VOTER MOBILIZATION VS. SUPPRESSION

Sidney Blumenthal:

Vast efforts to mobilize or suppress African-American, Hispanic and Democratic voters have already reached a greater level of intensity than in any modern campaign. The Republicans in Ohio, for example, have attempted to toss out new Democrat registrations because it was claimed they were written on the wrong weight of paper, a gambit overruled by a federal court. From Pennsylvania to Arizona, a Republican consulting firm is discouraging new Democratic voters from getting on the rolls.
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Since September 11 infused Bush with a mission, he has evoked hovering angels, crusades, mushroom clouds, evildoers, shades of a universe of death. His imagery induces a dynamic of paralysis before the threat and fervor in embrace of his absolute reassurance and power. Dread without end requires faith without limit.

Yet Bush found himself on the defensive when the New York Times reported on the closed gathering of his campaign contributors, where he revealed his radical program for his second term - rightwing capture of the supreme court, privatizing social security, turning over national land to the oil companies, more tax cuts. Kerry was prompted to raise these issues. And Bush whined that Kerry was practicing "the politics of fear". The next day Dick Cheney projected terrorists exploding nuclear weapons within the US, and offered Bush as savior from looming apocalypse.

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as terror," wrote Edmund Burke. But not even the eve of destruction will stifle turnout.