Stepford Voters: Tears for Fears?

So much depends on the gleaming red motor-scooter, its handlebars affixed with a Kerry-Edwards poster, glazed by the midday sun …

For a few brief bright shining hopeful hours there, a John Kerry victory over chimp in chief as the next president of the United States beckoned as not just possible, but probable. Clearly, at least 55 million Americans in this country desperately craved – and should have received – a needed change of national leadership. My swing state of Pennsylvania was especially pumped!

Or so it seemed.

“Carol,” a Philadelphia social worker, described the phalanx of young female bike riders in formation spelling out V-O-T-E F-O-R K-E-R-R-Y that Election Day morning.

A political consultant I bumped into on the street informed me Kerry was ahead at 4 p.m. We were each cautiously optimistic.

Near dusk, a bus completely covered with Kerry-Edwards posters passed by, heading in the direction of one of the city’s ghettos, and someone onboard was using a loudspeaker urging people to vote in the two remaining hours the polls were open.

I can’t recall such an extreme outpouring of live enthusiasm and energy for any candidate for the presidency in recent memory.

Despite a mostly pathetic campaign with both candidates deplorably mired 30 years in the past in the rice paddies of Vietnam, Kerry distinguished himself in the debates as dignified, prepared and definitely presidential.

How exceptionally well the Democrats deployed youthful activists. On South Broad Street – Philadelphia’s main drag – nearly every block featured a gaggle of young people straddling the medial strip and brandishing Kerry-Edwards signs at onrushing traffic, streams of cars honking in solidarity while passing numerous Philly polling places, staffed by more young people. A massive mobilization.

And then the bad news began trickling in.

Foreshadowing? Near my polling place, a woman wearing a large Kerry-Edwards button showed me John Kerry campaign posters she claims Republicans ripped down and mutilated. She also blamed Repugs for committing the vileness of dumping trash teeming with used condoms on her doorstep.

Going to vote, I took a book along, but by mid-morning there was no line. Already, Philadelphia’s election machines were besmirched internationally by the Drudge Report online, erroneously suggesting several thousand votes were already registered. Not true, steadfastly maintained Democratic committee-person “Arnie Arcadia” outside the polling place.

Around dinner time, I heard how someone in New Mexico, a visually impaired Kerry supporter, was nearly prevented from voting for no real reason.

Later that same evening, “Wanda,” a drama teacher in West Virginia, notified me the vile Bush gang grabbed her state. How? Republicans scared – no, make that terrified – folks into voting for Bush, she reported, by confabulating if the Democrats won, they’d confiscate everybody’s guns! That’s an especially ridiculous threat since John Kerry not only hunts, but posed for photos with firearms and weaponry too many times during the campaign.

By 5 p.m., Zogby the pollster predicted an electoral split, implying another deadlock, which would amount to a new national nightmare. Or, as prescient NBC-TV so succinctly stated, “It’s a replay of the 2000 election.”

Heartbreaking, huh?

Despite the Bushling’s devious ineptitude, apparently he’s like an electronic identity chip embedded under his followers’ skin, guaranteeing their loyalty and devotion in perpetuity… giving him a moral mandate?

Stepford Voters!

Maybe DUH-Be-Ya really didn’t win this time, either. What if the exit polls weren’t wrong. Suppose the Diebold electronic voting machine system was deliberately hacked? Could cleverly programmed voting machine malfunctions mask election fakery? A Bush crony from Texas who owns that company promised to deliver Ohio, and was as good as his word. Stealbold! Or did Kerry take a fall? Why did he concede so soon? Could Skull and Bones be thicker than water? More to the point, has presidential politics become the new professional wrestling?

Just wait, gang. The joke’s on you … Hillary and Obama in 2008!

And as for you frenzied “liberals” – you know who you are – who get your jollies claiming “intelekshual” superiority over “moron” GWB and his merry band of radical Repug-Nican NeoCons, I have news for you: Don’t underestimate your enemy’s intelligence – these folks are smart enough to throw … an election.

“Politics is about cunning … Why are people surprised when snakes crawl on their bellies?” declared Edgardo Vega Yunque, author of the newly released post-9/11 political satire novel, “The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle.” “Why are people surprised the Bush people were more cunning and are still in power?”