Not all computer errors involve the counting of votes in Florida. Writing in Funny Times, language maven Richard Lederer tells about a computer glitch that caused the publisher of an economics report to have to issue an apology to subscribers: "Instead of the figures on the sales of soybeans to foreign countries," the sheepish publisher explained, the computer printed out "the chest measurements of the Female Wrestlers Association."
Hazard your own guess as to why the soybean statistician had FWA chest measurements saved on his computer, but the lesson here is that it's important not only to get your statistics right, but also to get the right statistics.
In the aftermath of November 7th, the media and the political pros have been zeroing in on one set of election figures, while totally ignoring another set that may be even more revealing about the presidential race.
The national focus, of course, has been on the few-hundred-vote difference between Gore and Bush in the state of Florida—a thin divide that was breath-lessly termed a "crisis" for our democracy by assorted pipe-smoking pundits. Yet these same deep thinkers didn't give a puff about a far wider electoral divide that poses what is obviously an actual crisis for our democracy: the more than 100 million votes that went astray on Election Day.
These votes weren't "lost" to misaligned butterfly ballots, pregnant chads, or some conniving election official who deposited them in a closet. Rather, these were the uncast ballots of almost half of the American electorate who chose not to vote this year, largely because they feel they've been cast out of the process by a vacuous, cynical, and elitist political system that no longer addresses their needs and aspirations.
These mostly are middle- and low-income folks, people who earn less than $50,000 a year. While they make up some 80% of the U.S. population, exit polls on November 7th found that, for the first time, they've fallen to less than half of the voting population.
A dwindling base for the Democratic party
This core populist constituency is the traditional base of the Democratic party. But as the Clinton-Gore-Lieberman Democrats have jerked the party out from under the working classes, pursuing the money and adopting the policies of the corporate and investor elites, the core constituency of the party has—big surprise—steadily dropped away from the polls.
In 1992, the under-$50,000 crowd made up 63% of voters. In 1996, after Clinton and Gore had relentlessly and very publicly pushed NAFTA, the WTO, and other Wall Street policies for four years, the under-$50,000 crowd dropped to 52% of voters.
After four more years of income stagnation and decline for these families under the regime of the Clinton-Gore "New Democrats," the under-$50,000 crowd dropped this year to only 47% of voters.
At the same time, those who are prospering under the Wall Street boom, cheered on by the policies of both the Republican and Democratic leadership, have become ever- more-enthusiastic voters. ... [ read more ]
After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
