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I'll tell you what I'm going to do on election day, but first a few observations and predictions:
1) Bush is going to win. For a variety of reasons: Americans don't like to change presidents in the middle of war. No president running for re-election in a year ending in 4 has ever lost. The election may very likely be rigged in swing states (with the electronic voting machines that don't have paper trails, and all that fun stuff). Bush can be both the tough-talking cowboy and the bumbling loveable party guy. Kerry's not good at being either of those. His attempts to sound tough haven't gone over very well; the pro-war crowd smells a phony in Kerry's bragging about Vietnam, and the anti-war crowd sees a wolf in sheep's clothing. I don't think he's either, I think he just made a miscalculation about what would attract voters.
2) Nader and Cobb will divide the far left vote, so neither will reach the magic percent number that would've helped their parties stay on the ballot for 2006.
3) Neither Bush or Kerry will bring the troops home from Iraq or Afghanistan in the next four years. If by some chance I'm wrong and the troops do come home, they won't stay long. Bush will send the troops to more countries, where they'll have lots of adventures to tell their grandkids. It's possible Kerry might do that too, but not as likely.
4) I have no idea which party will win the Senate, but I expect the Republicans to keep control of the House.
5) No matter who wins, sometime next year a massive fight will begin within the Republican party over who'll be nominated in 2008. There's dozens of governors, senators, secretaries, and generals who are willing and ready. Are there any who don't share the neoconservative ideology? Hmm.
6) If Bush wins (and I expect him to), the Democrats will begin fighting over why Kerry lost. The majority will blame Kerry himself. Hopefully someone will have the guts to fire Terry McAullife. A fight will begin between the right and left in the Democratic party, between the Liebermans and Kuciniches. If the right wins that fight, the Democrats are doomed. As Harry Truman said, "If you give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican, they'll vote Republican every time." And some of us will vote for third party candidates.
7) There will also be a fight within the Green Party, between those who supported Nader and those who supported Cobb. I'm not sure who I want to win that fight. Regardless of who wins, the party needs some internal reform. It needs to be more bottom-up instead of top-down. In particular, there needs to be a change in the rule about which candidates are allowed on the ballot at conventions. Those just asking for endorsement should be on it as well as those asking for nomination.
What will I be doing on election day? As little as possible. I'm going to vote early, in October, if I remember. On election day I'll be at UTEP from early morning until about 4:30 p.m. I have two classes on Tuesdays, European Political Systems and US Foreign Policy. The outcome of the election will undoubtedly be a topic of discussion in those two classes for the remainder of the semester. You might not think an American election would be an important topic in a class on Europe, but that professor likes to ramble. His usual rambling is reminiscing about fighting the Nazis, both as an underground Polish insurgent and later as a member of the British military. But he likes to discuss Bush and Kerry as well, and dislikes them both. And of course, whoever's inaugurated in January will have a lot of interaction with the European political systems. But I'm rambling.
I'll take the bus home, and probably arrive around 5:30. My dogs will bark at me, and leap on me, and I'll growl at them and run around and play tug of war with their rope. Probably my family will be watching the election returns come in, on either CNN or a local station. I'll check it on the Internet, as I find the Internet less annoying. We'll sit around a couple hours like that. Maybe we'll eat something. If Kerry wins we'll say, "Yippee! Hope they let him take office." If Bush wins we'll say, "Oh well. That's what we expected all along."
I tried to think of what we'd say if Nader, Cobb, or Badnarik won. But I can't.
Greg Cannon, an El Paso native, is a history student at the University of Texas at El Paso who hopes to be teaching history in a few years. He's a vegetarian, agnostic, and often pretty nosey. He's a news junkie. He keeps track of today's history at www.geocities.com/gregcannon1/part3 with the vague idea of some day writing a history of the early 21st century.