I just got done looking at this lovely site, a short first-person pictorial account, complete with broken English, of one guy's experience during the Orange Revolution following the Ukrainian presidential run-off election in November 2004, and lasting through to January of 2005. The reasons this is on my mind should be pretty obvious, but since I don't really feel like leaving things vague like I usually do I'll make it clear: I'm wondering what people can do next week if the election is stolen.
The protests in the Ukraine were overwhelmingly of a peaceful nature, which is a good thing for several reasons, not the least of which is that it did not give the legions of police officers in riot gear or the military brigades standing at the ready any excuse to wade into the crowds of up to a million citizens in Kiev and other locales and start shooting. The lack of bloodshed was probably aided by schisms that had developed in the military and intelligence organizations, with key figures dissuading General Sergei Popkov from following through on the planned crackdown. While preparations were underway to put down the protests which had rendered the capitol immobile there were reports of officials within the intelligence community leaking warnings of the coming violence to opposition leaders.
The demonstrators in the Ukraine received substantial financial and organizational aid from many overseas pro-democracy organizations, most notably the U.S. State Department, although this fact was not widely advertised during the revolution proper. The student organizations that were instrumental in directing protest had received extensive training in non-violent protest techniques from various sources prior to the election itself, and had for months been laying the groundwork for a public response in the eventuality of election fraud. Ironically, Colin Powell was one prominent critic of the election shenanigans taking place there, where posted results were off from exit polls by as much as 14%, a statistical impossibility.
It is my belief that this is the model a successfully contested election must follow: Widespread peaceful protests accompanied by a general strike and swift legal action to address the legal issues raised by the election. The victory in the Orange Revolution did not occur when the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko was installed into office. The victory was when the country's Supreme Court ruled the election results invalid and ordered a re-vote with international observers present. Thus the revolution was not a coup but the reversal of a coup. Although power did indeed change hands, it did so following a (decisive) election. The integrity of the state was preserved.
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If this coming election follows the pattern of other stolen elections, in the next couple of days we will be seeing what's known as the "rabbit story," a story that is intended to scamper across the public consciousness and distract public attention while providing a believable explanation for why the election results are going to be so different from what all the projections and analyses have been saying to this point. The idea is for the story to present a plausible "game-changer" scenario -- perhaps a sudden foreign policy shift (the infamous "October Surprise") or some supposedly major sea change in the issues affecting voters' decision this coming Tuesday. Whatever it is, whether it's increasing coverage of "the Bradley Effect" or the unexpected late-campaign success of negative campaigning or the impact of Obama pre-empting a game of the World Series ("Obama Loses the Baseball Voter!"), it should enter the news cycle in the next two days and stay around through the weekend.
It will provide a cover story to explain why, in effect, math isn't real. "Dewey Defeats Truman" will be invoked. Again, if the previous pattern is followed, the major media outlets will downplay accusations of vote-tampering, or if they do address them will concentrate on "equivalencies," implying that such incidents are isolated and equally distributed on both sides.
When the rabbit runs, that will be the signal that the fix is in.
Posted by flamingbanjo at October 28, 2008 09:59 PMLike this?
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/29/politico-we-would-have-released-the-khalidi-tape/
Posted by: tuckova at October 30, 2008 04:20 AMPerhaps. But my money is on last night's informercial, already criticized as “putting politics before our national pastime” by Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant.
McCain remarked "It used to be that only rain or some other act of God could delay the World Series."
"But I guess network executives figured an Obama infomercial was close enough."
In a way, I suspect that the ad buy for the Obama campaign is exactly an attempt to address this pattern in previous elections, because this is the last news cycle before the election. The conversation for the rest of the week could well be occupied with spinning this. The GOP will attempt to make it a story about Obama's overreach and "arrogance" and throw up some poll numbers showing the race "tightening."
The point of the rabbit story is just to provide distraction, though. It doesn't need to really change anybody's mind about how to vote. It just needs to help make the vote theft look plausible, and that looks to be a problem this time.
Posted by: flamingbanjo at October 30, 2008 04:54 AM