Reply #22: Well, My Friend [View All]

[The Magistrate]

You may have reached that dizzying apex of cynicism that is higher even than mine. It does not seem reasonable to me to suppose that degree of collusion. The parties are, it seems to me, sincere in their desire to beat one another, and the perquisites of victory for the functionaries of each are sufficiently better than the straitened conditions of defeat to suggest a sound motive for giving the best fight, according to the lights of each, either can mount. From many points of view, the differences may seem small, and even the outcome of no great moment within the confines of a duopoly that agrees on many basic points, but the differences, and the consequences flowing from which pole of the structure holds office, are real enough.

There will likely not emerge any allegations the elections were stolen with a sufficient heft of evidence behind them to be either actionable, or of much use as a political line. My own verdict is that the thing was more "cooked" than "stolen," and that nothing was done that could not have been rendered null by a sufficient turn-out of our own voters. There was certainly some suppression of registration, that was sharp practice indeed but within the letter of the law, and it seems to me that such measures as insufficient numbers of polling stations in some areas, and an insufficiency of equipment at them, again things that are sharp practice but not outright illegalities, had some deletorious effect. But as an old Chicagoan, it is hard to wax too wroth over such tricks as that. It seems to me that the other side did a better job on many levels of getting its adherents to the polls. Sometimes, you just get beat in these things....

"Wouldn't it be strange if Heaven was just like the Eleventh Ward, and you had to know just who was who to receive your just reward?"

"Americans looked into the abyss, and fifty-one percent said: 'Hmmm...I wonder what's down there....'"