The self-fulfilling prophecy of lesser-evilism.

• Author: Smith, Sharon
• Position: Election 2004: Green Analyses

Republicans and social conservatives swept the 2004 election, despite the extreme polarization of the nation's population. George Bush barely defeated John Kerry in the Electoral College but he won the popular vote by a sizeable margin of four million across the country. Republicans increased their majority in Congress while voters in 11 states voted to ban gay marriage. California's referendum against "three strikes" sentencing laws also went down to defeat.

No one can blame Ralph Nader this time around. Nader's half-million or so votes had no influence on the outcome of this election. The Democrats made sure of that, devoting months of effort to keep Nader's name off ballots in populous states across the country.

Who is to blame, then? Unfortunately, the first conclusions coming from the Anybody-But-Bush Left appear to have quickly shifted blame to the US population itself.

For example, Justin Podur's article, "The Morning After," posted on ZNet, argues:

[I]t is time to admit something. The greatest divide in the world today is not between the US elite and its people, or the US elite and the people of the world. It is between the US people and the rest of the world. The first time around, George W. Bush was not elected. When the United States planted cluster bombs all over Afghanistan, disrupted the aid effort there, killed thousands of people, and occupied the country, it could be interpreted as the actions of a rogue group who had stolen the elections and used terrorism as a pretext to wage war. When the United States invaded Iraq, killing 100,000 at the latest count, it could be argued that no one had really asked the American people about it and that the American people had been lied to. When the United States kidnapped Haiti's president and installed a paramilitary dictatorship, it could be argued that these were the actions of an unelected group with contempt for democracy. With this election, all of those actions have been retroactively justified by the majority of the American people.[http://www.zmag.org] Many people will be influenced by these arguments because Bush's margin of victory was so much larger than anyone predicted. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff, for example, argued on November 3, "Democrats peddle issues, and Republicans sell values. Consider the four G's: God, guns, gays and grizzlies."

It is true that the conservative and Republican vote was higher than in 2000. The 55% voter turnout had been widely...