Trick or Treat (Part IV)

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!
- Osama Bin Laden, from his latest video

OK, in reality he's saying things about goats. (I'm sure few people in the world know more intimate details about goats than Osama.) Just in time for Halloween he's come out swinging, one would assume with his best stuff, and lo and behold it's Michael Moore quotes. Ironically following on the heels of Kerry's own desperate plea , this should be a wake up call to the slumbering Left. Jim Geraghty is right, look in the mirror. I'd like to think they'll follow his advice, but the trouble is every time I've thought they would look into that mirror they haven't. When the real wake up call comes they choose to snooze, preferring to delay the inevitable confrontation with the not joking, real-world nightmare.

Will this time be different?

Unfortunately I think not. Because the American Left has never failed to disappoint me. It follows that I think Mr Geraghty is wrong in this statement: "A Bush landslide is now exponentially more likely..." though he chose his words carefully so as not to actually predict said landslide, I'm convinced that the Left that wants to believe that the President of the United States was acting with Saudi royals and Osama Bin Laden on 911 will certainly not stay home or change their votes just because Osama made a campaign video quoting Mike Moore supporting Kerry.

Likewise it doesn't matter whether Cronkite was joking or not when he told Larry King "I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing." Plenty of Americans believe it.

I think all the minds that matter (real voters on both sides) were made up weeks ago, Osama's not a difference maker any more than Guardian Readers were, and bottom line, I'm going to believe the election is close up until the time I see the results.

By the way, the Kerry campaign, via phone polling, has decided to play the Osama video as real, not a Rove plot. They do think he could be a difference maker, and here's how they decided:

Planning and strategy; deciding if it was Rove or Real:

Let me just mention that, as part of that, and we're very cautious about this - we added a question - this poll was intended to be fielded independent of the events - we added a question this morning that was only in the 250 interviews that was conducted on Saturday and I read it just to try to suggest that we ought to be a little bit cautious in interpreting what we think will be the consequence of these events.

We read following question:

I'm going to read you paraphrasement about Osama Bin Laden's videotape - this is a poll that was conducted by Democracy Corps, I'm going to read you a paraphrasement about the release of Bin Laden's videotape, please tell me what comes closer to your view: One, it makes me think that George W. Bush took his eye of the ball in Afghanistan and diverted his resources to Iraq; Two, it underscores the importance of George Bush's approach to terrorism

By ten points, 46-36 percent, voters responding to the survey agreed with the first statement, rather than the second.

And (que the candidate), 3, 2, 1... Action!:

"As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and all Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords," he told a rally in Appleton.

For the record, from my point of view I have a two word response to the Osama tape, it's non-partisan, and its not printable here.

Let's look at more from the venerable Cronkite. His call on the election results comes in a quote that follows immediately after the Rove statement above - so perhaps he remains in a 'tongue-in-cheek' mode:

CRONKITE: Well, I think it's one of the biggest messes we've had in a long time. I believe that we're undoubtedly not going to know the results of this election. I don't want to knock you off the air on Monday night or anything, or Tuesday night. But I suspect that we're not going to know who the next president is, whether it is Bush or the new man, until very probably sometime in the early spring. There's so much controversy that they're planting, deliberately planting at the polls, that there's almost certainly to be a suit going back to the Supreme Court eventually, going through the other courts slowly first.

And later

KING: Do you expect a huge turnout?

CRONKITE: What?

KING: A huge turnout?

CRONKITE: Oh, yes, I do. I think so. The only thing that could damage the turnout would be the threats that might be implied, as many of the new registrees are challenged as to their various things. Their spelling of their name and the state where they really come from, whether they're immigrants or not, do they have passports, all that kind of thing. If they are challenged at the polls, as they line up to go into the polls, they may fear having to answer all those questions. Particularly if they do have anything wrong about them and shouldn't vote.

We pause now for this brief reminder:

Do not hit that snooze button.

More to come.