Ohio

Barbara Boxer joined today with the Congressional Black Caucus to protest certification of the results of the Presidential election in Ohio. As I've previously noted (along with many other people), Ohio was by no means the closest election among the 50 states, and there would be many scenarios where the election would have been different if a few thousand votes would have changed here or there. But that's the nature of elections in our electoral college system. Moreover, the margin of victory in Ohio was not even that close -- 118,000 votes is a helluva lot. If we're going to start protesting votes that close, we'll never have a "legitimate" President again.

But what really worries me is two things. First, regardless of how we Republicans might feel about the Democrats making fools of themselves over Ohio, it is a bad thing for the Republic (and, hence, in the long term, for Republicans) to have one of the major parties falling prey to paranoid fantasies of voter fraud. Moreover, it is a very bad thing for one party to be broadcasting its conspiracy theories about election fraud and the imperfections of elections in our country at a time we are at war. Saying Bush is illegitimate at a time when the enemies of our country conceive of Bush as the Great Satan -- well, do the words "aid and comfort" mean anything anymore? Finally, it is a horrible horrible horrible horrible stupid stupid stupid stupid thing for Democrats to be pulling this crap three weeks before the scheduled elections in Iraq. Think of it: what does a young Sunni torn between his tribe's hatred for America and fear of Shia dominance and his desire to participate in a rejuvenated, democratic Iraq think when he hears that even in America, the world's greatest democracy, responsible, elected representatives say that the Presidential election was a sham? Couldn't the Democrats have taken one for the team on this one, whatever they believe in their cynical hearts? Don't they care about the idea of little-d democracy anymore?

Second, and only slightly less important, it is a tragedy that the "representatives" of African-Americans are the major repository of these nutty conspiracy theories. It doesn't do their communities any good at all to be allied with the lunatic, MoveOn.org fringe of the Democratic Party. But it's also dangerous, because the African-American community is also a community that is particularly ripe for radical Islamist propaganda. Sooner or later, the Hate America First attitude of the CBC is going to augment a radical Islamist upsurge in the black community that will be singularly bad for that community and for the country as a whole. And this at a time when Americans are, in fact, remarkably sensitive to both African-Americans and Muslim Americans. I don't get it, but it scares me.