I’m Calling It Too
So everyone around me is probably sick of my obsession with the U.S. presidential race. I’ve followed U.S. politics since long before studying it in University. We’ve watched the ads, the debates, and debated the issues. I’ve followed the ups and downs of the Electoral College vote (via the excellent site electoral-vote.com. Despite the up and down nature of Bush and Kerry’s status based on the polls I’m going to go out on a limb myself and say I think Kerry will win… and I think by a statistically meaningful amount (i.e. beyond the margin of error). I could spend lots of time writing the reasons why but came across this much better explanation.
As for the why … about Kerry, the New Yorker sums it up nicely in their endorsement.
[On Kerry they write:] “He can be cautious to a fault, overeager to acknowledge every angle of an issue; and his reluctance to expose the Administration’s appalling record bluntly and relentlessly until very late in the race was a missed opportunity. But when his foes sought to destroy him rather than to debate him they found no scandals and no evidence of bad faith in his past. In the face of infuriating and scurrilous calumnies, he kept the sort of cool that the thin-skinned and painfully insecure incumbent cannot even feign during the unprogrammed give-and-take of an electoral debate. Kerry’s mettle has been tested under fire—the fire of real bullets and the political fire that will surely not abate but, rather, intensify if he is elected—and he has shown himself to be tough, resilient, and possessed of a properly Presidential dose of dignified authority. While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America’s mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that this election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half century. That insistence is a measure of his character.”