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One of the Plain Dealer‘s more entertaining and observant political writers, Thomas Suddes, raised a question or two about the much-contested 2004 presidential election result here in Ohio. Below is my response (with bonus hyperlinks):

Sir,

Always enjoy your columns, the latest one included. But I may be able to suggest an answer to this question:

But if Blackwell and pals are so smart, how come when Blackwell ran for governor in 2006, he drew just 37 percent of Ohio’s vote; carried only one county east of Interstate 71 — Holmes — and carried just three of Cuyahoga County’s 1,434 precincts?

It may have had something to do with the facts that Blackwell was

1. an absolutely charmless, wooden candidate
2. running from the same party as an outgoing administration reviled for its corruption
3. in what was, if not quite an equivalent to 2010′s “wave election,” still a very good year for Democrats and a very bad year for Republicans up and down the ballot.

Whereas, regarding 2004, I’m among those who believe that Secretary of State Blackwell made above-and-beyond efforts to suppress Democrat votes (which, if it may be described as a “conspiracy” is an ongoing and not-very-secret conspiracy where Ohio’s Republican party is concerned) but, while I think that may have been enough to shift Ohio from a Kerry win to a GWB win, I’m under no illusions that Ohio would have been 60% for Kerry otherwise. At the absolute most, Blackwell and friends managed to shift the outcome by a percent or two. Just enough to make a Republican win out of a too-close-to-call election. But not really near enough to make a Republican win out of the 2006 governor’s race.

Someone may attempt to game the system, may even do so successfully once, without being a magician who can do anything.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

Yes he is, with obligatory Presidential memoir. Frankly, even aside from my distaste for the man, my initial reaction is to want no part of any discussion of this little return to the national stage by GWB. Regardless of party or political stance these things are always completely fake, tedious and by-the-numbers; does anyone ever actually read these stupid bloody useless, meaningless ghostwritten books?

But I can’t help suspecting that somewhere there are plenty of know-it-alls who would eagerly pounce on this attitude as evidence of that snobbish, out-of-touch “elitism” which it is lately so fashionable to condescendingly tell liberals is the root of all our many failings. So y’know what? Fine; actually, upon thinking about it, I would love to have a lengthy and in-depth national conversation about George Bush and his presidency right now. Let’s get everyone involved. Particularly some of those even-more-fashionable neo-reformed-born-again-this-time-we-mean-it conservatives who have adopted the very convenient line that “George Bush betrayed conservative principles (we’re not going to let that happen again)” of late.

I would absolutely love to hear a conversation with them about Bush and his legacy, actually. Some really good questions present themselves: (more…)

Remember the old stickybuffalo site, and how at one point it featured random selections from a database of quotes which someone had found interesting for one reason or another? Well, it did. (Unless history and/or my memory are misbehaving again.)

I’ve got my own quotes database, or at any rate a text file. I’m a big digital saver… I guess it’s better than hoarding physcal objects, unless one really wants to be on TV… anyway. Here are some selections to ornament stickybuffalo for a few days:

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