I’m not entirely sure what any of these poll results are supposed to mean. The survey asked Americans to ponder their options in every U.S. presidential election held since 1964. I suppose when you can’t go back to Nixon — Kennedy because Kennedy has been diefied. Ditto Eisenhower — Stevenson, Truman — Dewey, and Roosevelt versus Everyone. The three contests I want to ask are: William Henry Harrison versus Martin Van Buren. (I have no clue how that one would turn out.) Abraham Lincoln versus George McClellan. (I think we’d have to absolve the South from voting on this one, since they weren’t allowed to in the first election and the election concerned itself almost entirely on their fate. I’m curious to see if McClellan can clear himself into double digits.) Grover Cleveland versus James Blaine. (No particular reason, just find a dull and forgotten election with imperceptible repercussions on the future and see if anyone can say anything about it.)

Election results:

1964
Lyndon B. Johnson (D) 50%
Barry Goldwater (R) 23%

Actual result: 61.1 to 38.5. What was that saying? “We voted for Johnson and received Goldwater’s foreign policy?” Notwithstanding that, I’m surprised Johsnon’s landslide holds up here. Goldwater has been refurbished in history, and Johnson’s “Great Society” has been successfully demonized.

1968
Richard Nixon (R) 34%
Hubert H. Humphrey (D) 31%
George Wallace (I) 15%

Actual result: 43.4% to 42.7% to 13.5%. 15 percent would vote for George Wallace, still today? God damned it. Would they vote for Strom Thurmond too? Curious to compare it with:

1972
George McGovern (D) 42%
Richard Nixon (R) 39%

Actual result: 60.7% to 37.5%. See, today the Republican Party is bringing out the McGovernite card to churn public opinion to the consideration that the Democrats are… the party of the 3 As. Have you looked at the 3 As lately? George W Bush’s lowest approval rating in age-demographis is amongst 20-somthings: 20 percent, as it were. How do they respond to the three As? Amnesty, or alternately when the slur is fogged up a bit Appeasement. With vague fears of a draft looming over the place if we pursue the same foreign policy we are at the moment, and with this age-group being the ones who are sent out to fight, the consideration brings them to be for it. Abortion. An issue that cuts every which way, and will destroy each party at various points. Acid. You can easily just transfer this to “Marijuana”, and our generation of potheads seem to be in favour of it. Okay, NEXT!

1976
Jimmy Carter (D) 52%
Gerald Ford (R) 35%

Actual result: 50.1% to 48.0%. Ford falls away into “non-entity status”. Ford will be forgotten by history. What the heck is a Gerald Ford?

1980
Ronald Reagan (R) 56%
Jimmy Carter (D) 30%
John Anderson (I) 6%

Actual result: 50.7% to 41.0% to 6.6%. Carter fares better than Mondale. For what it’s worth.

1984
Ronald Reagan (R) 64% to Walter Mondale (D) 24%

Actual Result: 58.8% to 40.6%.

1988
George H. Bush (R) 53%
Michael Dukakis (D) 33%

Actual Result: 53.4% to 45.6%.

I note that Bush’s vote total remains identical. Theoretically if all of the voters who opted out, for whatever reason, voted for Dukakis, the trajectory of how people think of Bush and how people of Dukakis would be discovered as being a straight line across.

1992
Bill Clinton (D) 52%
George H. Bush (R) 30%
Ross Perot (I) 12%

Actual Result: 43.0% to 37.4% to 18.9%. I will note that Perot now has an unmovable 12 percent in the electorate. I will also note that Bush is more popular than Dole. I will also note that Clinton has finally pushed his way past that elusive 50 percent marker.

1996
Bill Clinton (D) 56%
Bob Dole (R) 25%
Ross Perot (Ref.) 12%

Actual Result: 49.2% to 40.7% to 8.4%. Lanslide Clinton!

2000
Al Gore (D) 46%
George W. Bush (R) 38%
Ralph Nader (G) or
Pat Buchanan (Ref.) 9%

Actual Result: 47.9% to to 48.4% to 2.7% plus 0.4%. Is Al Gore and John Kerry the exact same candidate? Though, Al Gore surely looks better than John Kerry these days.

2004
John Kerry (D) 46%
George W. Bush (R) 40%
Ralph Nader (I) 7%

May I mention that Nader has jumped up, that even as Al Gore and John Kerry slide right past Bush they both fail to receive the same percentage of votes as they did when they actually ran? I also note that, obviously, as we get closer to the present the numbers come closer and closer to 100.

“The old politics of partisan polarization won today. For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand.”

Cannot and will not let that result stand. Cannot and will not let that result stand. Cannot and will not let that result stand.

We move to November. Let us say that Ned Lamont defeats Joseph Lieberman and Alan Schlessinger, Jr — oh, 50.1 (just to hurdle us past the majority there) to 39.9 to 10. Joe Lieberman gives his concession speech.

“The old politics of partisan polarization won today. For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand.”

At which point, a sniper shoots Lamont dead over at the Victory celebration, and Lieberman — surrounded by his Praetorian Guard, marches forth to his Senate office to resume his duties as Senator and … ahem… Statesman.

Cannot and will not let that result stand. Cannot and will not let that result stand. Cannot and will not let that result stand.

I’m thinking he probably would have had a good clean shot at the Governor chair in Connecticut. But then I’m thinking that he wouldn’t get anything done there. For one thing, the famed ten percent of his views that are out of step with the Democratic Party are outside the purview of Connecticut governor, and those ten percent are probably in the end-run his passion. Second, and more importantly, he would not have a good seat in the Beltway Establishment — for he is not a Democrat or even a Republican (even as he becomes a Republican proxy in the 2006 election campaign, as Republicans work an effort to churn out a story that a sensible Democrat has been “purged” out by a bunch of neo-McGovernites — who, incidentally, leads Nixon in the polls these days, into a reality that settles somehow into the electorate) but instead is a member of the Beltway Party. And the Beltway Party is nothing if not an advocate for a one-party system, one where a particular and peculiar line of thinking is strictly enforced.

I now note a strange irony. In 1992, the Republican Party was all aflutter that Bob Casey was not speaking at the Democratic Party Convention, probably trying to make political hay out of it by suggesting that anti-abortion — pro-life if you must — (more targeted: Catholic) voters are being consigned out of the Democratic Party, a litmus test is being enforced. Clinton and the Democrats maintain that the reason he didn’t speak is because he hadn’t endorsed Clinton for President. Either way, the “purge” storyline seeped into the Political storyline. 2006, while Lieberman is supposedly “purged” from the party — the Democratic Party cleared the field whereby Bob Casey, Jr. — politically speaking seeming to be a clone of his father — would be the party standard bearer in the Pennsylvania Senate race, what is considered the Democrat’s top political pick-up opportunity. How does this work? You purge one thing and then regurgitate it whilst purging a similar but distinctly different confection?

#1: “Islamo-Fascism” is not a real word, and anyone who uses it should be summarily dismissed as not being a real person. The word for what Bin Laden and et al are pushing for is called “Theocracy”. A brilliant notation to Thom Hartmann for pointing out the obvious, beyond the simple mind-numbing of that propagandistic term.

As evidence of this, simply go to the wikipedia entry on this term, and to the origins:

The Guardian attributes the term to an article by Muslim scholar Khalid Duran in the Washington Times, where he used it to describe the push by some Islamist clerics to “impose religious orthodoxy on the state and the citizenry”.

Theocracy, no?

#2: Iraq is NOT “the Central Battle in the War on Terrorism”, even in the sense that I tended to think that “that’s because the US made it so”. An attack in Spain, an attack in Britain, an averted attack in the US (stopped by international police work, tipped off by a Muslim in Great Britain, Bush uses the word “we” at his own dishonesty… he had nothing to do with anything.)

#3: In a very real way, incidentally, there is a “Move along, nothing to see here” quality to this news story. Plot hatched, as many a plot are. Plot attempted, as a handful of plots are. Plot dashed. Good job! My worldview is not affected, as I already knews plots were being hatched, attempted, and dashed.

#4: The Ned Lamont ad that showed Bush with audio from Lieberman coming out when he opened his mouth is truer now than it’s ever been, though I guess the most immediate connection at the moment is Dick Cheney.

#5: The government is now going to take away your lip-stick from here to eternity. A cottage industy shall arise replacing cosmetics for arriving passengers. Score one for the Terrorists. Inconvenience in the airport becomes just a little too burdensome and pointless.

A federal law governing protection of American Indian graves would be amended to allow scientific study of ancient remains discovered on federal lands if the remains have not been tied to a current tribe, under a bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings.

“My proposal protects the rights of present day Native Americans to claim the remains of their ancestors when found on federal lands,” Hastings said. “At the same time, it reiterates that in cases of truly ancient human remains – such as Kennewick Man – Congress does not intend to block scientific study.”

I have no opinion on Kennewick Man. It does not affect me; it does not affect anyone I know; it does not affect anyone who anyone I know knows. I want my remains to be fed to wolves.

I have two suggestions for Kennewick Man. Give it to the UN. I have no real reason to give it to the UN, except to give people a reason to give a middle finger to the hovering black helicopters I’ve heard hover over the area.

The second possibility is to give it to Skull and Bones. Thus they can hand back Geronomo’s skull to the Nez Perce tribe, and mend those fences. And then snub their thumb at a different tribe, as is, apparently, their prolonged adolsecent want.

Keeping in mind the rule, I think from Issac Asimov, that there are only seven plots going on — period — I will now point out that two movies with much hype to them coming out have pretty much the same premise. Oliver Stone’s 9/11 and the retro-b high concept for the sake of high concept thriller Snakes on A Plane.

I will also point out, on this day when a terrorist attack was said to have been thwarted and you can not bring liquid onto a plane, that whether conciously or subconciously, this is not an accident. Any where along the lines did the makers of 9/11 in their board meetings pitch that “This will capture the post – 9/11 Zeitgist and blah de blah?” I have no way of knowing.

What you learn really quickly from hearing mash-ups is that songs are pretty much the same in the realm of pop music. You can post a Beach Boys song over a Nirvana song with very little tweaking and come out humming. I imagine that the same is the case with these two movies: move dialouge from one movie to the other and it’ll come out, maybe a bit jarring, but not too far off.

I regret that I did not get that post “You Know What You need to do” up earlier than I did. I was unable to marshall the forces of Connecticut Democratic voters that are hidden within the half a dozen readers of this blog that would have brought Lamont to that magical ten point victory that, according to reports, would have had Lieberman bow out. For that I apologize to the entire Blog-o-Fascist community. On the other hand, my idea to hack into and pull down Joseph Lieberman’s $15 web-site, covered in the “you know what you need to do”, was shared by someone else, and that was good.

Now I ponder. This is supposedly the triumph of the Blogosphere. To a more particular degree, which the media at large is eluded to, it’s actually the dawning of the video-blog sharing at Youtube in political campaign uprisings, a wide pastiche of home-constructed pro-Lamont but mostly anti-Lieberman campaign ads and a large selection of videos hounding Lieberman on the campaign trail. Does that continue? If you go to youtube through the duration from here until whenever Lieberman bows out — will we see clips of hecklers waving the newly renovated with a different meaning “Sore Loserman” signs at him?

There was this moment in the 2004 election cycle where some blogger or other wanted Raph Nader bug out, and suggested that he run a quixotic primary campaign against Joseph Lieberman in 2006, because Lieberman represents all that he is against in the Democratic Party and he would raise his points and get a whiff of media attention in his crusade. This struck me as stupid for the simple reason that Nader was not about to defeat Lieberman, and I would have much rather preferred someone beat the man. Beyond which, Nader is not a Democrat, both for his dignity and the dignity of the Democratic Party. (He’s not even a Green, because, you know, he’s cooler than thou.)

So I watched from my perch a strange secession of would-be challengers, earnest though they may be tedious and lacking in the serious challenger category. Paul Newman floated his name should no one throw their hat into the ring. A college professor whose name escapes me because I never bothered to learn his name.

And then came along Lowell Weicker, the Republican who lost to Lieberman the first time out in 1988. At this point I shrug, but I do sense that we were getting closer. And then, stepped out of the void, Ned Lamont. Apparently he stepped in after reading Lieberman’s Wall Street Journal editorial, and the comment that “Democrats undermine the president at their own peril” jars. It was provocative words, and if one is to throw punches like this one cannot feign outrage at the indignity of someone punching back. His default position — you must respect my principle, my principle, my principle I say — falls down on fallow ground when he himself is not able to respect my principle, my principle, my principle I say.

At some point or other someone is just going to have to write the definitive book on this campaign. I think I can piece together a good chronology of events. I remember noting Bill Hillsman coming in to work with Lamont, and remembered it as a portence that this just might work out. At this point in time we may as well call Bill Hillsman a political genius — that’s Paul Wellstone, Jesse Ventura, and now Ned Lamont. I don’t know if he’s moving on now or not (on to Kinky Friedman’s gubernatorial campaign in Texas?), (does he roll across the nation, make quick stops, work his magic, and then leave in the dead of the night to work on his next project?), or what now.

The campaign continues. Unfortunately. The campaign should be over now, with the Republican having selected their weak candidate (who stands at 9 percent in the poll) and the Democrats having selected theirs. But Lieberman moves on. It’s a curious campaign. My hunch is that Lieberman will eventually quietly recede into the sunlight, but it’s just a hunch. Meanwhile the Republican Party believes that they can use Ned Lamont as some sort of bogey-man to prop themselves up with, that the Democrats are getting shrill and dropping such principled men as Lieberman. Chris Shays, Connecticut Republican Representative in a tough campaign — the last bastions of Moderate Republicanism, lines himself behind Lieberman, and therein lies the double-edge: it’s another Democratic Primary as a general election. Republicans are obliged to sit this out, vote for their mediocre candidate, or vote for Lieberman… who, I shall point out, Sean Hannity — before a big Lieberman backer and that tells you all you need to know, has now opted out of support for Lieberman.

I should move on now. I’m getting murkier and murkier here.

I don’t believe in Democracy, which is to say that the word is an abstraction whose pure essence does not exist in real life with competing components in it that collapse on themselves. Approach one ideal, and another ideal recedes over the horizon.

The term “tyranny of the majority” comes to mind, by way of explaining why it is that an election does not a democracy make. I hear that Hitler was duly elected, occasionally the proper qualification is put in place — no, no he was basically appointed, more frequently not. The deal here is that the will of the majority is all good and well so long as it doesn’t mean the minority are shoved into ovens. A sense of pluralism must fall into the picture somewhere.

For the purpose of dissolving this scape-goat tendency away (Homosexuals aren’t having much of a good time in Iraq these days), I hear that democracy requires a genuine middle class, or perhaps the idea that the vibrancy of a nation ought be defined by that standard as opposed to the the ruling class. A pop quiz: what do you think of when you think of Ancient Egypt? What do you think of when you think of America in, say, the 1950s? King Tut and Hula hoops respectively, or some iteration of those themes that brings out the consumerist bias in us all.

The whiff of aristocracy, or King Tut, comes through in the United States’s system of government with the in some corner’s famous Alan Greenspan quote that he felt it was his responsibility to maintain a degree of worker insecurity. Other examples exist, and I may well need to pull together a blog burst of some sort.

Move to Hugo Chavez, champion of the poor, for the flip-side in the stumbling to a coherent democracy. John Dean wrote a book recently that claims Authoritarianism is the province of right-wing politics’ adherents, aptly assigning, say, lingering yearnings for communism in Russia to the right by way of “tradition” — the same will probably be true in a hypothetical post-Castro Cuba, if it can get past the USA stamping it into a neo-liberal mold of basically giving Cuba back to United Fruit. Hugo Chavez is something of a classic populist model of a leader in a third-world nation (whither that middle class?) — he reminds me, and apparently Greg Palast who’se a bit more sympathetic to both figures here– of Huey Long. More importantly, he’s example A of John Dean’s left-wing authoritarian figure — what else would he be?

Muslims, I’ve heard whimpered about as well as cynically disputed by the Bush Administration, cannot hold a democracy — it is against their religion. Truth be told, democracy is at root against every religion, and why you don’t want religious clerics (elected or otherwise) running your nation. Put Pat Robertson in charge of this nation and see what happens. Pluralism dissipates on contact.

Lebanon is a democracy. Or so I hear. Bush says it is, and claimed it as one of the triumphs of his Doctrine of War. Hezbollah, I guess, has acted in the political process of Lebanon as, say, Tammany Hall did in New York: at bottom and at its most benevelont, a social service network for the needy — beyond that, something else. Not a precise or even useful analogy beyond the narrowest precepts, but what are you going to do? I mentioned Hezbollah on this blog in 2004, by way of correcting Patty Murray’s 2002 statements which showed up predictably in her opponent’s campaign to unseat her. (Patty Murray has a Different View of Osama Bin Laden)

Israel, I hear, is a nation we need to throw 1,000 or 10,000 percent support behind, whatever they choose to do, because it is, I hear, the only democracy in the middle east. Except for Lebanon. And Turkey (which I think is more Muslim than Lebanon). I sense also that it is about to become chic to throw American support around the Kurds, and their desire to form what’d be a more democractic than their Sunni and Shiite counterparts in Iraq — Kurdistan. That would bring about some strife with Turkey — not a war, mind you, because, as I heard, it is impossible for Democracies to go to war against each other.

Land back to Lebanon and Israel and I guess you get around that rule by that rule with “They’re fighting Hezbollah — a Country within a Country!” Or rather, Israel is turning the nation toward supporting Hezbollah, thus subverting that original theme of the perils of Democracy and that country within a country more fully merges with the country proper, and thus Lebanon is no longer a democracy, so that steadfast rule of Democracies never ever fighting each other (in neoliberal parlence by way of Tom Friedman — conflates the two — two nations with McDonalds have never gone to war with each other — by now a rule long gone) is safely averted.

It is now 7:03 in Connecticut. And every registered Democrat in Connecticut knows what he or she needs to do.