{"id":65,"date":"2004-05-19T01:34:45","date_gmt":"2004-05-19T05:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/archives\/2004\/05\/19\/election-terror-attacks\/"},"modified":"2008-12-27T16:12:14","modified_gmt":"2008-12-27T20:12:14","slug":"election-terror-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/2004\/05\/19\/election-terror-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"election terror attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

~ we posted this set of questions in the forums at comic book resources [w<\/a>]. we place it here, with a few changes, so our non-comic book collecting readers can ponder these possibilities:<\/p>\n

What do y’all think the effect on the election will be when\/if there is an incident of terrorism – minor or significant – in the united states within 2 or 3 weeks of the election?<\/p>\n

I have heard many conservatives say that Spain was cowed by the terrorists, because they voted out the prime minister, Aznar, who had thrown in his lot with Bush’s agenda and replaced him with someone who had promised to pull the troops from Iraq. I find this to be unfair, for two reasons: first, that many in Spain did not see their troops in Iraq and the war on terrorism as the same issue, and second, fear of terror notwithstanding, a lot of the backlash against Aznar was due to the fact that his government publicly lied and tried to blame the Basque for the attack.<\/p>\n

I am not too interested in a conversation about Spain’s election; I just bring it up as part of the context in which our election will be held. Although there are differences, it could be thought of as a test case. If there is an incident here in late October, there will clearly be some rallying around the status quo and fear of change (ie, support for Bush), just as there will be some folks who point out that Bush has not kept us safe after all (ie, support for Kerry), but what do you think will be the majority opinion? Will huge amounts of people change their votes? Will more people think that ‘Bush got us into this’\/’We need help from the UN’ and move to Kerry? Will there be a repeat of the post-9\/11-unquestioning-support of the Bush administration? As the war in Iraq goes poorly, Kerry does better, but at the end of the campaign, when the war is still going terribly, are people are going to think they need a ‘war president’? Will they keep Bush, even though he caused the problems, because of the belief that Kerry will be too weak to take over? Will the election be called off if there is a dirty bomb in port Newark? If the election is postponed indefinitely, will people sit tight and wait obediently, or will they riot in the streets? I guess the question is, if there is an attack, how much power will fear have over the voters’ decisions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

~ we posted this set of questions in the forums at comic book resources [w]. we place it here, with a few changes, so our non-comic book collecting readers can ponder these possibilities: What do y’all think the effect on the election will be when\/if there is an incident of terrorism – minor or significant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,10],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-comic-books","tag-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angryredplanet.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}