And in other news, rubber ball thrown into the Grand Canyon results in highest bounceback ever!
GDP points don’t vote. Unemployed workers do.
It turns out someone did a poll on Dean’s liberal and unelectableness.
I guess I was wrong when I said that conservatives think that Dean is unelectable. Its the only really hardcore partisans like the ones in this thread that do.
Yes, one was - Jimmy Carter.
You really think this means something?
Sorry, but you are just wrong here.
Or perhaps I should say you are mostly wrong here. As I mentioned, the campaign is starting, and the free ride from the Republicans is at an end. Dean is now going to experience what is like to run for President against a popular incumbent. Certainly there is going to be discussion of substantive issues, but if you think the insults, mud-slinging, partisan smears, and mockery are going to issue only from the liberals, prepare to be disappointed.
Part of the process, and if you claim that the liberals on the SDMB and elsewhere have focused so far entirely on the issues in a fair-minded way, I am going to laugh at you. They haven’t, and they won’t. And it would be unwise for Republicans to fight this campaign with one hand tied behind their backs.
What goes around comes around. If you think Dean has been put thru the wringer so far, I assure you that it was no more than a rinse.
Regards,
Shodan
The GDP did not grow 8.2%. It grew at such a rate that if it continued for the whole year it would grow 8.2%.
So granted, it did grow quite a bit, and much more than it had been, but it didn’t grow 8.2%, either.
The GDP did not grow 8.2%. It grew at such a rate that if it continued for the whole year it would grow 8.2%.
So granted, it did grow quite a bit, and much more than it had been, but it didn’t grow 8.2%, either.
I’d really like to see Dean win.
But consider: a lot of the things that the conservatives are saying about him I and other democratic types were saying about Bush before the 2000 primary.
I didn’t think Bush could be elected street-sweeper, much less get his party’s nomination. (Of course I should’ve known better, coming from Texas.)
My guess is that the conservatives feel about Dean the way I felt about Bush: that he’s unelectable *and[/] that they’re afraid of him anyway.
Not to sound a discouraging note - but history doesn’t hold promising parallels for Dean. Even though young voter turnout hit an historic high in the Nixon-McGovern race of '72, it didn’t help McG much (they turned away from him in the later stages of the campaign). According to this site “After the (1972) GOP Convention, voters under thirty had switched from approving McGovern by a 48 percent to 31 percent margin, to approving of Nixon by a 61 percent to 36 percent margin. Without the youth vote McGovern’s chances of winning had been markedly reduced and Nixon’s chances of a landslide had received another boost.”
Voter turnout has been crappy in that age group for quite awhile. And while it would be nice to see a huge turnaround in '04 I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, or on the likelihood that it’ll go heavily for Dean. Or to whichever Dem emerges gasping from the pile of bodies.
http://pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm
Interestingly enough Dean does the best among the Democratic candidates against Bush in the latest CNN poll. 51-46. The five point gap is barely outside margin of error and is peanuts compared to likely swings during the actual campaign. Basically polls at this early point are dubious because the majority of respondents barely know who Dean is. However they are somewhat useful in determining trends and making comparisons. If Dean is too liberal to be elected certainly his numbers should be a lot lower than,say, Lieberman but they are not. And this is before the general campaign where he is likely to stress his moderate record in Vermont.
As for the Iraq the polls are positive only for the plain-vanilla question about support for the war. If you ask whether the war was worth the costs incurred, generally you only get minority support. For instance 42 to 47 against in the latest CBS poll. Unfortunately for Bush, the Dean campaign is certainly going to hammer the cost of the war during the campaign repeatedly: especially the 87 billion dollars that Bush requested for the year. So the majority support for the war in the abstract is going to be trumped by the fact that many people hate the huge cost of the war.
http://pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
Overall I think Dean has a good chance of winning. I think his biggest weakness might be his tax plan. I think the tax plans of Lieberman,Clark and ironically Kucinich are both more politically effective and better economically (and more progressive in that they reduce the tax burden for the middle class).
I still think that Wesley Clark has a better chance of beating Bush. He will be really effective attacking Bush’s national security failures. And IMO his tax plan will be political dynamite:
http://www.clark04.com/issues/familiesfirst/
It’s going to be 1988 all over again. A moderate republican vs. a liberal New England governor.
And especially so this year, because even if nothing bad or good happens between now and Nov, the 2004 presidential election is essentially going to be a referendum on Sept 11[sup]th[/sup]. And the anti-Bush crowd is going to have a rude awakening when they see how many people still unabashedly vote America first.
Dean’s “Did Bush know about it” comment is going to be his ‘riding in a tank looking like an incompetent boob’ moment.
I disagree. Conservatives aren’t smart enough (or clued in enough?) to be afraid of Dean. They OUGHT to be afraid, but they aren’t.
Instead. They think all kinds of things that have no basis in reality. Like Hail Ants who think Bush is actually a moderate. (Hint Ants, he only plays one on TV… badly).
or John who thinks: <i>Or, it could be that a majority of Americans own stock in some form, and Wall Street numbers going up means good tiding for a majority of Americans, not some elitist circle that hasn’t existed in years. </i> Hint, John. There’s a huge difference between owning a bit of stock, (the majority), and owning enough to make voting decisions based on that fact (a tiny minority). The vast majority of American stock owners have their stock tied up in retirement accounts that they can’t touch for years or even decades, and which are substantially underwater from where they were before Bush was selected. The notion that the majority of Americans vote their stock portfolio is pure wishful thinking.
Dean’s “Did Bush know about it” comment is going to continue to resonate and prey on people’s minds more and more over the course of the next year. People want to believe that he didn’t know. But the fact that he’s stonewalling the investigation, and that he has failed to hold anyone accountable for the massive failure that was 9/11 suggests that the people who are guilt of neglegence for 9/11 are too close to him to be fired. Perhaps even himself. If he can’t erase the doubts that are building on that score, it’s going to come back and bite him in the ass.
Which fully accounts for the two crushing defeats suffered by Ronald Reagan, no doubt.
Only if you have paranoid tendencies already.
There is a difference between “resonating” and having a head so empty that things echo. Dean’s comment is an unfortunate pandering to the tin-foil hat wing of the Loony Left. I am sure it will go over big with Ramsey Clark and his Band of Renown, but normal folk? I kind of doubt it.
The fact that Dean would try it, and that it would find some kind of traction even on the SDMB, says far more than you want revealed about the nature of the more fervent of Dean’s Fiends.
YMMV.
Regards,
Shodan
Hard-headed, yes.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Dean can beat Bush. I’m not buying the “Dean is a liberal” line. Paul Wellstone was a liberal. Dennis Kucinich is a liberal. Carol M-B is a liberal. Dean is a fairly centrist Democrat. There’s a lot about Dean that I like, too. I just don’t think the facts, as we know them now, support a win by him in Nov. But a lot could change between now and then.
The hard-core dems on this board are in denial. While it’s true that anything can change, and that 10 months is a long, long time in presidential campaigns, we’re trying to base our estimates on the numbers today, because that’s the best we can do.
And today, the numbers favor Bush over Dean by a staggering margin. The economy is going up, Bush is the incumbent, the shifting electoral map due to the census of 2000 gives Bush a further 7 vote margin in the electoral college, Bush’s popularity rating is higher than any other President at this point in his first term in over 30 years, and the country has moved towards the Republicans overall by 5-7 percentage points.
Add in the fact Republicans have a natural advantage over Democrats when it comes to security and the increase of conservatives in the young population and among women, and you set the stage for a potential Bush landslide.
Dean is at a much bigger advantage than Clinton was. First, Clinton was far more conservative than Dean. And second, Clinton came along at a time when the public was tired of 12 years of Republicans, plus everyone thought it was the ‘end of history’, peace in our time, and the ‘peace dividend’ was the only military issue anyone wanted to talk about. Plus, the economy was on the downswing under Bush I, and he ran one of the worst campaigns in modern history. All of this worked heavily in Clinton’s favor, and all of these trends are now reversed and work against Dean.
Can Dean win? Sure. A major Bush scandal, a large terrorist attack that highlights incompetence in Homeland Security, a stalled recovery leading to a ‘double dip’ (very unlikely now), or any number of other events could change things around. Also, I expect Dean to race to the center as soon as he has the nomination locked up, and it remains to be seen how he comes across once he starts talking about fiscal restraint, balanced budgets, his support for gun rights, etc. He may yet turn out to be an appealing candidate.
But there is no evidence of any of this, so the best we can do is judge the man based on what he’s shown us so far, and predict the results of the election based on the trends we can observe today. And based on that, if I were a betting man (and I’ve been known to place a bet or two), I’d give you 2-1 odds for Bush over Dean.
I meant DISadvantage.
Way to address the issues there yet again. :rolleyes:
I didn’t claim that liberals aren’t/won’t be doing that… and if you look, you’ll find that I criticize them for the same behavior. Generally speaking, it’s what I despise most about modern American politics – the instinctive lunge for the bottom of the barrel, the scandal, the personal insult. I see you seem to enjoy it there. So be it.
On the contrary, my friend… I encourage you and those like you to continue down the path of the lowest common denominator. If all you can do against Dean is sling shallow, meaningless insults, then I’m even more confident that Dean could win the day.
I wouldn’t vote for Dean if you had a gun to my head! (and if Dean supporters have their way, nobody will have any guns to put to my head!:rolleyes: )
Dean is making the classic mistake of running to the left. Dukakis made this mistake, as did McGovern, and even Gore.
Clinton ran to the right. Remember the “no more tax and spend philosophy, we reject it” ads Clinton ran? That’s as anti-left of an ad you’ll ever get out of a Dem.
One of the wisest political statements ever came from, of all people, Nixon: “Run to the right, govern from the middle” (or something like that). In 21st century america, running to the left is not going to get you elected President.
Of course they are afraid of him. He is raising enough money to run without using matching funds. Which IMHO is dead after this election. But he’s raising his money from the common man. Not from 2k a plate fund raisers. How many common people could afford that?
Just as an aside. Y’all notice how well he has handled the attacks from most of the dem candidates? He will handle the attacks from the RNC even better.
Brutus, Shodan, Sam. Save the tax dollars Bush has given you. It’s the last out of treasury you will get.
Dean/Edwards in '04
Which kinda makes you wonder why he was endorsed by the NRA for governor, huh?
91 percent consumer confidence? In what? Jesus? Where did that come from.
And yea, the Dems hope the numbers will change, but they dont’ have to hpe for any particular mechanism for that change. I just hope a lot of people come to their senses.