Election comments

Here in central Florida, the election process seemed to run quite smootly. There were no lines to speak of and no sign of any of Michael Moore's hired photographers or Kerry's claimed 10,000 lawyers.

It was good that Kerry decided to concede instead of attempting to litigate his way to victory. A bit of back-of-the-envelope calculation (as I presented earlier today) was probably enough to convince him that he had no realistic chance to prevail and there were also a lot of military ballots that remained to be counted and those would have broken heavily against him.

Kerry's concession speech was quite well done. Giving it, he seemed to be a real person, unlike the other times I have seen him in which he seemed to be like an actor reciting his lines.

I think that the liberal bias of the mainstream media in their support for Kerry may have hurt him as well as helped him. It is likely that most of those folks who believe Dan Rather is an unbiased reporter are concentrated in the blue states and those people were going to support Kerry in any event. Perhaps Kerry impressed the reporters covering his staged "goose hunt" with his outdoor and hunting skills but I don't believe that went over at all well with real hunters.

Also, while the liberal media seemed to be obsessed with Karl Rove and his claimed "control" of Bush, Bush always seemed to be a "real" person and comfortable with himself. It was Kerry who seemed to be "windsurfing" on issues based on the advise of his compaign team of the week.

But I suspect that the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth deserve a lot of credit for the outcome of this election. As Kerry used his short tour of service in Vietnam commanding a handful of men on a small boat as the centerpiece of his campaign, the details of this service were fair game. But Kerry never responded to the issues the Swift Vets raised about his character. In that regard, the liberal media provided cover for Kerry; never questioning him about his service record or demanding that he release his service records. Mainstream media coverage of the Swift Vets was limited to attacking them. But the story told by the Swift Vets got out anyhow through the Internet, conservative talk radio and the book "Unfit for Command". Despite the efforts of the liberal media to attack the story told by the Swift Vets, it reasonated with a lot of voters.