The American election: the 'silent majority' speaks.

The 2004 election has demonstrated several developments in American politics, the dimensions of which are sharply defined. First, the Republicans have become the dominant party. Their base of support, in contrast to the Democrats, is bigger, broader, more reliable, and more readily activated. For their part, the Democrats appear less and less a conventional coalition of interests and more and more a bizarre conglomeration of grievances. Critically important in this respect is the influence of what one would identify as the American "academic, media, entertainment complex." To put a fine point upon the matter, the Democratic Party has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the latter.

AMEC

In return for a ham-handed bias toward the Democrats, the "academic, media, entertainment complex", hereafter referred to as AMEC, has received a huge compensation. The party has allowed it to identify, to define--and, putatively, to legitimize--those grievances that the Democrats must strive to redress. Secularized, statist, self-involved, and hedonist, AMEC disfavours religious expression, the free-market economy, sacrificial love of country, and constraints upon individual behaviour, especially regarding sexual conduct. In all these respects, the Democrats simply serve their masters in the academy, the press, and the vulgar arts.

If AMEC dictates a "public square" stripped of all religious references, then the Democrats dutifully respond, "So be it." If AMEC dictates higher taxes, ostensibly on "the rich", and greater governmental control over the economy, then the Democrats dutifully respond, "So be it." If AMEC dictates an aversion toward the military, then the Democrats dutifully respond, "So be it." If AMEC dictates an absolute licence for both abortion on demand and homogamy on order, then the Democrats dutifully respond, "So be it." Especially in regard to the last category, the Democratic Party remains in thrall to the radical feminists' catalogue of contrived grievances, as well as to the homo sexualists' self-serving spectre of homophobia around every corner.

Historical triumph

In the year 2004, therefore, it seems not too much to say that the Democratic Party would much rather be politically correct than politically successful. The results of the recent national election attest to the truth of this proposition.

The triumph of the Republican Party in 2004 was both institutionally comprehensive and historically distinctive. Regarding the array of governing institutions across the nation, the Republicans scored a clean sweep. They retained the Presidency, while rising from a half-million deficit in popular votes, as of the 2000 election, to a surplus of three and a half million this time around. In 2004, George W. Bush received 51% of the popular vote to 48% for John Kerry. Bush the Younger thus became the first presidential candidate to reach the 50% mark since his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, accomplished this feat in 1988. Moreover, George W. Bush's popular vote total of 58 million set a new record, exceeding the one established by Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Of course, the electoral college vote determines which candidate wins the Presidency. In electoral votes, Bush went from 271-266 (1) (for Al Gore) in 2000, to 286-252 against Kerry. For Bush's second victory, the Republicans won Florida rather handily. Although one state--Ohio, this time--proved crucial, that state did not produce the Florida fiasco of the previous election. Nonetheless, the network anchors and commentators did their best to depict the "Buckeye State" as a "cliff-hanger." ABC's Peter Jennings, looking pained and puzzled, dismissed a Republican spokesman's categorical statement that Bush had amassed an insurmountable lead in Ohio as "spin."

The Republicans, furthermore, went far beyond holding the White House. They raised their margin in the Senate from 51 to 48, with one independent, to 55 to 44, again with one independent. They also increased their margin in the House of Representatives to 31 seats. Most tellingly, President Bush became the first Chief Executive in 68 years--since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936--to win reelection while his party gained strength in both the House and the Senate. By way of contrast, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota became that chamber's first party leader to lose a bid for reelection in 52 years. Daschle, like John Kerry at the top of the Democratic ticket, is a pro-abortion Catholic. Daschle's specialty in the Upper Chamber was to obstruct approval of President Bush's pro-life nominees to the federal judiciary. For his part, Kerry, who never sponsored a major piece of legislation during 20 years in the Senate, managed to cast six votes against a ban on partial birth abortion. No one should fail to note that the two biggest losers in 2004--Kerry and Daschle--are both pro-abortion Catholics.

In national perspective, the Republicans gained 6 governorships, for a 29-21 gubernatorial advantage over the Democrats. Bush won 31 states, came close in 5 others, and won less than 40% of the vote only in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia. The first two of these are, alas, nominally the most Catholic in the nation. In 15 states, Kerry won less than 40% of the vote.

Significantly, the Democrats ran strongest in the Northeast and the West Coast, the bellwether bastions of AMEC. On the other hand, over two-thirds of all Americans who regularly attend religious services, comprising over 40% of the electorate, voted for President Bush rather than Senator Kerry. According to George Marlin, author of The American Catholic Voter, "The churchgoers, those who voted along cultural lines, put Bush over the top." (2)

John Edwards

Kerry's selection of John Edwards of North Carolina as a running mate was of no regional consequence. Not only did the Republicans win North Carolina (along with the rest of the South), but they even carried Edwards' home county. Edwards, anointed in advance by AMEC as the Democrats' great hope for a Southern breakthrough, had become, instead, a mere historical footnote. As a vice-presidential nominee on a losing ticket, he has received a one-way passage to political oblivion. On its part, AMEC will simply fasten upon some new champion of a 'Southern strategy' for the next time around. Another AMEC hobby-horse, a surging youth vote that would propel the Democrats to victory, did not exactly pan out as expected. In absolute terms, it did increase; in relative terms, it remained constant. Along with youth, all other age categories turned out in greater numbers than previously, with the result that the youth category constituted the same percentage--17%--of the total vote in 2004 as in 2000.

One observer's summation of the election returns bears the ring of truth: "That's no cliffhanger, it's a rout. Do the math and it was a Bush rout." (3) If it was a rout, what made it one? The question admits of a compel pound answer. One element of the compound would be Senator Kerry himself. He proved to be an inept campaigner: wooden in gesture, opaque of speech, and vacillating on the issues. Another factor would be the failure of the Democratic campaign managers, many of whom were recycled Clintonites, to grasp the national mood. They thought that they had tapped into a wellspring of overwhelming national dissatisfaction with the Bush presidency. Whence did they derive this notion? The answer seems clear enough--from their masters in AMEC. In an instance of heaven's persistent irony, AMEC itself, in the actual event, became the object of a widespread revolt against its cultural-political hegemony.

Moral values

On election night, to the surprise, consternation, and grudgingly delivered admission of AMEC's "talking heads," exit polls revealed that "moral values" constituted a salient issue. For all the world, the reporters and anchors reacted like a football player who had been blind-sided by an onrushing undetected opponent. To extend the analogy, some "Monday-morning quarterbacks" quibbled over the precise meaning of the term "moral values."

Referenda results in a dozen states, nevertheless, sent an unequivocal message. There has existed, "since time out of mind" the natural moral conviction that holds marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This natural moral conviction was the subject of a referendum on the ballot of eleven states. By margins ranging from 60% to 80%, the voters in all eleven states affirmed the proposition. The states ranged from Ohio to Oklahoma, Michigan to Mississippi, and Georgia to North Dakota (4).

Also via a referendum, a twelfth state-Florida--endorsed a proposition that requires parental consent prior to an abortion sought by a minor. Of the twelve states in which voters had the opportunity to express themselves directly on homogamy or abortion, Bush carried ten in the presidential election (with a total of 100 electoral votes). Kerry won two, Michigan and Oregon, which would combine for 24 electoral votes.

Summary

The entire foregoing analysis lends itself to the following summary. If the Democrats suffered a rout, then so did AMEC. The secularism that the latter imposes upon the former received a sharp rebuke from a decisive segment of the electorate which both the puppets and puppeteers neither comprehend nor appreciate. The subjacent chart should prove instructive:

Let a statement by John Kerry--possibly the single most fatuous utterance ever made by a major party candidate in a presidential campaign--serve as a coda for the 2004 election: "Hollywood is the heart and soul of America." (5)

Canadian comparison

For Canadians who are disposed to wail lamentations for America as a result of President Bush's re-election, I would counsel that they consider these contrasts: 51% of the electorate returned President Bush for four more years in the White House; Prime Minister Paul Martin, whose party won 37% of the popular vote in the recent parliamentary election, serves at the suffrance of separatists and socialists. The Republicans remained disciplined, under the pressure of a long, intense campaign for the Presidency. Paul Martin, in our highest office, cannot even rein in his own caucus, especially in respect to repeated slurs against America's Chief of State.

President Bush, with an increased Republican majority in the Senate, will nominate judges who respect the right to life of the unborn baby; Prime Minister Martin, by fiat, has just appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada two of the most adamantine advocates of abortion on demand.

Americans in 25% of the states have had a free, democratic say in upholding marriage as a union of a man and a woman; Canadians await the pleasure of an unaccountable, stacked Supreme Court to tell them that homogamy will become the law of the land.

In America, a born-again Christian President readily proclaims his faith; in Canada, a cradle Catholic Prime Minister defies both the teaching of his Church and the tenets of the natural law in his support of abortion and homosexuality.

While legendary units of the British and American military fight and die in battle against a common foe, another legendary fighting force--the Royal Canadian Navy, proud victor of the crucial Battle of the Atlantic in World War II--suffered the death of a fine young officer due to equipment malfunction in a second-hand submarine.

All the while, the Canadian version of the AMEC, generously subsidized by taxpayers' money, continues to impose its nihilistic notions upon our society, law and policies. My fellow Canadians, do not cry for America. Cry for Canada.

I. Church          II.
attendance   Population %   III. Voter %

Weekly         41%            Bush 61%
Never          14%           Kerry 62%

Footnotes

(1.) Gore's total fell to 266 when one Democratic elector from the District of Columbia withheld her vote from her party's nominee in favour of giving it to an African-American public official in a symbolic gesture.

(2.) Richard Ostling, "Victory from the Pews", The Chronicle Herald (Halifax), Nov. 13, 2004. p. E10.

(3.) Bruce Garvey, National Post, Nov. 4, 2004, p. A1.

(4.) "Ohio's (anti-homogamy) measure, by increasing conservative turnout, may have given Bush the Presidency." George Will, "An Election Lost on Many Fronts", National Post, Nov. 9, 2004, p. A14.

(5.) Barbara Kay, "How Hollywood Killed John Kerry", National Post, Nov. 10, 2004, p. A18.

Edward McBride is Emeritus Professor of Political Science, St. Mary's University, Halifax, N.S. His last article in C. I. Nov. 2004 was entitled Beyond Judicial Activism.