Presidential Race Completed

1. Freedom squelches terrorist violence: A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom. (harvard gazette)
2. Suspicions grow that Arafat is dying of AIDS (israelinsider)
3. American Exceptionalism:The message of Tuesday’s verdict. (victor davis hanson, nro)
4. We weren't dumb enough to vote Kerry: The American people don't want to be condescended to by ketchup heiresses, billionaire currency speculators, $20-million-a-picture Hollywood pretty boys, and multi-millionaire documentary-makers posing as bluecollar lardbutts.
   The Democrats keep talking to people as if they're like John Edwards's 40-year mill-workers, but that's not what work is any more, and a 23-year-old hairdresser can know enough about starting and running a business to be unimpressed at a few footling tax credits dangled in front of her by a 60-year-old lifelong "public servant" lucky enough to be living a grand old life thanks to his billionaire wife's first husband. (mark steyn)
5. The Times Wrings Its Hands
   Here is how the New York Times responded today to the horrific murder of Theo Van Gogh and the ensuing arrest of nine Islamic militants:
   Something sad and terrible is happening to the Netherlands, long one of Europe's most tolerant, decent and multicultural societies.
   Yes, that is true. Van Gogh was shot, and then, while still alive, he was stabbed repeatedly and his throat was cut. The murderer then stuck a five-page letter to Van Gogh's body with the knife; the letter threatened certain Dutch politicians. That is indeed "sad and terrible," although we would be more inclined to rage than sadness.
   
   But what does the Times propose to do in response to this terrorist murder?
   Urgent efforts are needed to better manage the cultural tensions perilously close to the surface of Dutch public life. The problem is not Muslim immigration, but a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society. One very real danger is that the public trauma over the van Gogh murder may lead to a clamor for anti-Muslim policies that could victimize thousands of innocent refugees and immigrants.
   The challenge for Dutch political leaders is to find ways to reverse this disturbing trend of politically motivated violence without making it harder to achieve cultural harmony.
   Notice how blame for Van Gogh's murder rests not with the killers, but with the Dutch government's "failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society." Whatever that means. And, of course, in the Netherlands as in the United States, the Times' chief fear is that popular outrage at Islamic terrorism might lead to "victimization" of innnocent immigrants. Let me just hazard a guess here: there won't be any innocent immigrants having their throats cut. Except, perhaps, for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others who have been threatened with death by the Islamist terrorists. (powerlineblog)
6. Tire slashing update
   On Tuesday we noted that thirty vans rented by the Republican Party in Milwaukee to drive voters to the polls had been disabled by having their tires slashed. It appears that the Milwaukee police are making some progress investigating the case. Several readers have sent us the link to yesterday's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story by Cary Spivak and Dan Bice (registration required): "Tire slashing questions await Democrats' sons." The whole story is of interest; here are the first four paragraphs:
   The investigation has already led to the Tuesday arrest of Opel E. Simmons III, a veteran party activist from Virginia in town to work on John Kerry's presidential campaign. Simmons, 33, was released Thursday afternoon without being charged. (powerlineblog)
7. Tell Bill Frist to “just say no” to Arlen Specter for Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Remind Bill Frist what happened to Dan Rather when Rather betrayed the people through forged documents. Frist does not want to start Fristgate. (notspecter.com)
8. NOVELIST ROGER SIMON RESPONDS TO JANE SMILEY'S SCREED on the idiocy of American voters:
   The mind of a good fantasist must make those stories vivid. And to do that you have to live in those stories, believe your vision and live it like an actor. Contradictory ideas are to some extent not allowed because they would vitiate the drama, leaving only a lifeless essay.
   That means the novelist (myself included) must be something of an hysteric when writing. You are inventing your own private reality. That is what Ms. Smiley has done in her article.
   Indeed.
   UPDATE: Speaking of fantasy, Smiley has her Civil War history backwards, too:
   According to Smiley:
   The worst civilian massacre in American history took place in Lawrence, Kan., in 1862—Quantrill's raid. The red forces, known then as the slave-power, pulled 265 unarmed men from their beds on a Sunday morning and slaughtered them in front of their wives and children.
   Now, if history hasn't completely reversed itself recently, wasn't William Clarke Quantrill a Confederate raider? (instapundit)
9. I’m Loving It: Krugman’s post-election meltdown — and more! (nationalreview)
10. Krugman cutting off Dem nose to spite face (command-post.org)
11. Newsweek's dereliction of duty: Included with all the little anecdotes (Teresa Heinz Kerry is a royal pain — duh!) was at least one major political bombshell.
    After clinching the Democratic nomination, Newsweek reports, John Kerry was so desperate to enlist GOP Sen. John McCain as his running mate that he made an "outlandish" offer: He'd expand the role of vice president to include the duties of secretary of Defense.
    Moreover, Kerry — seeking the presidency in a time of grave international danger — promised to put McCain in charge of all U.S. foreign policy should they win.
    "You're out of your mind," McCain reportedly told Kerry. "I don't even know if it's constitutional."
    John Kerry clearly is not out of his mind — and nobody will ever confuse him with a constitutional scholar.
    No, one lesson here is that he is so utterly devoid of moral fiber that he'd trade away the heart and soul of the presidency in order to win the office in the first place. But how close would that election have been had the voters known that such an offer had been contemplated — much less made?
    Not very, we guess.
    So why did Newsweek sit on the news for all those months? (nypost)
12. Vandals Hit GOP Headquarters in N.Carolina: Vandals spray painted vulgar messages on the walls of the North Carolina Republican Party headquarters and left a burned effigy depicting President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, police said. Police said at least two windows were broken and it appeared that the vandals tried to put incendiary devices inside of the building.
    Investigators also found a partially burned, two-headed effigy in military fatigues. One head had the face of Bush and the other the face of Kerry.
    "The people who did this are sick," said Kevin Howell, communications director for the state Republican Party. "People don't understand that debate and elections are part of the process. This isn't how you act." (apmyway)
13. Reagan is Smiling: Let this be clear: this election is a reaffirmation of Ronald Reagan--his hopefulness, his vision, and his adherence to the conservative values that rescued the Republican Party from its political exile. After the celebrating, President Bush must get down to the hard work of achieving conservative goals. Doing this will expand the Republican majority not shrink it. As we beat back the terror threat around the globe, President Bush needs to offer further support for the culture of life, advance meaningful tax reform, appoint judges who don't act like super-legislators, and enforce our national borders for cultural and security reasons.
    In Shut Up & Sing, I wrote about the dynamic that we saw play in this election--the elites versus Americans. In the end, the latter will always win out. They find inspiration in Al Franken. We find inspiration in Tommy Franks. They admire Michael Moore. We admire Mel Gibson. We believe in partial privatization of Social Security. They believe in partial birth abortion. They think: "In Kofi we Trust." We think "In God We Trust." They pray for an opening at Spago. We pray for an opening in Heaven. (laura ingraham, townhall)
14. Democrats Map Out a Different Strategy The 2008 nominee must appeal to red states, analysts say. Hillary Clinton may not qualify. "We have to be very careful about the kind of candidate that we nominate and where that candidate comes from," said Scott Falmlen, executive director of the Democratic Party in North Carolina, where Easley won in a landslide Tuesday despite Kerry's lopsided loss there to President Bush. "This party has got to get in a position where it does not write off an entire section of the country."Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, was more blunt. "As of now, Hillary Clinton's a bad idea," he said.
    "Do we see a pattern here? No L.A., no Cambridge, no Manhattan," said Harpootlian, who remains a key party strategist in South Carolina. "The majority of America isn't from those areas, and they don't hold the values of these folks.". (latimes)
15. The Values-Vote Myth: Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.
    In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.
    This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.
    Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily. (david brooks, nytimes)
16. A question of values: A poorly devised exit poll question and a dose of spin are threatening to undermine our understanding of the 2004 presidential election.
    The news media has made much of the finding that a fifth of voters picked "moral values" as the most important issue in deciding their vote - as many as cited terrorism or the economy. The conclusion: moral values are ascendant as a political issue.
    The reporting accurately represents the exit poll data, but not reality. While morals and values are critical in informing political judgments, they represent personal characteristics far more than a discrete political issue. Conflating the two distorts the story of Tuesday's election.
    This distortion comes from a question in the exit poll, co-sponsored by the national television networks and The Associated Press, that asked voters what was the most important issue in their decision: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values or health care. Six of these are concrete, specific issues. The seventh, moral values, is not, and its presence on the list produced a misleading result.
    How do we know? Pre-election polls consistently found that voters were most concerned about three issues: Iraq, the economy and terrorism. When telephone surveys asked an open-ended issues question (impossible on an exit poll), answers that could sensibly be categorized as moral values were in the low single digits. In the exit poll, they drew 22 percent.
    Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result.
    The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.
    He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror. (nyt)
17. The Gay Marriage Myth Terrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election. The morality theory rests on three claims. The first is that gay-marriage bans led to higher turnout, chiefly among Christian conservatives. The second is that Bush performed especially well where gay marriage was on the ballot. The third is that in general, moral issues decided the election.
    The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well.
    
    politics
    Who's winning, who's losing, and why.The Gay Marriage MythTerrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election.By Paul FreedmanPosted Friday, Nov. 5, 2004, at 1:16 PM PT
    Did "moral values"—in particular, the anti-gay marriage measures on ballots in 11 states this week—drive President Bush's re-election? That's the early conventional wisdom as Democrats begin soul-searching and finger-pointing. These measures are alleged to have drawn Christian conservatives to the polls, many of whom failed to vote last time. The theory is intriguing, but the data don't support it. Gay marriage and values didn't decide this election. Terrorism did.
    The morality theory rests on three claims. The first is that gay-marriage bans led to higher turnout, chiefly among Christian conservatives. The second is that Bush performed especially well where gay marriage was on the ballot. The third is that in general, moral issues decided the election.
    The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well.
    It's true that states with bans on the ballot voted for Bush at higher rates than other states. His vote share averaged 7 points higher in gay-marriage-banning states than in other states (57.9 vs. 50.9). But four years ago, when same-sex marriage was but a twinkle in the eye of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Bush's vote share was 7.3 points higher in these same states than in other states. In other words, by a statistically insignificant margin, putting gay marriage on the ballot actually reduced the degree to which Bush's vote share in the affected states exceeded his vote share elsewhere.
    If the morality gap doesn't explain Bush's re-election, what does? A good part of the answer lies in the terrorism gap. Nationally, 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush but not Kerry to handle terrorism; only 31 percent trusted Kerry but not Bush. This 18-point gap is particularly significant in that terrorism is strongly tied to vote choice: 99 percent of those who trusted only Kerry on the issue voted for him, and 97 percent of those who trusted only Bush voted for him. Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry. (slate)
18. Freedom vs. License: LIBERALs wondering why they lost Tuesday might want to consider the difference between "freedom" and "license."
    Freedom is about disagreeing with the policies of George W. Bush. License is referring to a wartime president as a "Nazi."
    Freedom is having thoughtful doubts about how we are conducting the War on Terror. License is automatically referring to every military effort we make as "another Vietnam," or an "incompetent failure" — even as our troops remain in harm's way.
    Freedom is about exploring the idea of "civil unions." License is about court-mandated same-sex "marriage" absent legislative input.
    Freedom is about respecting other peoples' opinions even when you disagree with them. License is assuming that anyone who doesn't think like you is a "moron."
    This election may very well have been about the difference between "freedom" and "license." License lost — decisively. (nypost)
19. The Vets AttackNew Battles: Underestimating the Swift Boat ads, the Kerry team suffered from their slow response. Then Bill Clinton's former aides arrived and staged a silent coup. Edwards played along, but his aides were indignant. They warned the veep candidate that the story was already out of control and about to get worse. Historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a wartime biography of Kerry, cautioned that Kerry's diary included mention of a meeting with some North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris. Edwards was flabbergasted. "Let me get this straight," the senator said. "He met with terrorists? Oh, that's good." (newsweek)
20. Believe it or not, it wasn't just rednecks who voted for Bush, Mark Steyn The big question after Tuesday was: will it just be more of the same in George W Bush's second term, or will there be a change of tone? And apparently it's the latter. The great European thinkers have decided that instead of doing another four years of lame Bush-is-a-moron cracks they're going to do four years of lame Americans-are-morons cracks. Inaugurating the new second-term outreach was Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror, who attributed the President's victory to: "The self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport-ownin' rednecks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land 'free and strong'."
    Well, that's certainly why I supported Bush, but I'm not sure it entirely accounts for the other 59,459,765. Forty five per cent of Hispanics voted for the President, as did 25 per cent of Jews, and 23 per cent of gays. And this coalition of common-or-garden rednecks, Hispanic rednecks, sinister Zionist rednecks, and lesbian rednecks who enjoy hitting on their gay-loathin' sisters expanded its share of the vote across the entire country - not just in the Bush states but in the Kerry states, too.
    (telegraph)
21. Journalists can't grasp electorate's morality (chicago tribune)
22. How Karl Rove won the election for Bush (boston globe)
23. Specter Campaign Crumbling (humanevents)
24. NY Elites Out of Touch With America’s Heart and Soul (alicia colon, nysun)
25. Baffled in Loss, Democrats Seek Road Forward (nagourney, nyt)
26. Let the explaining begin! (howard kurtz, wapo)

Other

• Blog links to soldiers' blogs from Iraq (beautiful atrocities)
• Winners and losers (new england republican)
• ESRI 3D Electoral vote map (polipundit)
• New Vatican Sex Guide: It's A Sin Not To Do It In their attempt to galvanise the faithful, Roberto Beretta and Elisabetta Broli, who write regularly for the Italian Bishops' magazine, Avvenire, have written one of the raciest works ever to deal with the Church and sex.
  Bullet points on the jacket cover underline the central message: "Sex? God invented it. Original sin? Sex has nothing to do with it. Without sex there is no real marriage."
  The pages of It's A Sin Not To Do It, however, feature a frank interview with Cardinal Ersilio Tonini in which he emphasises that "the Church is not an enemy of the flesh". He argues that Vatican doctrine has always defended the "nobility of sexuality", which is regarded by the Church as a "treasure" of humanity.
  Another chapter likely to raise eyebrows unearths theological justification for post-coital masturbation for women who fail to achieve orgasm during intercourse. (telegraph.co.uk)
• Young Rove's dreams became everyone else's nightmare: Far better than any of his old friends, Karl truly has achieved his dream job. Unfortunately for the rest of us it's become our nightmare. --- Dr. Brian Moench is an anesthesiologist at LDS Hospital and former instructor at Harvard Medical School. (Brian Moench , Salt Lake)