I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!

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I'm gutted. It seemed like this year was going to be different. There was new confidence, new self-belief. We'd learned from the mistakes from the past and had chosen a leader with the tenacity and acumen to prevail. We were up against an opponent whose performance had been nothing short of atrocious and as the moment of truth approached, we had the momentum. And yet, and yet....

Cardiff 4 -1 West Ham.

The other team I support didn't win yesterday either. I'll surely have more to say about this later ("Oh *goody*, I hear you say), but at this point, I don't really know what else the Dems could have done. I think Kerry was the best candidate available, for once I think the Dems ran a very good campaign, and with an economy in the crapper and an upopular war on, I don't think the objective circumstances for a pickup could have been much better. The polling conventional wisdom indicated a Kerry victory..... but post-election exit polls seem to show markedly different results. I don't know what happened.

What keeps sticking in my mind is this study from late September showing that Bush supporters were plain uninformed -- that, for instance, 72% continued to think in late October that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I don't know what to do about that...they had people in their living rooms every day for months talking about the lack of WMDs. What more could have been done to inform these people? 55% thought the 9/11 commission concluded that Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda. Again, factually incorrect. I guess these are voters who don't follow the news at all and simply rely on their gut about a person -- and in fact, their perception of reality flows from their preferred candidate rather than the other way around. Don't know what to do about that either except nominate the folksiest goshdarn pol we can dredge up. Don't get me wrong, lots of fully-informed people consciously and intentionally voted for Bush and his policies, but when one party's supporters are so radically misinformed about the most profound factual matters, it is troubling for our democracy.



| posted by Alex at 7:59 AM