Excerpted from an even longer article. I tried to dig out the core of it from a peice that was actually twice as long as what I posted below.

Basically what it says is that no matter who wins, we can pretty much expect the same rancor and division we have today. I'd have to agree with that.


Quote:

October 31, 2004


THE RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
Why 'This Is About Bush'

His narrowly focused 'hedgehog presidency' cements the allegiance of conservatives and galvanizes his foes. The result is bitter division.

By Ronald Brownstein

.........Half a century ago, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously separated intellectuals and artists into two categories: the fox, who is clever, creative, committed to many goals; and the hedgehog, a creature driven by a single unwavering conviction. By Berlin's standards, Bush has produced one of the purest examples of a hedgehog presidency.

With his repeated tax cuts, his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and the war in Iraq, Bush has consistently pursued goals that generate strong support among Republicans and conservatives, but at the price of provoking antipathy among Democrats and liberals.

In his policies, Bush has sought to advance his ideas mainly by holding to sharply defined positions — and attempting to shift the debate in his direction almost by magnetic force.

In his political strategy, he has sought more to deepen his support among groups that lean in his direction than to broaden his appeal among groups that have resisted him.

Bush and his brain trust "have decided that rather than trying to expand their coalition and possibly water down their agenda, they would rather push for their agenda, even if it meant having to govern in a very partisan way," said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Atlanta's Emory University. "Bush's strategy has focused primarily on energizing the Republican base rather than reaching out to swing voters."

The culmination of this hedgehog presidency is a campaign that has become a crusade, both for Bush's supporters and his opponents.................



..........."If Bush wins, he is going to be reviled by the left for another four years, and if Kerry wins it is going to be the same thing on the right," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee.

"It's not like this election is going to resolve anything, because whoever wins is going to win by a percentage point or two and whoever loses is going to spend four years trying to destroy the other side. Don't think this is over" Tuesday..............



............The latest polls still show Kerry and Bush commanding mirror-image demographic and ideological coalitions defined more by cultural values than economic interests, just as in 2000. Bush dominates among rural voters and middle-income whites, especially those who are married and attend church regularly or own guns.

Kerry holds strong leads among urban voters, minorities, singles and those who don't attend church regularly or own guns. He also runs competitively among lower-income whites open to his economic message and affluent white voters responsive to his views on social and foreign policy issues.

Independents and suburbanites, two classic groups of swing voters, remain closely split between Bush and Kerry in late surveys — just as they were four years ago......................


Unity Ends With War

The war in Iraq blew away the last fragments of post-9/11 unity. Indeed, in its political effect, the war has functioned like a social issue such as abortion. It has divided the country most profoundly along cultural, not economic, lines — thus reinforcing and even intensifying the divisions evident in 2000.

Support for the war has generally been greater among the same morally conservative, less affluent constituencies that have been drawn to the GOP over the last generation on social issues. Opposition has been most marked among upscale and socially moderate constituencies that moved toward the Democrats, largely on social concerns, in the 1990s.

Driven by that current, the most important changes in voting patterns this year are less likely to reverse the trends of 2000 than to push even further in the same direction — with Democrats increasingly relying on upscale and better-educated voters and Republicans gaining among downscale voters mostly on noneconomic issues such as national security.

Four years ago, Bush ran even among voters with a college education. But recent polls show him trailing with that group, largely because he has lost support among college-educated men, traditionally a Republican constituency.

Bush may offset those gains by expanding his support among married women without a college education, the so-called "waitress moms" responsive to both his socially conservative and peace-through-strength messages.

These patterns have persisted even though Kerry has centered his economic message on a promise to defend middle-class families and Bush has built his economic agenda around tax cuts that have provided most of their benefits to the most affluent. And the frame Bush has tried to impose on the 2004 election seems designed to accelerate the trends.

Whereas Kerry has generally sought to blur ideological distinctions, Bush has aggressively tried to sharpen them, presenting the election as a choice between a liberal and a conservative. Like most of his policy decisions, Bush's campaign strategy appears to have been aimed more at broadening his support among conservative-leaning constituencies than expanding his reach to moderates.

"He makes very little effort to speak across the divides of the American people, to reassure people that he is interested in transcending those divisions," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank Bush praised in the 2000 campaign. "Somewhere along the way, he let himself get talked into running a campaign that is basically addressed to one half of America.".

Both Camps Energized

This polarizing approach has presented Bush with clear costs and benefits in this year's contest.

The most obvious cost has been the fervor Bush has inspired among his opponents. From financier George Soros (who has donated about $24 million to anti-Bush groups this year) to rock icon Bruce Springsteen (who appeared with Kerry this week after spurning endorsement requests for 30 years), to the massive voter registration drives engineered by groups such as America Coming Together and the 531,000 people who have contributed since October to MoveOn.org's political action committee, it is difficult to imagine how the left could do any more to beat Bush.

These efforts, said Pariser of the MoveOn PAC, stem from "a visceral feeling about where things are headed unless we change course."

Bush's strategy also has cost him some support in circles that usually lean Republican. Last summer, a group of former diplomats and military officers, many of whom held top positions for Republican presidents, called for his defeat. Forty-one newspapers that editorially endorsed Bush last time have revoked their support this year, according to Editor and Publisher, an industry magazine.

Diplomats and editorial writers may not move many votes. But their disenchantment symbolizes the class shift in American politics that Bush appears to be spurring.

The flip side is the enthusiasm Bush has inspired among conservatives. Last year, Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, the group of Vietnam veterans criticizing Kerry's record in the war, didn't exist; today it has raised at least $23 million from more than 100,000 donors.

Established conservative groups like the National Rifle Assn. and the Club for Growth, which focuses on economic issues, are all mounting vast efforts for Bush.

"Everybody is digging as deep as they can," says Moore.

The biggest test of Bush's "hedgehog" strategy will come Tuesday.

Bush's advisors are betting that his passionate attachment to conservative causes at home and abroad, his firm style of leadership and his ardent expressions of personal religious faith will inspire a huge turnout from the Republican base that will carry him to a second term. The risk is that he will inspire an equal or greater reaction from Democratic constituencies that will tilt the key states, and the race, to Kerry.

Over a grueling and historic term, Bush has riveted America. He has achieved more of his agenda than seemed possible after his narrow victory in 2000. But his presidency has carved deep lines of division through the country.

Bush is about to learn whether in drawing those lines, he is left with enough supporters to earn a second term.



And what do I expect if Kerry is elected? Another Yitzhak Rabin situation where some Igal Amir type thinks he's doing the country a service and 'defending America' by killing a "liberal President", and the far right calling him a hero for his efforts. That's how divided I think the country is.

And I blame talk radio for starting it. Firstly and foremostly the right wing Rush Limbaugh types which I think were the first to so polarize and demonize, all in the hunt for anything Clinton. And of course now from Ann Coulter, Hannity and their type, who actually do call you a "traitor" if you're on the opposition. And the reaction to that on the left from Al Franken to Michael Moore.

You have to admit, before the demagougery and rancor from talk radio, we may have disagreed but no one was thought of as being "anti-American" for having differing politics. Extremism breeds extreme reactions and actions IMO.

In other words, "traitors" get shot.

We're deeply divided and I think in any great tragedy, there must ultimately be a death.

As it was in Lincoln's day, so shall it be in our times.