It's a Dismal Day for Bush-Haters

By JULIA LEVY, Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 4, 2004

Publicists for high-profile Bush haters in New York City and beyond reported their clients were too depressed yesterday to discuss the outcome of the presidential election.

Most members of the Anybody But Bush set who rallied enough to pick up the telephone or sit down at the keyboard said they weren't optimistic about the next four years. Some contemplated fleeing to Canada, while others started lashing out on the Internet against the newly re-elected president.

"I am very disappointed, obviously. I worked very, very hard for the last year and a half or so for Kerry, or just defeating Bush," the satirist who helped launch Air America, Al Franken, said in a telephone interview. "Bad stuff happens every day in this country because of him."

Mr. Franken said President Bush's goals for the next four years - and his apparent disinterest in bringing Americans together in the wake of the election - indicate to him that Mr. Bush is "just going to do the same stuff he's been doing, only more so." He predicted "some kind of financial crisis" in America by 2008.

The billionaire financier George Soros, who reported giving $24 million to liberal causes in this election cycle, said in a statement he was "distressed" by Mr. Bush's big win. "I hope, but don't trust, that the second Bush administration will have learned something from the mistakes of the first," he said.

"What is at stake is our ability to recognize our own fallibility."

He said that given Senator Kerry's loss to Mr. Bush, he feels "strongly" that GeorgeSoros.com, the Web site he started to combat the president's initiative in Iraq, should remain active.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who ran against Mr. Kerry in the Democratic primaries, mentioned his thoughts of moving north on Comedy Central Tuesday night. Last night, in an appearance on CNN, he didn't say anything about going to Canada. Rather, he said the Democratic Party must rethink how it pitches itself to the American people.

"We've been moving to the center, and it hasn't worked," he said. Mr. Sharpton, predicting a period of "soul-searching," said members of his party may become more active and liberal as a result of this election.

Meanwhile, on the Web, the creator of "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore, struck back at the Republican Party, with a mosaic portrait of the president composed of hundreds of photographs of the Americans who have died in Iraq. Mr. Moore did not return multiple requests for comment.

Many lower-level Bush-haters spent the day sulking and considering what to do next.

A recent law graduate who has been volunteering for the Kerry campaign, Nicholas Arons, said, "I, like many of my friends, who consider ourselves patriots, have a sincere feeling of alienation. It's very troubling to live in a country so divided, where the president thinks he has a mandate."

Despite his feelings of alienation, Mr. Arons said he's staying in America.

Other Kerry volunteers said they are actually thinking of packing their bags.

An Upper East Side nanny, Maia Fourmyle, said she has been doing "hard-core" volunteering for the Democrats since February. She spent yesterday crying, Ms. Fourmyle, 31, said, and has resolved that as soon as her lease is up in February she'll leave for Guatemala or Spain.

"I can't be part of a country that would elect such an a---," the Californian said. "I just don't see how so many people could vote for him after all the crap that's gone on."

A student of Slavic languages at Columbia University, Thomas Anessi, said he's planning to leave for Poland in January. He acknowledged that Ukraine and Belarus aren't models for democracy, but he said: "The big problem with staying here right now is I don't know what I can do."

Other Americans were reportedly hoping to move somewhere closer: Canada.

Slate posted a how-to guide for people looking to cross the northern border. Harper's posted a guide online for Americans considering renouncing their citizenship. Unlike the Slate "explainer," Harper's cautioned that Canada "is no longer a paradise awaiting American residents." The magazine said it takes an average of 25 months to be accepted there as a permanent resident.

A Reuters article yesterday quoted an immigration ministry spokeswoman as saying, "You can't just come into Canada and say, 'I'm going to stay here.'"

Sebastien Theberge, director of communications for Canada's minister of foreign affairs, laughed when he was asked if Canadians are expecting an influx of disgruntled Democrats. He told The New York Sun he couldn't predict what would happen, but he said that after the 2000 election people threatened to move to Canada, yet there was no unusual northward flood of Americans.

Rather than leaving, Mr. Franken said, Americans should stay here to continue the fight. He said anti-Bush Americans will probably spend a few days getting their bearings and conducting election postmortem analyses before issuing a "call to arms" starting to focus on the issues facing the country. "We're just going to try to fight him," he said. "We're going to start focusing on stuff right away, reacting to what the president's doing, reacting to what the right is saying about this election, and then on to talking about whatever he's going to do."