Advance exit polling

Since
we go to press hours before the polls close November 5, I’m in a weird position
as I write this. I don’t know the outcome of the election, though I’ve tried to
prepare myself.

            Some things are as certain as
conservative hatred of the “death tax” (it’s actually the most
progressive one we’ve got).

            I know the Republicans need to win
hearts and minds, since they’ve so obviously lost theirs. (The poisonous
campaign against Assemblymember Susan John was one urine sample I used for my
diagnosis.) And oh — or doh! — those Dems. Once again they’ve fielded some
candidates who might better be put out to pasture, and I don’t mean because of
age. That they fell back on Walter Mondale and Frank Lautenberg as US Senate
candidates-in-a-pinch shows how much the party is squeezed dry of fresh blood.

            And what about the “minor”
parties? They make too many preventable goofs. At least they can plead
inexperience.

            The question on all minds is this:
Will this election bring the deluge — the Republicans taking the Senate and
thus controlling the Congress, White House, and yes, the Supreme Court? By the
time you read this, we’ll all know the answer.

            But let’s get real. If the Dems took
both houses, and each house still had a small “c” conservative
majority, the course probably wouldn’t shift by more than a few degrees. The
country’s been driving with a locked steering column for more than a quarter
century. Except for what’s heard from a few small voices in the back seat, the
dominant discourse swings from rant to sermonette. Which would be tolerable if
the take-home message were “Love thy neighbor.”

            Instead, the message is
“They’re all out to get me,” “they” being a group of
pathetically minor foreign military powers, plus some freelancers the US helped
put in business. And you know what? Bad as their sins are, “they” are
doing nothing we haven’t done on a larger scale.

Time for comic
relief: It looks like the 2004 presidential race may be a rematch of Bush vs. Gore, not
only with this blessed pair at the top of the ballot, but with electoral
dysfunction all over again. It’s always a mistake to believe the system’s
designed to work any differently.

            Is that cynical? I don’t think so.
It’s right there in the history books. Well, at least those not written by
historians too comfortable publishing for this or that Big House. The US has
always been more concerned about getting and spending, expanding and
conquering, than about making peace and justice or building a new international
community worthy of that much-abused name. You can read the next tragic chapter
in the White House’s recently issued National Security Policy.

            My mood hasn’t been helped by what I
saw in the November 3 Democrat and Chronicle.
The Living section had a side-by-side profile of a local military recruiter (by
the way, what a shame the Rochester public schools were forced to re-admit
these snake-oil salespeople) and a campus activist. It was the headline that
got me: “Different paths to peace.” It seems “war weighs
[equally] upon those who will fight and those who seek another way.”

            Taken individually, the profiles of
Sgt. Todd A. Crofoot and RIT activist Ivan Broida provide some insights. But
that headline turns everything to mush. To paraphrase A.J. Muste for the
umpteenth time: There’s no other way to peace besides peacemaking. At this
stage of history, to imply the Pentagon is a peacemaker is Orwellianism on
steroids.

            I really hate being a naysayer. But
think of all the opportunities for true peace and prosperity our potentially
wonderful country has missed. Whatever the vote tally, there’ll be lots of
money for “defense” but no Marshall Plan for the Rust Belt (of which
Rochester is a charter member, despite its homegrown industry of self-imaging).

            Our schools will have more fiscal
crises, maybe to the point where no bailout will be possible. Many a local
government budget will go bust, with the effects ricocheting toward the usual
bystanders, the poor. It’ll be interesting to see which goes through the roof
first: health care costs or public anger at them. (You want universal coverage
and public health services? Your name will soon be on John Ashcroft’s little
list.)

            And as Social Security prepares to
take a hit, everyone awaits expansion of the US social insecurity system, which
rests on the fear of unemployment, shortfalls in child care, the lack of a
decent long-term care policy, and other selling points of unregulated,
unmerciful capitalism. Only yesterday lots of people were dreading Y2K. Now
we’ve got real worries — and we need to re-set some internal settings before
midnight.

This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2002.