A little background, voted straight republican party ticket every election before this one. In this election, voted for Kerry. This election tells me that it is not enough to sit on here and pontificate about the issues. It is not enough to just go and vote. It is not enough to make a small donation to the election that I want to win. It is not enough to attempt to persuade your family and friends that you are right. It tells me that the "fringe" elements of the democratic party do more harm than good. It tells me that the lesser of two evils is still not good, regardless for whom you voted. It tells me that Americans as a whole really don't get it, and by it I mean way too many tie the war on terror to the war on Iraq. It tells me that a president can cite bad intelligence and cite it frequently enough to convince the country that it is true, even if he later admits that it isn't. I am gutted by this election. I really don't like Kerry, at all. But I voted for him because he wasn't Bush. This obviously isn't enough to win an election, even when the other guy is so by. So my question is when, if ever, will a leader step to the plate that will make you vote for him more than vote against the other guy? This election makes me ill, but it also will inspire me to be 100000000000x more involved next time, donating time, energy, effort to whichever campaign I choose. I have no problem being outvoted, I just wish that I could sit here and say that I am 100% convinced that the country made the right decision (and by right decision, I don't mean my decision, I mean the country as a whole made an informed and intelligent decision based on the facts). That being said...Kerry, for the love of man, concede.
Good post, but Kerry's got 10,000 lawyers in Ohio. Less than 140,000 vote difference. There is a real chance to steal this election right back. No surrender until all the lawyers are dead!
All of this despondency among Kerry supporters is plainly obsurd. As someone who voted for the President, I feel the Democrats just learned the lesson that we learned in 1996. That lesson is that "Anybody But..." won't capture the imagination. What they need is a candidate they can love and who can energize his/her base, while not putting off the middle ground. Senator Kerry is popular within the party, but how many Democrats actually liked him? You said yourself that you didn't like him. I've heard that from so many other Democrats. They've learned, and I think they'll come back from this with a stronger showing in 2008. My observation is that our political system has become so adversarial that the two sides don't want to lose because of really any philosophical differences. They don't want to lose because they don't like each other. I'm not above this. I really don't like John Kerry. Maybe my memory is lacking, but I don't remember it being so pronounced as it is now.
It isn't absurd. The notion that GWB, after the sh!t he has pulled over the last 4 years, can get re-elected is deeply troubling. Sure, we didn't love Kerry, but we hope that the country can see pre-emptive wars based on false premises are a bad thing. We hope that the current 'no tax and spend' policies are transparent, we hope that Martha Stewart in jail and Ken Lay making energy policy is reviled. But no, we appear to have re-elected the chimp. That we won't get Kerry doesn't wreck me. That some majority of this country can vote for Bush/Ashcroft/Cheney/Rove is deeply troubling.
How many provisional ballots are there? Cuz we know they're going to be heavily for Kerry. I've seen the figure 250K. He'd have to get ~75% of them to get Ohio.
That's my take, too. I honestly don't know what the consequences of Bush vs. Kerry as president would be - I think that having Kerry in office would have been better, but there would have been some serious problems with that situation too. The deeper concern is that Bush can get approximately 50% of the vote after four years of idiotic policies with blatantly dishonest justifications, and with a plurality of the public believing that the country is on the wrong track. That strikes me as a sign that something has gone seriously awry, and in that regard it doesn't make a lot of difference whether the number is 49% or 51%. I'm afraid that what might have to happen is that things get so bad that people are no longer able to convince themselves that everything going wrong in America is the fault of everyone except those in power. We're not at that point yet, but I think there's a good chance we'll get there before too long.
This was a poorly run campaign. Kerry basically went to sleep in August and was in pure react-mode with SBVT. He didn't begin to gain until the debates, and he missed so many slam-dunk opportunities there that I began to wonder if Susan Estrich was running the show. Edwards brought absolutely nothing to the ticket; no energy, no southern constituency to speak of, easily button-holed as a pretty face. We essentially had a northeast liberal and a paper weight.
I don't think any of the Dem primary candidates would have done much better than Kerry, except for Clark. Dean had pretty much all of Kerry's negatives, and he also had promised to get rid of the tax cuts for the middle class. Think about how much time and money Bush spent trying to convince voters that Kerry would raise their taxes, then think about what his attack machine would have done to a candidate who had actually promised to raise middle class taxes (same problem disqualifies Gephardt). I also don't think being seen as an anti-war candidate would have been much of an asset, judging by the polls. Edwards is good, except for the fact that he would never be able to convince the public of his credibility on foreign policy and national security, and that would pretty much sink him. Clark could have done it - and if he had entered the campaign a few months earlier, I think he would have won both the nomination and the election. He would have been almost immune to Rove's smears, and while he was obviously not ready for prime time as a campaigner when he entered, he learned fast. I'd put him near the top of the list for 2008.
That's the biggest problem for Dems. Out of the 9 who were serious candidates in the primaries (and you could argue that fewer than 9 were serious) who would've been a better candidate? Outside of those there still isn't a whole lot left in the cupboard. There just aren't any prominent Dems waiting in the wings the way that Rudy, John McCain and potentially Jeb are for 2008. When you consider the strength of George W. Bush relative to those other Republicans 2008 could be a very interesting election
Anybody against the war would have helped. Dems, stupidly, voting strategically. But the "strategy" was that Iraq was going well, and they needed to nominate someone for the war and get the election on domestic issues. If what happened in Iraq in April had, instead, happened in January, we'd be talking about President-Elect Howard Dean right now.
I think Giuliani will have to seriously change some of his stances on social issues before having any chance of getting the nomination - I'm not sure he can win in the GOP primaries. Jeb will be a potential candidate only if GWB's second term is very successful. McCain would be an excellent candidate, but I think he's still distrusted by much of the party, so he'll have to play ball for a couple more years before that becomes a possibility. He'll also be 72 in 2008, so health might be an issue.
You guys aren't looking far enough into this. Rednecks breed much faster than the more educated folks who actually pay attention to current events in the coastal blue metropolitan regions. More rednecks = more Bush votes. Periodisto.
Giuliani's willingness to be the go-to guy for Bush with the press suggests that he is willing to do just that, or at least make some concessions on them. Plus he's got the America, ******** Yeah! vote coming to him for being the face of our positive 9/11 response. I thought the same things about McCain, but then I remembered him being McCain and if there's one guy I can see trying to pull off the whole old president thing, it's McCain. I wouldn't underestimate Jeb though after Bush's strong STRONG showing in Florida. Polls were putting that state under 1% difference and W demolished Kerry there. That puts Jeb in a good place for 2008 if the dynasty wants another shot at it.
??? "Demolished"? I thought it was Bush +5? Giuliani has about the same chance at getting nominated as Hillary. The GOP primary electorate is never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never gonna nominate an Eye-talian from Jew York City with two divorces, one very, very, very messy. Ever.
It's not a kerry's fault... It's the americans fault... The supidity of the american people... The fear of the terrorism ?? Bush was anable to capture Ben Laden... How can they vote for a man who have lying so much ??? It's unbelievable. Nixon for less has Faced an impeachment for more less...