Nobody tell him about the secret Democratic plot to have the liberal judiciary remove babies from Republican households and have them adopted by homosexuals.
This is why Kerry lost: we don’t believe that bullshit. Most people don’t believe that bullshit. You WANT to believe that other people believe that bullshit, but quite obviously they do not.
Well, I guess we disagree. I see many threats from the Middle East and while I do not think we should just march into all the countries we don’t get along with I support the president’s descisions to invade Iraq. But, I respect your opposition, I don’t think it’s been a 100% perfect operation. What war is? I don’t recall reading that Roosevelt’s critics climbed down his throat because he did not have an “exit strategy” for WW2.
I remember all the people screaming at Bush #1 for not “finishing the job” in the first Gulf War and now we have people angry because we “have no reason to be there.” Go figure.
Along these lines there was one area where Kerry could really have clobbered Bush: Illegal immigration. Our porous borders. Bush’s proposed ‘amnesty’ for illegal immigrants.
It would have made an effective wedge issue against Bush but instead Kerry’s position was hardly any different than Bush’s.
The democrats and Kerry made some major mistakes and if they had not, it might have moved the popular/electoral vote just enough for Kerry to win yesterday.
Their number one mistake was underestimating the difficulty of unseating an imcumbant. We’ve been jaded into believing this is reasonably possible because of Ford, Carter and the first Bush. We forgot the circumstances of each one’s defeat, a great deal of interparty opposition, Bush had none of that and add in the 911/terrorism factor, it was an extremely difficult task.
Democrats made a great effort in spending and signing up young and new voters. What they needed was closer to an herculean effort and that just wasn’t possible.
That’s because Roosevelt had an end-of-war strategy.
Based on the seemingly large voter turn out, I think that Americans reacted against the extremism and intellectual fascism of the Democratic party and its supporters. I believe that years of being exposed to crackpot ravings about how we’ve become another Nazi Germany with the Patriot Act (yet no secret police ever appeared to come along and drag the posters of those ideas away), about how Bush an evil blood thirsty Cthulu murdering (murdering, I tell you) millions of Iraqis, etc. genuinely frightened mainstream Americans into voting. A call to arms to defend normalcy if you will.
I think that there is a disgust against radicalism right now, particularly against a form of radicalism that tells you it is open minded and against persecution, yet persecutes those who disagree with any of its ideas.
I find this especially sad as someone that things Bush did a bad job, that Kerry was (barely) an electable alternative, but that his supporters did more damage than good.
No he didn’t. Not at first and not for a while.
From here:
We were attacked on 07 Dec 1941.
on 21 Sep 1943
then, in December :
One might even argue that in light of all that followed Roosevelt’s strategy (Korean War, Cold war, Vietnam) his “exit strategy” was seriously flawed.
In reality, Roosevelt’s end-of-war strategy was to win.
The lesson from this election is clear. Karl Rove has a strategy.
Step 1: Tell filthy lies about your opponent.
Step 2: If that doesn’t work, tell filthier lies about your opponent.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 as often as necessary.
That worked for Republicans in the Presidential race, and the Kentucky Senate race, and the South Dakota Senate race, … Bush’s campaign was purely negative. Kerry’s was mostly positive. That’s all there is to it. The idea that Kerry’s campaign was a negative one is a lie spread by Bush’s campaign. Go back. Watch the commercials run by the Kerry campaign between April and September. Are they positive or negative? Watch Bush’s campaign commercials from the same stretch of time. Are they positive or negative?
From now on, whenever a Republican faces a close race, they will respond by hiring bands of thugs to spread totally ficitonal rumors about how the Democratic candidate either is homosexual or is guilty of some horrible crime (or both), and if that doens’t work then they’ll hire another band of thugs to spread even worse rumors. Whatever works, that’s the new morality for the Republican Party.
>The center in America is further to the right than many of you folks want to admit.
Exactly. The sooner the liberals send some emmissaries outside their cocoons, the sooner they’ll start winning again.
We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this. I don’t see any evidence of a threat from Saddam, we’ve been searching for a while, too. We have 1,000 americans dead, billions of dollars spent, and I’m left wondering why.
WW2 was different, there was a threat, a BIG threat, we were even attacked first. When you’re faced with a truly dangerous enemy, you have to ensure victory before even thinking about an exit strategy. Iraq was not that sort of enemy, victory was assured before the first bullet was fired, the exit strategy should have been in place before we started.
Whoa there. Let’s not form the old Democratic circular firing squad this time. 9/11 was a gift-wrapped prize for Bush from a popularity standpoint. He was presented with practically unanimous public support for extremely broad latitude to go after the terrorists and, at the same time, rack up credentials for himself. And yet, due to his bungling and foolishness, he still just barely managed to keep his job, and that only by means of relentlessly cynical and negative campaigning. In '08, the Republicans will be unable to run anyone closely identified with the response to 9/11 or whatever, God forbid, happens next. (Cheney is too old, too sick and too abrasive). The Democrats did the right thing in this election, but some events are too big to overcome.
The Congressional losses are a bigger long-term concern, but Congress is less winner-take-all than the Presidency. People in the blue states are still electing their favorite liberals.
I’m not sure I remember them either. The PLO and their offshoots certainly don’t count, as they were radical secular nationalists with a partially Christian membership. The PKK in Turkey were quasi-Marxists. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria were pretty much focused on the domestic scene.
One could maybe point to certain colonial period movements, but that was a rather different context. About the earliest terrorist-style attack on the west by an explicitly Islamist group I can think of was the 1983 bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut by Hezbollah or an affiliate. Even that is a bit ambiguous, as it was a military target and it probably wasn’t designed to sow terror among the civilian population as much as it was a military strike.
While the writings of such figures as Sayyid Qutb attacked the west as early as the 1960’s, that didn’t really materialize as a genuine Islamist terrorist threat until the 1980’s in Israel and 1990’s elsewhere. Gulf War I was what set off ObL, specifically. However just as a counter-example it probably wasn’t a major influence on the GIA attacks on French civilians in Algeria and France.
- Tamerlane
But where in there does it say that people who get their news online skew democrat? It says they skew young and affluent.
For that matter, in the past, it’s always been suggested that early release of poll data helps whoever is ahead, as people want to be on the side of a winner, but won’t wait in line for a “lost cause.”
Here we see the true liberal heart: If you don’t agree with their viewpoint you are either stupid or uninformed. The liberals know better than you what should and should not be important. When they gon’t get their way it is because you were lied to and duped and not because you made an informed decision based on your own set of priorities and values. What is comes does is this: the left believes they should have power over the people. I have huge disagreements with Bush’s religious agenda, but even his vision of a “society of decency” pales in its holier-than-thou powerlust next to the liberal desire to control the lives of Men.
I believe this arrogance goes a long way toward explaining the significant loss the Left suffered yesterday.
So if they’d just run someone who hates gay people, hates Muslims, hates balanced budgets and is a member of the bigoted, evil religious right they could have won, you say?
But that would just make them Republicans, and we already have one party full of diresputable filth.
To hell Bush and everyone who voted for him.
Nice strawman. And if, heaven forbid, we’re afflicted with a wave of terrorist attacks in this country, do you really think John Q Voter would hold the minority party responsible? Or would he think that, maybe, the party that controls the government could possibly be a tad . . . off in their approach?
Sorry, when I say that “every terrorist attack from here on out will be their fault”, I mean that voters trusted Dubya more on this issue, but that trust will evaporate if we are attacked again.
The GOP is in a dangerous position: they have EVERYTHING. Every issue–the economy, the WOT, the WII (War In Iraq)–will be another test for the Republicans, another chance for the electorate to conduct a DRE, with results to be published in 2006 and 2008. And the public has long, cold fingers.
I don’t think the reasons are very complicated.
The War On Terror. Repeat that ten times.
Kerry had no obviously consistent message on the subject of Iraq, and Bush did. Since Bush successfully associated the Iraq war with TWAT, fear ruled the day. If you look at some of the social and economic issues, and the polls, Kerry might have been able to win just enough to tip the scales in his favor, if he could have campaigned on those alone. Unfortunately, TWAT completely dominated the political discourse running up to the election; the war in Iraq has made the issue of terrorism overwhelmingly pervasive, rightly or wrongly.
So in the end, a majority of Americans saw Kerry as “weak on terror”.
What’s really funny is how you people think the center won’t move again. If Nixon were running today, he’d be a Democrat. I suppose 51-48% is a “mandate”, if you thought 2000 was a mandate (and the GOP did), but the reality is that the country is closely divided. Please remain in your cocoon if you don’t wish to consider that.
I’m mystified by the attitude expressed in MadSam’s first paragraph. It seems to me that uneasines / fear / worry about terrorism should be the prime reason for wanting to turn the Bush 43 administration out of office.
> They did not do enough to prevent terrorist attacks in the US. Prior to 9/11, they paid no attention to terrorism. They had other concerns; terrorism just wasn’t on their agenda. Prior to 9/11, Bush was on vacation more than usual for a President. Bush ignored the Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to attack in US” (not “attack US” – attack in US).
> Since 9/11, they’ve done nothing to hold anyone accountable for dropping the ball. There were screw ups. Those who screwed up are all still in their jobs.
> Most of all, they launched an unnecessary, unjustified, ill-planned war in Iraq. A war that distracted them from Afganistan, allowing it to slide into chaos. A war that has killed 1100+ of our fighting men and women, and many thousands of Iraqis. The Iraq War has been a great recruiting tool for Muslim terrorist organizations.
It seems to me that the terrorist threat to the US is worse now than when the Bush administration took office. It seems to me that the increased threat is the fault of the Bush administration.
I am also mystified by the attitude expressed in MadSam’s 2nd paragraph. We’re better off with a President who is a known quantity, no matter how bad a President he is? Better to re-elect the worst President of any of our lifetimes than to take a chance on someone “unknown”? Not that Kerry actually was unknown. We knew a lot about him.
Re MadSam’s final paragraph, I can’t see that Kerry needed to say anything about anything. The (absolutely overwhelmingly) main issue was, or should have been, the Bush adminstration: their abysmal record on terrorism, war, the economy, the environment, civil rights, relations with our allies, etc, etc. Any other possible person would have been better.
Really. Any possible Democratic candidate, and most of the possible Republican candidates would have been preferable. By “possible candidate,” I mean people who could be a credible, realistic candidate for President. This would mainly be current and past Senators, Governors, Representatives, Vice-Presidents. A few would be un-electable due to advanced age, or to attackable things in their records, but most of them would be possible.
Any of the Presidents we’ve had since WW2 would have been preferable. I’d gladly accept Nixon, Reagan, or Bush 41 rather than Bush 43. (They being the ones I most disliked among our post-WW2 Presidents prior to Bush 43’s first term.)
Bush 43’s return to office seems to me to be a case of appearances beating reality. While some did vote for him on issues (abortion, stem cell research, treatment of gays), others voted for Bush because he made them feel better about things, or because he seemed have religious beliefs like theirs, or because he seemed to be “a good man”.