption that the elections are not being stolen. So why wouldn't Rove threaten eternal damnation to his minions if they don't direct their wicked ways to the Connetitcut polling places?
I'm not a statistician, but humour me for a minute, and consider some numbers: with 3.5% reporting, Lamont leads 59 to 41. With 38% reporting, Lamont is ahead by 13 points. 64% reporting, Lamont is ahead by 8 points, all the way down to 4 points at the end. I know that people are saying this is because the earlier reporting poll centers are in locations that favor Lamont. But isn't this exactly the same thing that people said for the 2004 elections? Remember those before and after screen shots of CNN's web site with the fixed exit poll numbers? Why is it that the early votes are always the liberals? Not a single swing all day for Lamont in the primary -- from the get go, it was all downhill. I made over 100 phone calls for MoveOn.org, and not a single person I talked to planned to vote for Lieberman -- I know it's anecdotal, but sometimes that is a valuable reality check.
One more consideration: although they did not release the "who did you vote for" question of the exit poll, don't you think that the "who will you vote for in Nov." question is pretty similar? I mean, who would say they're voting for Lieberman in Nov. if they voted for Lamont in August? And hasn't Greg Palast laid down the arguments why exit polls are overwhelming accurate, in comparison to conventional polling? I recall in Germany, exit polls regularly are within 1/2 of point of the actual results, and that is a common result. In the CT primary, we have a 13 spread in the exit polls for Lamont! How does that measure up with a final of less than 4%?
I know people may be saying we won, and that it doesn't matter, but here's some more food for thought: what if they're betting the same thing? What if they forget to cover their tracks this time? I just hope that people smarter than me are analyzing the results of this primary -- if we start to see anything fishy like 1,000 people voting for LieberLoser in a precinct that has 400 registered voters, I'm going to be very suspicious.
Ultimately, we may be able to do nothing about it, but if my crazy theory is right, it validates another theory that has been circulating around my family and friends: we have to win big. Their criminal acts are a handicap -- victory doesn't mean 51% to 49% any more for Democrats -- what it means is, we have to beat the spread by 15, preferably 20 points, otherwise, we can't count on the victory.
But maybe this isn't so bad -- it just means we need to build a platform that is so overwhelmingly convincing, that we can't help but garner a 20 point lead. We know this war is wrong, we know these crooks are taking us down a massively destructive path for the simple sake of their own greed and addictions and paranoias. We need to forge alliances, put aside our differences, and focus on a very small number of fundamental issues. We need to stay away from divisive issues like gay marriage, stem cell research, immigration, and so forth.
I heard a speech given by Afeni Shakur (Tupac's mother) at the Seattle Public Library a month or so ago. She said that the reason Black youths are being killed and herded into jails at the horrific rates we are seeing is because their priorities are in the wrong place -- that Black youths are more concerned about racial equality than about the truly critical dangers of today.
Offensive as that may seem -- she's right. I think we need to pause in our fights for the myriad of important social justice issues we are facing today, women's rights, worker's rights, minority rights, abortion rights, gay rights, immigrant rights, universal health care and so forth -- these are all issues we care about with a tremendous depth, and rightfully so -- but because we care about them, the Repugnants are using them to divide Progressives with the center of America, at a time when Progressives should be leading Center America onto a battlefield an army that is full of potent and vitriolic hate, consumed by greed, and will stop at nothing to have what they want.
I'm not sure what the distillation of the Progessive and the Center alliance should be - but I know it should most definately NOT look like the bland Repugnant-lite stance of the DLC, Lamonts heroic victory assures us we can drop those numnuts out of the picture. We need to leverage the issues that Americans overwhelmingly agree on -- namely Iraq, and the Environment. These issues should be presented as the flip sides of the same coin -- the Wrong direction and the Right direction.
Don't give the Repugnants a laundry list of issues they can divide and conquer us on -- our platform should be simple, and overwhelmingly convincing. if 60% of the country opposes the war in Iraq -- we need to make sure we get every single one of those votes. That gives us the 20 point spread we need for victory. Let's stay focused on the core issue, don't let their bait and their red herrings surprise us, beat the handicap, and take the battlefield.