- Nima Arkani-Hamed and other people around don't look desperate, in fact they laugh, which is a very nice picture to see. Yesterday they truly believed that Kerry's victory had been programmed...
- Kerry may have surrendered too early - I thought that there was still a mathematical possibility that most of the ballots in Ohio voted for Kerry, and they would be enough for him to win the state. But something may have changed recently. Perhaps, they realized that the missing ballots couldn't be overwhelming pro-Kerry...
- Nevertheless, Kerry has proved that he (with Edwards) was a very realistic alternative that had a significant chance to win. He also seems to be a realistic politician, and unlike Al Gore, he avoided the painful process of questioning everything and everyone. In my opinion, Kerry deserves respect for that, especially because the Democratic Party hired thousands of lawyers and paralegals whose task was to question every vote they could...
- Nevertheless, what Kerry has shown was not enough. Bush has convinced most of the voters that he is the right man for the White House. He is the guy whose acts agree with his beliefs. He is the guy who looks better and whose way of thinking is more transparent and comprehensible for the people. He is the man you can rely upon. He is the right man to continue the War on Terror (plus other related mess) that he was forced to start on 9/11. He knows in which way the taxes should move for the people to feel richer and more free. We know better what to expect from him...
- I also understand that Kerry did not come to greet his fans in Boston during the rainy night. He probably realized at that point that his chances were not too high. On the other hand, the fans who waited in the rain were most likely left-wing fundamentalists who would have little understanding for Kerry's growing decision to surrender...
- Bush has clearly won the popular vote, roughly by 3 million votes, if I remember well. Because a large part of the left wing has criticized Bush for not having won the popular vote in 2000, those arguments made them much weaker in 2004 because now they would need to argue that the popular vote does not matter at all, even if the difference is 3 millions. Bush's victory in Florida was much more decisive than in 2000...
- Those 11 states that were deciding about the consistency of the term "gay marriage" showed that this topic is not too controversial in these states, and all of these states decided that the marriage is a union between one man and one woman, and to avoid misunderstandings, the definition should become a constitutional law. Of course, this success of the traditionalists does not mean that it could be repeated in all other states of the USA...
- The turnout was amazingly high - which is connected with the fact that the US society is very polarized. George Bush has not been successful yet to become a "uniter", as opposed to "divider" as he promised in 2000 - but of course, it is mostly because of the difficult tests that made his job much harder...
- In my opinion, the American people feel that the politicians really represent them, and they are positively excited about their candidates, and they understand that the politicians fight for specific issues: this connection is much weaker in Europe, I think, much like the turnout (for example, the disastrously low turnout in the polls for the European Parliament)...
- All formal and technical procedures went smoothly, it seems. The USA were slower in reporting the final results than Botswana, a country in the southern part of Africa, and this fact is related to the lack of unified technical rules how the votes should be collected and counted. In the European Union, I am pretty sure that they would try to introduce unified hardware and software for all countries, and so forth. In the USA it's not the case. It is not such a big problem - nevertheless, the superslow results from Ohio should mean that the Ohio system of collecting and counting votes will be banned, and replaced by a system from another state (or county). I encourage the people in Ohio to realize that their current system is pathetic...
- The GOP strengthened in the Congress and the Senate, and probably also with the number of its governors. Tom Daschle (D) was the first speaker of the house in the last several decades who was not re-elected. A Republican from South Dakota will replace him...
- George Bush is a winner, but the Left has its winners too - for example, Hillary Clinton is one of them. I am sure she can't wait until 2008 anymore...
- My guess is that Osama bin Laden is among the losers because his recent video looked like an attempt to prevent Bush from being re-elected. This strategy may have worked in Europe, but it is not enough for America. Although Osama is just one of the most obnoxious killers in this world, he would love to take credit for the destruction of the Soviet Union and other events in the history. He's definitely less important than he tries to show...
If you compare 2000 and 2004, many things are different. In 2000, when Bush was elected for the first time, the US economy was just ending a period of impressive growth, budget surpluses, and so forth, but the bubble had already collapsed, and people knew that they would be entering a less shining period. However, almost no one realized how easy it was for an Arab jerk to destroy the skyscrapers in Manhattan, with thousands of lives in them. Also, no one realized that there is a lot of dirt and fraud waiting in companies such as Enron.
Today, we know a little bit more. We know that the terrorist attacks may take place in the Western countries. We were reminded that large companies may become messy, and they may go bankrupt. There are many new policies to prevent the terrorist attacks and corporate fraud - and there are new chances that these policies might be effective. On the other hand, all the people in the world may be luckier this time. The frequency of terrorist attacks could decrease, and the world may be entering a happier and more peaceful era. Moreover, the first derivative and the second derivative of the economy looks better than in 2000.
All these things seem promising. Will Bush be able to avoid disasters in his second term? Will Iraq become stabilized after the elections in January 2005? Will most of us agree, in a couple of years, that the war in Iraq was a good idea in the long term? Stay tuned...
