Election Predictions

It's pretty clear by now that the Blue Wave was nothing but the leftist media's code name for this year's effort to boost Democrats. The pattern has become so predictable it's painful watching it unfold yet again.

It starts months before with the slow drumbeat of stories portending an inexorable D victory. The pre-election polls show Ds way ahead. The early election day exit polls show Ds way ahead. The networks call it for the Ds, pretty much everywhere, on average of one hour before the polls close. By evening it has, surprise, become too close to call. The next morning they briefly mention an R landslide and move quickly to video of a bombing in Iraq.

Then come the sour grapes. The Leftard blogs light up with conspiracy theories about the exit polls, Diebold, and any Republicans - especially relatives of powerful Rs - who might work in election-related media or government. For two years we'll hear how the election in <insert random flyover state> was stolen, the pissing and moaning getting more bitter and pathetic right up until the next election, when it's deja vu all over again.

Until John Kerry put his foot in his mouth the Ds were telling anyone who would listen that this election should be all about Iraq. Then Kerry's "botched joke" reminded everyone how they see the military. Oooops.

Kerry will forthwith be knifed in the back, thrown under the bus, and quickly forgotten by the media. Watch now for them to turn attention back in desperation to something the Ds were really scoring points on. Mark Foley.

UPDATE, 2 Nov: Seymour Hersh sums up the leftist opinion of the military and the deeply cynical mindset that produces such beliefs:

If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said. "In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby killers, in shame and humiliation," he said. "It isn't happening now, but I will tell you - there has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

Hersh came out hard against President Bush for his involvement in the Middle East.

"In Washington, you can't expect any rationality. I don't know if he's in Iraq because God told him to, because his father didn't do it, or because it's the next step in his 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program," he said. Hersh hinted that the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq lies with eight or nine members of the administration who have a "neo-conservative agenda" and dictate the U.S.'s post-September 11 foreign policy. "You have a collapsed Congress, you have a collapsed press. The military is going to do what the President wants," Hersh said. "How fragile is democracy in America, if a president can come in with an agenda controlled by a few cultists?"

Hersh is apparently fishing for another Pulitzer prize. In front of a foreign audience of course.