Word: voting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dread moment for a political campaign comes when reporters, and sometimes ordinary citizens, start asking whether the candidate has already lost and the actual vote has become a formality. That nadir arrived for Michael Dukakis early last week. Following his lackluster performance in the second debate with George Bush, stories appeared that the Duke had effectively written off most of the country to concentrate his last desperate efforts on 18 states with 272 electoral votes -- a mere two over the number required for victory -- in which he still had a chance. The reports were denied, but not very convincingly...
...chance that blacks and Hispanics will turn out for the Democrats in at least their usual numbers. Dukakis has not exactly galvanized them, and polls show him trailing previous Democratic contenders among blacks. In addition, it is getting very late to put on a big get-out-the-vote drive. But as the slugging reaches its climax, many blacks and Hispanics are likely to be reminded of their traditional opposition to the Republicans. Finally, there is a factor difficult to evaluate but potentially important: the press and TV love the drama of a close election. Having come near to writing...
Dukakis hit his emotional peak at a rally in Quincy, Ill., where he brought along brochures mailed to voters by the state Republican Central Committee. One asserted that "all the murderers and rapists and drug pushers and child molesters in Massachusetts vote for Michael Dukakis." Angrily waving one of the pamphlets over his head, Dukakis growled, "Friends, this is garbage. This is political garbage. This isn't worthy of a political campaign." All during the week he spoke with feeling about two crime victims he knew well: his father, a doctor, who was once bound, gagged and beaten...
...naps between appearances, disdains pressing the flesh and finds the business of vote getting "unbearable." But when the normally taciturn Yitzhak Shamir mounts a campaign podium, he plays the crowd's emotions with the precision of an acupuncturist. "I heard about the problems that you are struggling with every day, the stones and the Molotov cocktails," he shouts at 800 Likud loyalists gathered in a shopping mall on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem. As his lips produce the sound, his fists become the fury, chopping the air and pounding the lectern. "Those who are trying to throw...
Some 80 miles to the north, alert security men watch the crowd gathered on a basketball court in the town of Shfaram. Shimon Peres sits motionless through the introductory speeches, hardly understanding a word since they are all in Arabic. Peres knows that while the Arab vote will account for as many as 14 of the Knesset's 120 seats, Labor stands a chance of taking perhaps four of those seats, the rest going to left-wing Arab parties. "If you vote against the Jews, there will be no peace," he bellows into the microphone. "If you are serious, give...