Mercurial

Cartograms reveal, easily, that the USA is not as politically divided as the merely spatial analysis tend to suggest, showing then a much more balanced political country.
Even when the presence of Democrats is higher in coasts and urban areas, and Republicans with values being more important than hunger and death, o philosophers, are more prevalent in rural and landlocked states, the huge distribution of areas as shown clearly indicates that there is no such things as a mandate, that the country remains as diverse as ever, and that there exists a powerful unified identification with the values and policies of the Democratic party.
You see, I am tired of all pundits, both D&R, declaring the death of the opposition, or the necessity of a secession, of an expulsion of those minorities of liberals.

Truly, if you just look at the map, by county or state, you see only the arbitrary decision, the result of an un-audited census by county on their preference for party. But, checking it for population and influence, there is much more than a mere duality of colors: the enormous contingent of people opposed to Señor Bush policies are in fact distributed all over the country, not just merely concentrated in one or two centers, and second, although the vote went to Bush and minders, it is clear that the country remains divided, issues still unresolved and expectations still high.

The extremely demoralized Democrats talking and blogging about depression, voluntary exile and the impossibility of an enlightened nation should actually look forward to four or eight more years of the same efforts on reconstruction, vote advocacy and participation encouragement. What they should do, besides all this, is to ensure that all electoral practices follow a similar model, that votes are easy to cast, auditable, and with a hard-copy, un-modifiable record.

There is no such thing as an easy democracy, and the next eight years are going to be a stern proof of that. The strong political maneuvers of Señor Bush, the amazing strategies of Rove et alli, the plausible collusion of companies such as ChoicePoint and Diebold all make for a fertile ground for imaginary enemies and real battles. Those people and companies mentioned above, dangerous as they might be, are actually nothing when confronted with people that have a need for answers and stand by their rights to demand them. The Congress, although Republican, will have to understand that a big chink of their constituency didn't vote for them, oppose their policies, and will hold them accountable for whatever law they approve.
Furthermore, a Republican party desperate to prove its legitimacy after 2000 simply approved anything coming from the White House, where Cheney, Rove and Rumsfeld (and Bush) declared opinions and approved whatever agreed with their affiliations.

This Congress, however, is strong by itself, and perhaps - a big perhaps - will remember that they are, in effect, the ones that can make laws, and that they are not subject to what the White House thinks as their divine mandate. Moreover, where the WH thinks in terms of profit and corporate interests, the Congress ahs to deal with voters and people, the same ones that, for example, die when mercury levels soar. This Congress would do good in recovering its ideological independence, to think about their task and duty, and stop being the lackey of the Executive branch.

I seriously doubt that the battered Democrat will regain its strength in the next four years - it had the previous four, with a humiliating treatment by WH and media alike, to make sense of where it was. Probably in the next term the hordes of Christians that voted for a candidate that advocates war, hate and poverty are going to reconsider their idea, and move towards a more sensible policy. Possibly the successor to the Democrat party won't kill its best chance of a candidate that surges through the popular activities of volunteers such as the Dean acolytes.

At any rate, Americans have reached the point where they will have to get reacquainted with their notion of tolerance, democracy, liberty and respect. It will be the hard way, of course, having just installed in power a person that thrives in death and poverty, war and hunger. Perhaps in the following years the throngs of supporters of "values" will come to understand that actions speak more than words, that Fox is not the carrier of the truth, and that one bad choice lasts forever.