Random Thoughts

Some local Republicans are voting for John Kerry. Remember the cover pictured here from our February 2 issue, speculating that these two would end up being sidekicks? We ran it on the eve of the Feb. 7 Michigan Democratic Caucus for an interview Rick Coates conducted with candidate John Edwards.
John Edwards got some kidding over our cover when a national news show displayed it on the air and asked what he thought of the idea of running with John Kerry. Five months later, the Express prediction came true with Kerry picking Edwards for his running mate.
I don’t much care for political predictions, but with only 90 days until the election, it seems likely that one would be climbing out on a very short limb indeed to predict that George W. Bush is going to be shot out of the presidency on Nov. 2 like a cartoon mouse from a circus cannon.
That opinion is based on what many local Republicans and independents are saying over coffee counters, restaurant tables and festival scenes around Northern Michigan.
“I voted for Bush last time, but there’s no way I’d ever vote for him again,” is a mantra you hear over and over in Northern Michigan. And, privately, a number of past and present local elected Republican officials have been appalled by the disastrous direction in which Bush has taken our country.
You can also see the evidence in the number of Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers popping up all over conservative Northern Michigan and the dearth of similar tailwear touting Bush and Cheney. You can see it in the yard signs down many neighborhoods: “Support Our Troops -- Vote Bush Out.”
You can see it in the pages of local newspapers, which are on fire with letters raging over Bush policies, and the very few letters touting the Bush/Cheney record.
You can see it in the many Democratic fundraisers blossoming around the region. You can see it in the example of more than 70 of the region’s top musicians recording a CD to “Beat Bush.” You can see it in the number of bestselling books by dismayed White House Republicans: John O’Neill, Richard Clark and John Dean, among them, on the shelves of local bookstores. Even local teenagers are getting involved with a “Rock the Vote” concert to register 18-year-old voters.
On the TV news, we hear this is going to be a close election, with likely voters split 50/50 in favor of Bush or Kerry. But this is going to be an election decided by the “unlikely” voters -- people who’ve been stunned by the revelations of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and folks who don’t want their kids paying for the tax cuts of the super rich or car-bombed in a war dreamed up by a White House cabinet of oil company executives.
Soon you’ll hear the national media wondering whether Bush, Jr. will be a one-termer like his father. That will generate a national sense of wish-fulfillment to create a like-father-like-son legend. Everyone loves a legend, and what becomes a legend most in this case is repetition.
It ain’t gonna‘ be close, not with the likes of Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan’s son blasting their own party over its medieval stand on stem cell research. Not to mention John Edwards feeding Dick Cheney into the woodchipper in the upcoming debates.
So here’s a prediction -- a little riskier perhaps than merely predicting that Kerry and Edwards will win: it will be everyday Republicans themselves who will play a major role in tossing Bush and Cheney out of office.
Perhaps then we’ll get back to becoming the “United” States of America again.
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