Don’t hold back, Dave. Tell us how you really feel.
Earth to Dave: you’re losing an argument with yourself.
Please don’t tell me you’re turning into one of those posters who doesn’t realize we can scroll back up the page and see what’s already been said.
I’ve spent plenty of time among the fundies myself. And my in-laws are a couple that are more ‘on the bubble’, so to speak - leaning Republican, certainly, and part of the southern conservative Christian milieu, but haven’t checked their brains at the door. We’ve all got our examples that we’d like to extrapolate the behavior of large chunks of the electorate for.
There certainly are voters who are going to vote for Bush on the basis of gay marriage, over the shitty state of the job market, over a war that’s making no sense, over the lies emanating from the White House and their attempt to use 9-11 to justify everything, over Bush’s desire to go to Mars when we’ve got half-trillion dollar deficits (excluding Social Security) lined up, one after the other, for the rest of the decade; over the Bushies’ ensuring that people who live off their investments pay lower tax rates, thanks to Bush, than people who work for a living…yes, there are such people.
I don’t think any Dem has much chance of landing many of those voters, and it’s a waste of time to try.
Josh Marshall had some thoughts about the whole Southern thing in talkingpointsmemo.com recently. He noted that a number of swing states have areas that are South-like, and Dems ignore that at their peril. Central PA, southern Ohio, West Virginia, places like that. Maryland isn’t exactly a swing state, but parts of MD are like that too.
But on the whole, those areas are much less religiously conservative than the Southern heartland. Guns matter, defense matters, being tough on crime matters. But posting the Ten Commandments is a bit further down the scale; ditto gay marriages. The gay-marriage issue won’t help the Dems in swing states, but I doubt it will hurt them there that much. It will hurt the Dems tangibly in South Carolina, but even Edwards won’t take SC from Bush unless it’s a landslide.
Are you truly contending that swing voters are so shallow that the primary, overwhelming factor in their decision of what candidate to vote for is geography? :eek:
Oh, my, I quivver before the time homored RTFirefly technique of selectively quoting parts of posts and stringing them together to create a “meaning” that only he devines instead of making a legitimate arguement. If you would bother to invest in a dictionary, you would note that “X is more of a hot button topic than Y” is not equivilant to saying “X is the most important hot button topic of all”, except maybe in bizarro RTF world where what people actually post pales in importance to grinding your particular axe. You caught me in a technical contradiction, I admit, but I thought the fact that in the first quote you’ve posted I was responding to someone who said that I claimed gay marriage was the only issue involved AND the fact that I clarified (the part you neglected to underline) “the deciding topic, or the only thing upon which a decision would be based” would make the destinction clear enough for most rational people, Mea Culpa if I was wrong. I wasn’t counting on someone ignoring the actual arguement in favor of playing anal retentive grammar policeman. Also, what does "As of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, Kerry is now unelectable in most of the South. Dubya will beat the living fuck out of him on this issue " have to do with the other two quotes? I stand by the statement, if you feel you can refute it, have at the statement with facts instead of jumping up and down screaming “You’re contradicting yourself” rather than adressing, you know, the actual topic.
The real problem isn’t the assumption that they’re so shallow that they will vote on the basis of geography, it’s the assumption that they know enough about geography to know where Massachusetts is … or WHAT Massachusetts is …
Just wanted to take a moment to note that my prediction Gephardt would endorse Kerry has come true. I don’t think it’s a monumental observation or anything, but I made it the night of the Iowa caucuses, and it’s nice to be right. 
I still have questions about Kerry’s purported inability to win in the South. I know he lost South Carolina, we’ll see what happens in TN and VA.
Here’s my problem: at this point, Clark and Edwards are completely surrendering all the non-Southern states and focusing on the South to try and prove they can win there and he can’t. If the three of them were all competing in ALL of the open states and Kerry was consistently losing in the South, I’d feel differently about it. He’s going to Tennessee now, I think, and has bought ads in Virginia. Clark and Edwards have abandoned Michigan (the biggest state to have come up so far, where Kerry has a huge lead) and Washington state. So say Clark wins Virginia and Edwards gets Tennessee. Kerry will still have increased his lead because the other two are picking their battles in this manner. Kerry has won states in the East, Midwest/Great Plains, and Southwest. Edwards won the state he was born in, and Clark won Oklahoma - barely - after betting the farm on it. He didn’t even make second in Carolina, where he once led. In a way, the strategies of Clark and Edwards make it sound like they’re competing to see who would best compliment Kerry on a ticket.
Correction - Clark is focusing on Tennessee (and ignoring Virginia), so if he wins anywhere Tuesday, it’ll be there. Edwards and Kerry are competing for Virginia.
Marley23, I have to tell you that I didn’t see the Gephardt endorsement coming. I didn’t think there would be any bad blood between Gephardt and Kerry, but I really did think Gephardt would sit the rest of the primaries out. Frankly, I’m glad this happened; of all the dropouts thus far, Gephardt’s endorsement of Kerry would be the most meaningful.
I also agree with you that Kerry’s appeal in the South is highly underestimated. While I’m sure Kerry won’t sweep the region, I can see him playing well enough to win in Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana and possibly Virginia in the general election. This will depend on the strength of his campaign, the strength of Bush’s, and a whole lot of other things we can’t possibly be aware of right now.
Vis-à-vis the primaries, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Kerry will win Michigan, Washington and Maine, and I’ll take a similar risk in predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. As to Virginia and Tennessee: I think Kerry is definitely competitive in both, and I think he’s got an excellent chance of taking Virginia. Tennessee could break for either Kerry or Edwards. I don’t think Clark’s really got enough oomph to start thriving in this campaign. The fact that winning Oklahoma was such a chore for him says a lot about how much he’ll catch fire in coming elections.
Your problem with Edwards and Clark surrendering the Northern and Western states is a valid one. Somehow the idea that no Democrat can win the election without winning the South has taken over these campaigns. The North, the Midwest and the West aren’t foregone Democratic consituencies, and we still need to do well there, too, if we’re going to unseat Bush. Ideally, a candidate should be able to win in all fifty states. Kerry seems poised to do well in more states than Edwards or Clark. Further, if Kerry can show that he can win a Southern primary or two as well as the non-Southern ones, that’ll take a good deal of the wind out of Edwards’ and Clark’s sails. In sum, I think you’re right: Edwards and Clark are running for vice president, and it looks like Edwards is currently leading in this race.
RTFirefly mentioned Josh Marshall’s talkingpointsmemo.com and how it recently said that the Democrats cannot ignore the South. It’s true, too. While the Democrats could win the election without carrying a single Southern state, it’s important to remember that central Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, West Virginia and southern Missouri all have South-like qualities. I lived in central Pennsylvania for several years and my brother lived in southern Ohio for a few years, and both of us can tell you that this is very much true for those regions. We’re from western Pennsylvania, originally, which is certainly not South-like, and which is a considerably more Democratic part of the state. However, Pennsylvania and Ohio are typically 50/50 states in presidential elections, and turning off entire blocs of voters in regions of these states could make a difference. While it certainly wouldn’t hurt to pick up a Southern state or two, concentrating on the South makes a big difference in these two states, as well, which are must-win states for both the Democrats and for Bush.
I don’t think Kerry’s coming from Massachusetts will make that much of a difference to the voters across the country. My experiences in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Illinois don’t suggest an instinctive hick-like distrust of them gol’-danged Easterners. I did live in Iowa for a while, but it seems to me that Iowans, while sporting a subtle pride in their being different from Easterners, aren’t turned off by one of them if he or she comes off as a square dealer or a basically decent human being. Iowans are not a bunch of stupid, xenophobic hicks. Don’t sell them short. Remember: the last time the Democratic presidential candidate was from Massachusetts, the Iowans voted for him.
I suppose it’s because the South is Kerry’s most obvious potential weakness. The other two guys are trailing big-time, they’re trying to exploit anything they can.
And I quiver befor the time-honored Weirddave approach of using phraseology that sounds like it was stolen from an elementary-school recess.
An another, apparently. For if I have even caught you in a technical conontradiction, the problem clearly isn’t with my dictionary.
But on to the alleged substance of your argument:
Well, you were claiming that it was going to be an issue that would override many more serious and meaningful issues. And why, exactly, was that? Because after sober reflection, people thoughtfully concluded that gay marriage really was more important than the war, the economy, the deficit, health care, and so forth?
Of course not. Gay marriage is high on its opponents’ list because it hits them viscerally, rather than rationally. Can’t get more ‘hot-button’ than that.
It was your thesis.
See post #203, where I did exactly that.
Feel free to jump up and down some more. It’s good for the circulation.
I truly believe we are starting to see the zenith of Republican power (as their party stands here and now) in this country. They are already showing signs of a disconnect between reality and their view of the world and I think the voters are beginning to wake up to their lies and dirty tricks.
Even some members of, what should be, the Republican party base (religious fanatics and the generally ultra-conservative) are beginning to have their doubts about Bush (and making them public) and with the administrations policies in general, than has ever been seen before. Everything from immigration reform (guest workers) to tax-cuts for the ultra-wealthy (and the resulting deficits as far as the eye can see – even that hypocritical pompus gasbag Rush Limbaugh has been critical of the Bush Administration on this) has brought about a change in the perception of the current administration.
Now they are, in general, beginning to canabalize themselves. There was a story on drudgereport.com yesterday about Fred Phelps (he of godhatesfags.com), the fundamentalist Baptist preacher from Kansas, applying to put a momument to Matthew Shepherd’s “x-number of days in hell” in the city parks of a few cities across the country because they have existing monuments to the Ten Commandments. Now, these cities are pulling those monuments or bracing for a legal fight to keep his from being erected (apparently there’s been a court ruling that existing monuments to the Ten Commandments are acceptable - sort of a grandfather clause – correct me if I’m wrong).
Couple that with the sheer volume of protests leading up to the Iraq War, the “jobless” economic recovery, redistricting being forced down the throats of voters in Texas and Colorado, daily reports of service members being killed in Iraq (we’ve now reached 500+), not to mention the upcoming Republican Convention being held in NYC within days of the 3rd anniversary of 9/11 leads me to believe this election will be a grand turning point for this country and the two parties in the election.
I predict Kerry will win the nomination in August and choose Wes Clark as his running mate. Who would dare attack Kerry OR Clark on National Security or for being un-patriotic? The Republican’s would lose two of their biggest weapons in the election if we have two TRUE war heroes versus an AWOL deserter playing dress-up in a flightsuit and Dick Cheney.
Kerry/Clark in Novermber.
Since my party seems bound and determined to nominate Kerry, I can only say “Watch and learn.”
(And I do hope the lesson sinks in by 2008.)
With friends like this, Kerry will be sunk. Which is fine with me.
Democracies are characterized by rotation in office. No party can remain in power for all that long because both will equally fight to win the center, so in that sense there is something to use of the word “Zenith” here. However, I think that swing voters will be repelled by these tired desertion charges, will think Bush has been a reasonable wartime president, and will give us Republicans one more election. Look for the Democratic comeback starting in November 2006.
Hated presidents win reelection. Check out Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton. Kerry’s supporters are his greatest weakness.
Well-spoke (since I agree.) As I just posted, they may show they have learned as soon as 2006. Actually, what with focus groups and all, both sides are continually learning. As a result the parties are pretty evenly matched.
The desertion thing is primary rhetoric, not something you’re going to hear daily during the campaign itself. Dean is arguing it should be a big deal, which is one reason I’m pretty sure it won’t be. The other candidates aren’t making opposition to the war their central issue, so the ‘deserter’ thing isn’t of much importance anyway.
I don’t know how today’s voting affected the delegate count exactly, but Kerry won both states by wide margins and definitely increased his lead. I’m reading that polls currently show him ahead in Maine (where nobody is really campaigning, it seems), and more importantly, Tennessee and Virginia. So I have this question: if Clark or Edwards (or both) don’t get a win on Tuesday, what happens? Do they have any kind of chance left? Will they quit? Clark’s campaign in particular seems frustrated, see his son’s comments that he hoped the General would quit if he didn’t win Oklahoma.
Kerry is not going to be called unpatriotic, but his senate voting record on National Defense is not very good. He has voted pretty much straight (Dem) party line on all the key issues during his tenure, including voting against Gulf War I, and several key Defense programs in the 80s, during the Cold War. That will not play well in the campaign. His anti-death penalty stance is another serious weakness, although his recent “conversion” to favoring the death penalty for convicted terrorists sounds very opportunistic.
But I’m looking forward to see how he handles these things. Dukakis was a wimp in this campaign, and I expect Kerry will not follow in those footsteps.
I sure hope you’re right. The only Dem I’ve seen who speaks and acts like he has balls is Dean.