Word: weather
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...Heavy snow in South Dakota, New Mexico, the western part of Texas and southwestern Minnesota... Heavy rain in northern Texas and Minnesota... Bad weather expected in Wisconsin... Rain forecast for the battleground states of Ohio and Michigan not as bad as expected. Florida and California sun-drenched as ever...
...Well - it's about the weather, anyway. For the past 24 hours, the cable news networks have turned into so many franchises of The Weather Channel, hauling out the Doppler machines and precipitation maps almost as often as those goofy electoral maps. (More on those later.) Between CNN, MSNBC and Fox, we've heard more about the weather in the Dakotas than we're likely to hear in a lifetime. (I for one was surprised to learn there are times in the upper Great Plains when it doesn't snow.) MSNBC supplemented footage of Fred Rogers going to the polls...
...there any grounds for turning the nation's news organizations over to so many pipsqueak Al Rokers? There is a widespread, but according to at least some experts dubious, belief that bad weather benefits Republicans (who will have Jeeves fire up the SUV and drive to the polls in heated comfort) and hurts Democrats (who are so hindered already by The Man's oppression that a sizable shower makes exercising the franchise out of the question...
...Campaigners will always find excuses after a loss, and the weather theory may have some basis, but you'll have to look hard for a concrete example of where snow, or sun, actually gave the election to one side or another. If it did, of course, it puts an interesting spin on actual environmental policy. Do the Republicans, by loosening pollution standards, really want to get a lock on future elections by altering the climate and buffeting the nation with freakish megastorms? Or are they sabotaging themselves by promoting global warming, thus guaranteeing balmy days in November in Democrat precincts...
...What the weather focus does do is reinforce the notion that the election is so close you can't dare change that channel - so close a butterfly flapping its wing in the Amazon jungle could throw Oregon to Bush! Which of course may actually be true this time, but besides driving up ratings, it provides yet more butt-coverage for any unfortunate earlier prognostications. (Last night, many of the pundits were practically giving the election to Bush. If they're proved wrong, they could always blame it on the balmy weather in Miami.) And, during the downtime when polls...