Drape Yourself with Sackcloth & Ashes

By Joseph Rago | Sunday, June 12, 2005

The 2004 election has now come and gone, but it's comical to look back fondly at the din and racket it drummed up on the Hanover Plain. Vanessa Kerry, for instance, came swishing into town a week or so beforehand, delivering speeches and making small talk at several Greek houses. Kabir Sehgal, who organized a meet-and-greet at Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, said, "She spoke eloquently on the need for change at the White House and how her father would lead the country on a 'fresh start.' After her speech, the Rockapellas performed a song (with a pin-drop silent audience) and Christian Littlejohn [SAE President] presented Vanessa with a bouquet of flowers. Vanessa said with a smile, 'I need to come to the SAE house more often!'

Of course, her tour was not all toothy grins and shameless pandering—well, actually, it was. Ms. Kerry was in town to 'energize' Dartmouth's youth vote. "Young people have a reputation of not being involved and educated," she said. This year, things would be different. Why? John Kerry was a different kind of candidate, the kind that would appeal to America's young people. "He's a very real guy, a straight-talker," Ms. Kerry said. "It's shocking to me how hip he is. He's so hip, it scares me. He knows pop culture; he windsurfs, skis, snowboards, plays the guitar—he's got the hip style down." Later, students passed out stickers that proclaimed, "Sweet Dudes Vote."

On Election Day, the New Hampshire Democratic effort to churn out the youth vote was in overdrive. Students affiliated with political groups pestered other students to no end with electronic-mail messages, enticing them to "VOTE!!!!!!!!!" Nary an undergrad could show his face before being set upon by jazzy activists. It was indeed a heady time. Dartmouth's activists were pleased with the response, and lustily prepared to dance on the grave to which they imagined the Bush Presidency was soon headed.

Sadly, it was not to be. After it was clear that President Bush had been reelected, many a voice was crying out in the wilderness. Activists were devastated and saddened. Michael Martin '06 told the Daily Dartmouth, "In my mind I thought of Hanover as a litmus test for the sentiment in the rest of the country. I thought that the high young voter turnouts were good signs for Kerry." Aside from his torturous understanding of the definition of "litmus test" (he probably meant "bellwether"), it was clear that the voting in Hanover was not representative of the rest of the country.

To be sure, Hanover may have indeed been one of the least accurate barometers of the election. While President Bush won the popular vote by a healthy three percentage points, he lost to Kerry in Hanover by a whopping fifty-six points, with seventy-eight percent of just over 6,600 voters going for Kerry. While voter turnout from the College was undeniably high (some estimates putting it close to fifty percent), the Democrats made the vital miscalculation of equating "more voters" with "more Kerry voters." While Kerry handily won Hanover, thanks in large part to the youth vote, such was not the case across the state, or even country as a whole. Kerry took 57% percent of the under-30 vote in New Hampshire, compared 43% for Bush. Still a commanding margin, but significantly closer. Nationwide, the gap closes to forty-five for Bush, and fifty-five for Kerry. The very vocal 'Get Out the Vote' drives, particularly by liberal organizations nationwide, also appear to have fallen flat. The coveted 18-to-24 year-old age group comprised 9% of the voting populace, the same proportion as in the 2000 election. Expand the group to include all eligible voters under thirty and the number comes in at 17% of voters, also the same as 2000. Although the raw numbers are higher, due to sixty percent voter turnout this year, compared to around fifty in 2000, the energetic vote drives appeared to help Kerry very little. As the columnist Mark Steyn put it, the youth vote is "the Left's equivalent of the Rapture: it may happen one day, but not on any schedule you want to put money on."

Meanwhile, the cogs of the vast right-wing conspiracy continued to churn, keeping Bush silently ahead nationwide, and just close enough among young, idealistic voters. In this light, Hanover, with it's disproportionately high and Democratic youth turnout, becomes an even poorer "litmus test." Optimism has no greater ally than na�ve tunnel vision.

Hanover did not even paint a realistic picture of political conditions statewide, as a ninety-six year old grandmother, with no prior political experience, carried a twenty-plus point victory over a two-term incumbent Senator who himself carried 227 of the other 234 precincts in Hew Hampshire. Judd Gregg, the Republican Senator for New Hampshire, chairs the Senate Education and Labor committee, and sits on the Appropriations committee. It is estimated that he personally brings upwards of $70 million of pork-barrel spending to Dartmouth and the Upper Valley every year, most of it directed towards medical research and regional development. And although his presence in the Senate carries immense value for any Dartmouth student or Grafton County resident, he was bafflingly defeated in Hanover. Fortunately, he carried nearly every other precinct with ease.

Meanwhile, the two Dartmouth students running for New Hampshire State Representatives were both handed resounding, but not surprising, defeats. Katherine Racicot '06 garnered 1,968 votes in the Hanover District, or just over 8%, narrowly edging out fellow College Republican Jesse Roisin '05, who came in with 1,851 votes, or seven percent. The four open seats were taken by a Democratic slate of senior citizens who made minimal efforts to campaign.

To state that most College progressives did not take the loss well would certainly be an understatement. On the evening of Kerry's concession, College liberals gathered on the Green to protest and fire up a "vigil/rally/venting." Participants were encouraged to bring "candles, lighters, prayers, poems, tears, whatever you need to grieve. It's going to be a long night and a longer four years."

At midnight, there were but five or six students shuffling about in the center of the Green. It appeared that the candlelight vigil was not to be. However, within a half-hour the solemn group had swelled to over thirty students, candles ablaze.

The group gathered in a circle several rows deep. The participants all stared at their feet, with muted expressions of anger, sadness, and fear on their faces. An uncomfortable and awkward mood prevailed as one by one the mourners shared personal stories about their voting experiences, divulged their fears (fascist oppression, wholesale loss of civil liberties, uteral dispossession, et cetera), and attempted to lift one another's spirits with pleasant truths (thanks to term limits, Bush cannot 'steal' another election).

As the students came to terms with the unpleasant reality that the man they knew to be the embodiment of evil and of stupidity had handily won the popular majority vote, they died a little inside. Fortunately, the mood was not entirely depressing, as the support group occasionally paused for musical interludes, including a dirge-like rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner."

Of course, what would a protest be without a counter-protest? Leon Chang '08 joined the circle, and then abruptly raised a large sign above the crowd. On the sign was a large frowning face with a tear in one eye. The attention of the assembly shifted to his sign, and after a few seconds, Chang flipped the sign over to reveal the bold statement, "SOMEBODY CALL THE WHAMBULANCE."

Another counter-protest came form the College Republicans, who, lacking original ideas, simply stood ten feet away from the circle of mourners, holding Bush-Cheney signs. The Bush supporters' eerie presence caused unease among the other students, prompting the arrival of Safety and Security. Officers stood by and tersely observed the scene. After they arrived, Republicans drove around the Green honking and calling out war-whoops.

At the end of the evening, the weepy emotionality of the mourning liberal students and the misconceived silent protest by the Republican students combined to create a stunningly absurd tableau.

The misery for Democrats appears to be ongoing. Observed the Review's Hanover correspondent, S. Rainsford,

As recently as last night in 5-Olde, I over-heard two bleary-eyed and teary-eyed little chubbettes bewailing the results, and asking over and over, "How could this possibly have happened?"

I considered telling them exactly what had transpired and why it did, but I was having too much fun listening to one of them threaten to transfer to McGill and the other speaking of dumping her boyfriend who hadn't bothered to vote. (As it turned out, he'd voted in Virginia so a Kerry vote wouldn't have mattered a damn anyway, but she was still determined to make him suffer).

I realized later on, after they'd blubbered their way on home, that all over this campus, there are all sorts of distraught and horrified folks, mostly first-time voters, who are wondering how the calamity of Bush's re-election, could possibly have happened.

The shock and awe of first-time Dartmouth voters at Kerry's defeat is a much more palatable reaction than that of left-wing nut-jobs found at other colleges. Harvard, for example, has ushered forth a particularly vitriolic reaction. The day following the election, more than a hundred protestors populated the yahd, embracing the Democrats' favorite electioneering tactic: fighting reality. Well, more like protesting reality. Harvard students from all walks of life—though mainly Trustafarians—joined in the organized protest of the group 'No Stolen Elections!' The Crimson's Jessica Chiu reports that the group plans to protest the election results in at least thirty cities. There are currently no plans to protest other mathematical certainties, such as the fundamental theorem of calculus or the value of pi. Nevertheless, the group of Harvard students is as blindly confident and unabashedly pedantic as ever. "I think Harvard students are more aware than others of how they can make democracy happen," Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky told the Crimson. He added, "The power is still in the people. We didn't just give it up to the President yesterday," evidently ignorant the definition of 'election.' We have the same problem here on the Hanover Plain, but the offending term is 'litmus test.'

Drape Yourself with Sackcloth & Ashes

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