Beyond Ohio | Planet Waves for Nov. 3, 10:00 a.m. CET | By Eric Francis We may ask the question: what happened? But the real question is what will happen now? I don't mean with the election. I mean with the United States, and as a result, with the world. At this point, the outcome of the election seems fairly clear. Everything is going to hinge on Ohio, to the extent that this is possible. That may take a while to resolve. And as promised by Wade O'Dell -- Ohio resident, top-level Bush fundraiser, and president of Diebold (the company that makes electronic voting machines) -- the 20 electoral votes of Ohio will probably go to Bush. It seems logical to concede the election on behalf of John F. Kerry. But as one of the old Hollywood greats once remarked of the movie business, "Nobody knows anything." In some respect with this election, everyone was wrong. Voter turnout, projected at up to 120 million, fell far short of that. Everyone, down to Jimmy Breslin, was off the mark somehow; he published statistics this week which showed that when polls were conducted of cellular phone users were factored in, Bush would be crushed. Young voters, Breslin said, would vote against the draft, and he went to bed after his last day of his long career feeling confident. Those who said that because Gore won the popular vote last time, Kerry could not lose it this time -- or it would be too close to call -- were wrong. If you believe the current numbers, Bush won the popular vote not only by a few solid percentage points, but by an actual majority of voters -- this, for the first time in many years. This majority is the alleged cure for Bush's rip-off of Florida last time, his loss of the popular vote, and his metamorphosis from moderate to aggressive conservative activist. Bush's margin of victory in the popular vote was more than he managed to pull out in the official polls, the whole cell phone issue notwithstanding. So the polls, even though they showed a slight Bush edge, were wrong -- and we don't know how or why. And it seems that the millions who protested the war allegedly made no difference. The countless lies told about the war allegedly made no difference. The 100,000 murdered Iraqis allegedly made no difference. The 1,100 dead American soldiers allegedly made no difference. The fact tat Osama is not Saddam allegedly did not make a difference. The fact that Iraq was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks allegedly did not make a difference. The fact that the administration was warned of the Sept. 11 attacks allegedly made no difference. The millions of newly unemployed allegedly made no difference. The trillions of dollars in debt that our country has been plunged into allegedly made no difference. The tax cuts for the very richest Americans allegedly made no difference. But all the votes in the world cannot turn night to day, or make a lie into the truth. And no matter what anyone thinks, these issues and the people who care about them do make a difference. These issues don't change and they're not going away. The government officials who created them can drop the red, white and blue balloons on cue, and they can claim the record number of votes in history, but they still have to come back to work and face the same issues. They can turn around and blame the people who voted them in -- this used to be called a mandate -- but they still have to account for their actions. Remember that Richard Nixon was elected by a massive landslide -- he won 49 states in the 1972 election! -- six months AFTER the Watergate scandal became news. And he did not resign until the summer of 1974, after his entire top staff had resigned in disgrace, and many of were convicted of crimes. So what the president does, in fact does makes a difference. The fact that a constant and relentless drilling-in of fear was used to sell Americans on George W. Bush makes a difference, because in a sense if he is sworn in on Jan. 20, he will be compelled to deliver what he has promised, and to experience its effects. This will leave the people who understand something about fear and its effects to deal with that -- because those who are responding to fear, abandoning hearts and minds in doing so, are in a very real sense helpless. We all know the nation is deeply divided, but few have said exactly on what issue. I assure you, the issue is not political. It is true that all the votes have yet to be counted in Ohio -- and that the uncounted ones are provisional ballots, cast on paper. And it is true that there may be something very wrong in that state, and many others where Wade O'Dell's equipment was put to work. It seems unlikely that John Kerry will roll over and go down like Al Gore did. And yet it seems that without a clear majority of the popular vote, or clear evidence of election fraud, he has little in the way of a moral argument. Yet the "other half," that 49% portion of the country (at minimum) that has voted against Bush and his Iraqi holocaust, is a lot more concerned than it was four years ago because it now sees the results of what has happened from the theft of the 2000 forward. And for these people, the work is just beginning. The real discussions with our neighbors have yet to happen. It will be very interesting to see what comes out in the wash between now and November 14, and how John F. Kerry handles himself -- and how we, whose lives this election is all about, face the challenge of living consciously. The world is in a very delicate state right now, and becoming aware of this fact is a point of beginning, not a victory and not the end. We who know where we tread need to make every step count.