Author: Andrew Sullivan

Jeff Jarvis has the details. Bottom line:

After the election results are in, I promise to:
: Support the President, even if I didn’t vote for him.
: Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
: Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
: Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.

Hold me to it. Somehow, I think you will.

THE EXIT POLLS: Doesn’t such heavy early voting somewhat undermine the exit polls? If, in some areas, like Florida, there has been extensive early voting, and most of it skewed Democrat, wouldn’t that make the exit polls look more pro-Bush than the votes might actually be? Just asking …

HOW SICK IS REHNQUIST? Probably sicker than we have been told. Here’s some interesting data:

The combination of radiation and chemotherapy raises the suspicion that Rehnquist’s cancer is not one of the common types that are usually easily treatable, said Dr. Joseph Geradts of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. The most common types are papillary and follicular cancer, and they are generally responsive to radioactive iodine, Geradts said. Chemotherapy could be needed if it is the more aggressive form, called anaplastic, he said. He noted that the gland is often removed as part of cancer treatment, but in cases of anaplastic cancer the thyroid sometimes cannot be readily removed. The presence of a tracheotomy to ease Rehnquist’s breathing also might indicate anaplastic cancer, Geradts said, since that form can squeeze the trachea.

Why does this matter? Because the Supreme Court is a paramount issue in this election. And a new nomination may come sooner than anyone thinks – perhaps the next president’s most pressing domestic obligation. And that’s another reason I’m for Kerry. If you’re gay, or if you have a family member who is, this election is the most important in the history of the civil rights struggle. No, Kerry is by no means perfect. But he is not actively leading a movement that would strip a whole minority of basic civil rights.

MysteryPollster looks at the Columbus Dispatch’s old-fashioned mail-in poll. It’s a very big sample – close to 3,000 – and has a good track record. It shows the race an absolute dead-heat. But there’s a wrinkle:

One difference between the latest poll and the one published four weeks ago is the inclusion of more newly registered voters in the sample, whose names were in the latest available data from the secretary of state’s office. About 88 percent of the new voters – including those from Ohio’s largest counties – were among the potential poll participants. And which candidate did those new voters prefer? “These newbies now represent one in eight Ohio voters, and they support Kerry by nearly a 2-1 margin [65% to 34%].”

Uh-oh. There’s more:

Meanwhile, the poll contains troubling signs for Bush. Only 44 percent say things in the nation are headed in the right direction. Fewer than half approve of his handling of Iraq and the economy. And his overall approval rating is 49 percent, a measure that many political experts say represents a ceiling on his support Tuesday.

I’ve been asked to make a prediction. It’s so close you’d be a fool to do so now. So I’ll stick with my hunch back last March and say Kerry is going to win. I say that simply because Bush’s record is too poor to merit re-election. And I trust the American people to realize that. As soon as Kerry proved he was a viable alternative in the debates, he won.

STEYN THREATENS TO QUIT: If Kerry wins today, Mark Steyn has said he won’t wrote again for a while. Money quote:

Usually after making wild predictions I confidently toss my job on the line and say, if they don’t pan out, I’m outta here. I’ve done that a couple of times this campaign season – over Wes Clark (remember him?) – but it almost goes without saying in these circumstances. Were America to elect John Kerry president, it would be seen around the world as a repudiation not just of Bush and of Iraq but of the broader war. It would be a declaration by the people of American unexceptionalism – that they are a slightly butcher Belgium; they would be signing on to the wisdom of conventional transnationalism. Having failed to read correctly the mood of my own backyard, I could hardly continue to pass myself off as a plausible interpreter of the great geopolitical forces at play. Obviously that doesn’t bother a lot of chaps in this line of work – Sir Simon Jenkins, Robert ‘Mister Robert’ Fisk, etc., – and no doubt I could breeze through the next four years doing ketchup riffs on Teresa Heinz Kerry, but I feel a period of sober reflection far from the scene would be appropriate.

This, of course, is silly. If Kerry is elected, it will merely mean that Americans have chosen a different commander-in-chief to pursue an enemy that we all recognize still exists. And may I offer the sincere hope that anyone who can pen prose as elegant and as consistently hilarious as Mark Steyn should never quit journalism? He should continue to do so – but from a distance that allows him greater insight into the American psyche. Canada, perhaps? Or France?

With some last minute thoughts.

A HAWK FOR KERRY: A Brit who faced the wrath of his fellow Guardian readers for supporting the Iraq war says he’s now for Kerry.

ZOGBY: His penultimate poll basically gives the election to Kerry, barring Florida. He has a tie there.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Another conspicuous aspect of the tape is the absence of common Islamist themes that are relevant to the month of Ramadan, which for fundamentalists like bin Laden is the month of Jihad and martyrdom. Noticeably absent from the Al-Jazeera tape was his usual appearance with a weapon, and more importantly the absence of references to Jihad, martyrdom, the Koran, the Hadith (Islamic tradition), Crusaders, Jews, and the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad on the duty to wage Jihad against the infidels. For the followers of the Al-Qa’ida ideology, this speech sends a regressive and defeatist message of surrender, as seen in the move from solely using Jihad warfare to a mixed strategy of threats combined with truce offers and election deals.” – Yigal Carmon, president of MEMRI, on the latest OBL tape.

VOTER-SUPPRESSION: Using homophobia to suppress the black vote. It’s been going on in Michigan.

October 30 – Fox poll shows Bush up by 2. Headline: “Fox Poll: Bush Up By Two Points Over Kerry”
November 1 – Fox poll shows Kerry up by 2. Headline: “Fox National Poll: Voters Split.” You really can’t make this up. Well, as Neil Cavuto has opined, Osama was all but wearing a Kerry button.

David Bernstein calls this the “most depressing presidential election for a libertarian since 1972.” It is. The idea that freedom works – even when it advances ideas hostile to you – has been consigned to the margins of discourse. Kerry is a statist; Bush is a statist. Kerry hankers after liberal conformity in most areas; Bush has done more to sever the GOP from individual freedom at home than anyone since Goldwater. Money quote:

I find virtually nothing to admire about John Kerry. W. deserves credit for a certain steadfastness in the War on Terror, but his administration is suffused with the sort of hubris, sense of entitlement to power, and belief in the ameliorative powers of government action (in both the foreign and domestic realms) that one normally associates with the worst types of statists. And let’s not forget the Administration’s blatant lies about the cost of the Medicare law, and Karl Rove’s apparent plan to drive all well-educated, secular folks out of the party in exchange for the votes of the most ignorant elements of the fundamentalist community, a traditional Democratic stronghold.

Yes, depressing. But freedom will re-emerge. It’s just a dark day right now.

Here’s the full transcript. Basically: loony and vile.

The Republicans are at it again in Michigan. And Florida too. Ugh.

Glenn Reynolds seems to think that my criticism of the Iraq war is purely negative criticism. He cites my previous writing back in May that

There are also many valid criticisms of the occupation. But I have yet to read any cogent criticism that offers any better future plan than the one president Bush outlined Monday night. John Kerry’s plaintive cries to “internationalize” the transition are so vacuous they barely merit attention. The transition is already being run by the U.N.; very few countries have the military capacity to cooperate fully with the coalition, and few want to; quicker elections would be great, but very difficult to pull off on a national level before the end of the year. So what are Bush’s opponents proposing? More troops now? But wouldn’t that undercut the message of transferring sovereignty to the Iraqis? A sudden exit of all troops? But no one – apart from right-wing and leftwing extremists – thinks that’s a wise move. Giving a future Iraqi government a veto power over troop activities? Done, according to Blair. The truth is: Bush’s plan is about as good as we’re likely to get. And deposing a dictator after decades of brutal rule could never have led immediately to insta-democracy. . . .
What I’m saying, I guess, is that as long as the anti-war critics continue relentless negativism without any constructive alternative, they will soon lose the debate. Americans want to know how to move this war forward, not why we shouldn’t have started it in the first place. Right now, the president has the best plan for making this work. What does anyone else have?

Well, yes. I stand by every word. But things have moved on since then, haven’t they? The plan I outlined is now Kerry’s plan as well. (In fact, it’s closer to Kerry’s original plan than Bush’s.) And the insurgency has gained more traction and more manpower since May. And when we are facing an electoral decision six months later, criticism is anything but negative. My constructive point is that a new pro-war president will move things forward, and that the incumbent has proven himself incompetent. Time to hold someone accountable, I’d say. Glenn says he expected much worse. But did he expect no WMDs? Did he expect Colin Powell’s U.N. speech to be revealed as a tissue of untruths? Did he expect Abu Ghraib? Has Glenn ever fully come to terms with any of that? And the reason we all expected much worse from the invasion is that, in retrospect, we misread Saddam’s war-plan. He was far smarter than we were. We expected a brutal conventional battle. Saddam planned a strategic retreat and then an insurgent regrouping. And we were completely unprepared for it. The question is: why were we so unprepared? How were we out-foxed by a vicious old tyrant? And do we trust the same group of people to get it right this time? I don’t.

AS FOR MICKEY: It’s always pleasant to be dismissed as “excitable”. I do react to events instantly and with my emotions as well as my brain. And I reserve the right in blog-time to change my mind. But I have never been so excitable as to have argued last December that Kerry’s campaign was so execrably bad that he should withdraw from the race before the Iowa caucuses. Let’s roll the tape, shall we?

“Kerry Withdrawal Contest: In part for reasons described in the preceding item, Democratic Senator John Kerry, once proclaimed the frontrunner in the press, faces not just defeat but utter humiliation in the New Hampshire primary. Is he really going to soldier on to finish in the single digits and get clobbered by both Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, if not one or more other candidates? Shouldn’t he save his pride (and possible national political future, if only as a VP candidate) by withdrawing from the race before this harsh popular verdict is rendered? … But what can Kerry say that isn’t even more humiliating than seeing it through?” “I realize my wife Teresa needs me more than my country needs me”? That won’t cut it. “I’ve decided to take time out to learn the Web so I can compete in future campaigns” and “I’m entering rehab at an undisclosed location to recover from my vicious Ibogaine habit. I make no excuses” are too trendy. … Let’s harness the power of the Web and help Kerry adviser/speechwriter Robert Shrum with the dirty job that lies ahead for him. A copy of John Glenn: A Memoir to the reader who submits the best cover excuse that will let Sen. Kerry drop out of the presidential race before the voting actually starts while preserving his viability within the system. … Void where prohibited…

Would it have been possible last December 5 to have written something a) that “excitable” or b) that wrong? “Not just defeat but utter humiliation.” Hysteric, heal thyself.

Here’s a super-duper meta-analysis from Princeton of all the recent state polls, including all the parameters of turn-out, undecideds, etc etc. So it ends up with a statistical likelihood, not a prediction. Worth checking out. I should also add that Slate’s poll, leaning toward Bush, has this caveat:

Here is the math that matters: If all the states in which the data lean discernibly to either candidate vote as the polls suggest, the election will come down to Florida and Ohio. If Bush takes both, he wins. If Kerry takes either, he wins. We assess the probability in each state independently, and we assume that neither state’s turnout affects the other’s. Since the odds in each of the two states are approximately 50-50, with a tiny edge to Bush, the combined probability of Kerry winning the election is about 70 to 75 percent.

Check in for more updates.

Here’s a simple set of pleas for tomorrow from yours truly. Think about splitting your ticket. If you vote Kerry for president, vote Republican for the Congress (unless there’s a big reason not to in a specific case) and vice-versa. Both Bush and Kerry will be better presidents with a hostile Congress. In the eight states where constitutional amendments are aimed at removing all protections from gay couples, do not fall for the idea that the measures are aimed at “protecting” marriage. If that were the case, the amendments would not be so sweeping. They are designed entirely to strip a group of citizens of equality under the law, to deter gay people from having settled relationships, and to keep homosexuality stigmatized. And please also consider voting for relaxation of marijuana laws that deny people the right to harmless pleasure and, in many cases, important medical relief. Montana, Oregon, Alaska, and Massachusetts have important measures to this effect. Vote for them.