Actually, the election was a mayoral race in my home town of Philadelphia, a rematch between incumbent Democrat John Street and Republican Sam Katz. Four years ago it had been a squeaker, with Street winning by only 9,000 votes. This year it was shaping up to be just as close, with the two candidates neck and neck in the polls up to the closing weeks of the race.
Then an FBI bug was found in the mayor’s office, leading to the exposure of a federal probe into corruption in City Hall. You’d think that would spell the end of Street’s re-election chances, but the opposite happened. Street’s numbers soared, and he ended up wiping out Katz by 80,000 votes and 17 percentage points.
Not only that, but the outpouring of anti-Republican voting helped to unexpectedly elect some Democratic judicial candidates in statewide races.
That’s right. The FBI put a bug in the mayor’s office, confiscated his Blackberry handhelds, raided the offices of several of his major campaign contributors and political associates…and voters reacted with a massive shift of support towards him.
How can this be? Easy. Because voters believed George W. Bush and his gang of cronies are way more unethical and underhanded than their mayor. Huge numbers of people concluded that the timing of the investigation was a Bush administration attempt to sway a close election to the Republican candidate. Philadelphia is a stronghold of Democratic voters in a largely Republican state, so a Republican mayor might dampen next year’s Democratic turnout enough to give the state to Bush in the presidential election.
Sound far-fetched that so many people could believe the Republicans are capable of such fraud? Well, not after seeing the recall election in California, where a Democrat in another crucial state was turned out of office for a Republican (Arnold Schwarzenegger, for Chris’sake!). Not after seeing the Republican legislature in Texas seek to undo a done deal in order to redistrict the state more in favor of their candidates. Not when the stories about the potential for rigging the electronic voting machines being installed around the country by the Diebold company, run by an ultra-conservative crony of the Bush administration, are leaping from internet rumors to mainstream media like Newsweek and the New York Times. Not when people remember how second place finisher Bush stole the election in his brother’s state of Florida three years ago.
As economist Paul Krugman writes in his recent book “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century:”
It seems clear to me that one should regard America’s right-wing movement—which now in effect controls the administration, both houses of Congress, much of the judiciary and a good slice of the media—as a revolutionary power…a movement whose leaders do not accept the legitimacy of our current political system….Why don’t the usual rules apply? Because a revolutionary power, which does not regard the existing system as legitimate, doesn’t feel obliged to play by the rules.
It doesn't even particularly matter to people whether or not in this case the Bush administration really was trying to interfere in the election. The point is that so many people are so ready to believe it. They've heard Bush lie about Iraq, about the economy, about who actually benefits from his tax cuts for the rich, about the environment, about social security, and on and on.
Philadelphians more and more see through Bush’s lies and his reward-the-rich political cronyism. I think a lot of Americans are starting to see through them as well.
