Washington's hottest ticket
Bob "Kiss of Death" Shrum, appointed as John Kerry's top political strategist despite having lost every presidential race he has worked on since 1972, is throwing a big party at his Washington home on 3rd November. As the polls widened, the party was widely expected to be a wake by just about everybody except Shrum's Valkyrie-style wife Oatsie. But after Kerry trounced Bush in the first television debate, an invitation is suddenly the hottest ticket in town. Shrum, now never seen without his "lucky" purple scarf, is convinced it will be a victory celebration. Forget about the polls and watch the turnout, is his advice. Unprecedented "get out the vote" efforts by both parties have boosted the number of registered voters from 161m four years ago to 165m today, and Shrum claims that the Democrats are winning the registration race by a 60:40 margin. If they can get all the new voters to the voting booths (and get them past Governor Jeb Bush's partisan officials in Florida), Kerry should win.
Dad screws it up for Dubya
The bad blood thickens between the retainers of Pappy Bush and W. Now W's boys are blaming the old consigliere Jim Baker for losing the election. Baker, secretary of state under Bush the elder, was the tough lawyer who negotiated the terms of the first television debate with Kerry - and W's boys say he led their man into a trap. The 90-second statements helped Kerry to curb his prolixity, they claim, and Baker did not nail down the television companies into signing the terms - which would have prevented those embarrassing cutaway shots of Bush smirking, scowling and generally showing his simian side while Kerry was orating. In an anguished postmortem the next day, Bush's campaign chief Ken Mehlman asked if Baker had put in any clause to stop the Democrats from splicing the cutaway shots of a perturbed Bush into an ad. The answer was no - and even as Mehlman spoke, the Democratic National Committee was stitching one together.
Bad news from Iraq...
The Bush administration is shooting the messenger. The US agency for international development, having hired the private security group Kroll to provide independent reports on the state of play in Iraq, has now put a hold on distributing the reports because they don't spout the party line: gallant Allawi's government finally getting on top of the gunmen. In fact, the latest Kroll report comes close to accusing Bush of electioneering under false pretences. "Doubts continued to grow this week over whether elections can take place in January as planned against the current backdrop of relentless violence," reads the Kroll report dated 30th September. "It is likely that the current US firmness is tied to the November presidential elections, and that its stance could change after the US vote, if George Bush is re-elected. A revised and perhaps more realistic timetable could then be adopted."
...worse news from Europe
Sending international observers to monitor the US election would once have been a bad joke but now it looks as if it is going to happen. The UN is not regarded as a neutral body in the US so attention has turned instead to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has done similar work in the Balkans and Caucasus. Whoops. The new president of the OSCE's parliamentary assembly, the chap who actually appoints and directs the election monitors, sends chills down Republican spines. He is Alcee Hastings, a former US federal judge who was caught in a FBI sting for trying to take a $150,000 bribe, was impeached by congress and dismissed from the bench by a vote of 413-3. But you can't keep a good man down, particularly a Democrat with a power base in Broward County, Florida, one of the much-disputed districts in the 2000 election. Republican legal watchdogs, preparing evidence for what they think will probably be another nasty court case after the polls, have Hastings on tape saying he believes the Bushies intend to steal the election again, and his mission is to stop them. The Democrats are quietly salivating at the prospect of OSCE monitors judging the US elections unfair or improper. Since the US government has formally recognised the OSCE as a reliable body in such matters, a negative OSCE verdict gives Democrat lawyers a foolproof way to file lawsuits against a dodgy election.
The election is about justice
Forget Iraq. This election is really about the fate of the supreme court for the foreseeable future. The very conservative current chief justice William Rehnquist, 80, is an embarrassment who is seen to drool at dinner parties. Moderate conservative Sandra Day O'Connor, 74, is also planning retirement. The next president gets to nominate new justices, but the Senate has to confirm them. A simple majority of the 100-strong Senate is not enough; 60 votes are required to override the delaying tactics that the minority Democrats have now perfected. So if Bush wins, and the Republicans get 60 Senate seats, expect the most right-wing judicial bench since the 1930s. That means farewell to abortion rights, affirmative action and probably a lot of civil liberties. If Kerry wins, and the Republicans keep control of the Senate, the Democrats will have to nominate very centrist types to have a hope of getting them confirmed. The chances are that Senate gridlock will mean a more moderate supreme court.
