# Election 2008: Did the Dems Learn from 2004?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [April 5, 2007, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813 "2007-04-05T02:17:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/21 "2007-04-05T16:01:32Z")
Please, Lord, let it be Newt. I will eat tofu. All whale products, _right out!_ I will maintain a respectful demeanor when someone tells me they’re Wiccan. I will quit smoking, and this time I mean it! Tobacco, of course, baby with the bathwater, and all that…
And, **John-boy** , Guilliani is toast. Rudy is doody. If Bernie Kerik is any indication of his judgement and wisdom, he is a maroon. And unless he flip-flops massively on the gay and abortion issues, he will lose the knuckle-walking Trog base.
Newt! Newt! Newt!
---
### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/22 "2007-04-05T16:15:32Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Please, Lord, let it be Newt.
…
Newt! Newt! Newt!
[/QUOTE]
Cheney is the [logical choice](http://www.nysun.com/article/51783).
Whoever they pick, we are doomed, DOOMED by our own incompetence.
Heck, even if Clinton wins, it’ll **backfire** on the Dems for sure.
---
### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/23 "2007-04-05T16:17:06Z")
Yeah, and experience counted so much in 2000.
Northeasterner? Hillary isn’t a New Yorker, she’s a carpetbagger. So forget that. Who’s leading the Republican polls? Rudy? Not just Northeast, but New York City. Thrice married, gay loving, well, hero until you look deeper. That will make the religious right rush to the polls.
McCain is already melting down. Romney? Northeastern also. A Mormon flip flopper. Yeah, Newt would be a good candidate - for the Democrats. Brownback is more mainstream these days, but he’s a nobody. Who else do they got? Whoever is the Republican candidate has got to be able to deal with the more and more scandals that will be out by election time. Either they repudiate Shrub, and lose the 25% diehards who still like him, or support him, and lose everyone else.
How many of you pessimists thought the Democrats were going to lose it last November, by the way?
---
### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/24 "2007-04-05T16:22:38Z")
Cheney? The only man in Known Space less popular than GeeDub? Rudy is road-kill, Cheney is _week old_ road kill.
---
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/25 "2007-04-05T16:23:57Z")
[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
Iraq changed everything- the Republicans will win in 2008 only with massive electoral fraud and/or the Democratic candidate makes an incredible mistake.
[/QUOTE]
Both of which remain strong possibilities, remember.
---
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/26 "2007-04-05T16:25:14Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Here, in a nutshell, is exactly why the OP is dead on. Denial of reality, a paranoid persecution complex and a healthy dose of “blame someone else for our problems”. You know Bob, this may play well with the base as y’all sit around drinking the Kool-aid, but it’s very off putting to most of the rest of the voting public, you know, those folks in the middle you actually have to convince to vote for your guy? Navigating through an election by the seat of your arrogance isn’t a winning strategy. Jesus, when will you guys ever learn?
[/QUOTE]
When will **you** stop denying the reality of Republican vote fraud, vote suppression, and all-around cheating?!
---
### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/27 "2007-04-05T16:27:43Z")
[QUOTE=Maus Magill]
Clinton is nearly as polarizing as GW is. We do not need that.
[/QUOTE]
Not really. Neither side likes her, so it doesn’t much matter whether her party is in power of the Legislative branch or not if she took power. She’d still have to fight over everything.
Bush’s scary part was in using the single party force to sledehammer through anything he wanted and being able to force his party to stick with him via the polarization. I.e. “If you’re not a God-fearin Republican then you’re a terrorist through and through!” and being able to sell that idea through the public.
---
### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/28 "2007-04-05T16:31:47Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
When will **you** stop denying the reality of Republican vote fraud, vote suppression, and all-around cheating?!
[/QUOTE]
Frankly, the amount that cheating could skew the vote is so minimal that pretty much the fact that it came to that just shows the meh-ness of both candidates. And there’s no way to know that it’s not a simple case that the Republicans cheated **more skillfully**.
Gore and Kerry were both dogs. Bush was also a dog. We’ve not had a real choice for two elections in a row. Whoever won didn’t really matter so far as the public cared.
---
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/29 "2007-04-05T16:32:23Z")
Consider this: If 2008 comes down to Clinton vs. Giuliani, the religious-right voters will be able to stomach neither and stay home; or, better still, they’ll run a third-party candidate who will spoil Giuliani’s chances. The left wing of the electorate, OTOH, has learned its lesson from the Nader campaigns and will unite behind the Dem nominee, **any** Dem nominee.
And Clinton has one advantage over Kerry in 2004: She doesn’t have to tell the voters who she is. They don’t all **like** her (I don’t, goddam DINO, for whom I will vote without hesitation), but they all **know** her.
---
### Author:  [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/30 "2007-04-05T16:39:03Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
When will **you** stop denying the reality of Republican vote fraud, vote suppression, and all-around cheating?!
[/QUOTE]
When you start trotting out proof and not hearsay and wild chains of coincidence.
And, hey, John Mace, thanks for the ringing endorsement there. 🙂
As for all of you who keep saying that Rudy can’t win because he’ll be unacceptable to the religious right, if you’re talking about winning the Republican nomination then you may very well be correct, although I think that the left has a real tendency to greatly overstate the influence that the RR actually has, but in the general election? I disagree. They may not _like_ Rudy all that much, but if you think they’ll vote for Hillary or Obama instead of holding their noses and pulling the lever for Giuliani, or even that they’ll stay home and by that inaction allow one of those two Democrats to win, you’re nuts.
---
### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/31 "2007-04-05T16:42:10Z")
Here’s the thing though, the Republicans don’t have any solid candidates either.
Rudy? Not gonna happen. Rudy may be what New York needed after Democratic misrule, but he’s an authoritarian, and he’s WEIRD. Middle America isn’t going to vote for Rudy, nevermind his 9/11 actions.
Romney? Mormon. That’s gonna cost him. That’s 10 times worse than Catholic.
McCain? Mmmmaybe. But he’s not doing so hot.
Newt? Come on. Newt isn’t running. I admit a certain fondness for Newt because he was a guy who actually cared about ideas. Not that he had good ideas or anything, but in our current dark ages he passed for an intellectual politician. But that doesn’t mean I think he’d make a good president, nor that I think he has a chance in hell to be president. He’s yesterday’s diapers.
It’s a funny race, the first time since 1952 (Eisenhower vs Stevenson) where a former president or vice-president isn’t one of the nominees. In every other race in the modern era the presumptive nominee of one of the major parties was already known by now, and the other party’s primary fight was all about whether the nominee could beat the already annointed incumbent.
So we’ve got these funny rock paper scissors comparisons.
But I agree that the Democrats have a huge built-in advantage in 2008, regardless of their nominee, because even though no figure from the current Bush administration is running all Republicans are going to be tied to the Iraq war. And I also gotta say, if you are running in a statistical dead heat to George Freaking Bush that a few thousand stolen votes in a few states can keep you from winning, then you pretty much deserve to lose. If you really got 50.01% of the vote to Bush’s 49.99%, then fuck you.
In case anyone is confused, I voted for Kerry.
---
### Author:  [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/32 "2007-04-05T16:42:47Z")
Geez. So much hand-wringing from my fellow Dems already. Relax! Nobody really cares about this election yet but the candidates and the donors!
The way I see it, you have got to be blind to see that Republicans are in disarray over their candidates right now. Guiliani has so far gotten a free pass on his family values bona fides, McCain is halfway around the bend and starting to look more and more like Bob Dole with more interest in getting in front of TV cameras, the righty Republican base likes Romney about as much as the lefty Democratic base likes Clinton. And at the moment, the Republicans who’ve announced still think the Iraq war is pretty much the greatest thing that ever happened to Freedom.
In this kind of election, neither side is going to get the perfect candidate. The Blue Side just needs a candidate just a wee bit better than the Red one, and I think that is a perfectly reasonable expectation at this point.
---
### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/33 "2007-04-05T17:05:54Z")
[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
Someday there will be a first black president, but he (and it _will_ be a he) won’t be a first-term Democratic Senator.
Someday there will be a first female president, but she won’t be a Democratic Senator from the Northeast.
[/QUOTE]
You can make up these "but"s until you’re blue in the face. There IS no experienced black Senator running. (In fact, there aren’t any other black Senators at all.) There is no female non-Northeastern Senator running. If you want to recruit Barbara Boxer, go ahead. 😉 These are the candidates available at the moment. There’s a decent spread, and Democrats certainly seem happier with their options than Republicans do, and I think that’s a good sign. Remember the famous Republican fundraising edge of '00 - '04? The top two Democrats brought in more money this quarter than all of the Republican candidates combined. Whining like this is premature and annoying.
---
### Author:  [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/34 "2007-04-05T17:19:58Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager]
How many of you pessimists thought the Democrats were going to lose it last November, by the way?
[/QUOTE]
Personally I don’t get a shit who the Republicans run, I’m not a republican. I do care that my party nominate someone who can actually win a national election. Neither Clinton nor Obama will do that.
---
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/35 "2007-04-05T17:30:20Z")
If Clinton and Obama make peace and form a Clinton/Obama ticket, they’ll lose any chance of support from racist whites, but most of those would have voted Pub anyway. OTOH, they’ll get the vote of every eligible African-American but Alan Keyes. You’ll see an inner-city voter-registration drive like you’ve never seen before.
---
### Author:  [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/36 "2007-04-05T17:32:25Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23]
You can make up these "but"s until you’re blue in the face. There IS no experienced black Senator running. (In fact, there aren’t any other black Senators at all.) There is no female non-Northeastern Senator running. If you want to recruit Barbara Boxer, go ahead. 😉 These are the candidates available at the moment.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. And for that matter, you can talk about “Someday there will be” but until a black man or a woman actually _run_ for office, it won’t ever happen. Too often I see variations on “Oh sure, a woman will be president someday, but that day’s not today, so why bother trying?” Even if neither Obama nor Clinton win the primary or the general election, the fact that they are running at all and seem to have a better than slim chance (hell, they’re the _front-runners_) is a step in the right direction.
---
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/37 "2007-04-05T17:39:51Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
When you start trotting out proof and not hearsay and wild chains of coincidence.
[/QUOTE]
[Here’s](http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16962753.htm) just one example of many. And no one [in](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315502) [these](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=307833) [threads](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=279927&highlight=voter+fraud) could come up with any evidence that individual “voter fraud” is a real, widespread problem worthy of concern. See [this](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032801969.html) recent editorial:
> [@](#):
>
> Before and after every close election, politicians and pundits proclaim: The dead are voting, foreigners are voting, people are voting twice. On closer examination, though, most such allegations don’t pan out. Consider a list of supposedly dead voters in Upstate New York that was much touted last October. Where reporters looked into names on the list, it turned out that the voters were, to quote Monty Python, “not dead yet.”
>
> Or consider Washington state, where McKay closely watched the photo-finish gubernatorial election of 2004. A challenge to ostensibly noncitizen voters was lodged in April 2005 on the questionable basis of “foreign-sounding names.” After an election there last year in which more than 2 million votes were cast, following much controversy, only one ballot ended up under suspicion for double-voting. That makes sense. A person casting two votes risks jail time and a fine for minimal gain. Proven voter fraud, statistically, happens about as often as death by lightning strike.
>
> Yet the stories have taken on the character of urban myth. Alarmingly, the Supreme Court suggested in a ruling last year ( Purcell v. Gonzalez) that fear of fraud might in some circumstances justify laws that have the consequence of disenfranchising voters. But it’s already happening – those chasing imaginary fraud are actually taking preventive steps that would disenfranchise millions of real live Americans.
Republican [voter intimidation,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=277079) OTOH, is a **real** problem, or has been recently.
---
### Author:  [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/38 "2007-04-05T17:48:25Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
If Clinton and Obama make peace and form a Clinton/Obama ticket, they’ll lose any chance of support from racist whites, but most of those would have voted Pub anyway. OTOH, they’ll get the vote of every eligible African-American but Alan Keyes. You’ll see an inner-city voter-registration drive like you’ve never seen before.
[/QUOTE]
I keep seeing this sentiment and I think it specious. But you go ahead and keep dreaming.
---
### Author:  [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/39 "2007-04-05T18:02:37Z")
BrainGlutton:
_yawn_ Same old shit. You really should look up the definition of “proof”. Wake me when you have some.
---
### Author:  [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2007, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813/40 "2007-04-05T18:09:04Z")
I think it’s crazy to say that Obama can’t win. The man is amazing. Have you heard him speak?! The word “orator” will soon be in use again.
He’s charismatic. He’s good-looking and masculine. He’s credible on the Iraq war. However much people call him “inexperienced,” he doesn’t have the callow vibe that Edwards certainly had in '04.
He walks and talks like a winner; that counts for a lot! And the reasons that right-leaning folks won’t vote for him? Because he’s super liberal? Not really, no “worse” than the average Dem. Racism? Could be a factor, I admit.
Here’s the question: If people aren’t going to vote for an “inexperienced black man,” then why does Obama have $25M in contributions right now?
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813.md?page=1)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/election-2008-did-the-dems-learn-from-2004/398813.md?page=3)