Kerry will be portrayed as anti-Patriotic in a number of ways, including his voting record on veterans benefits and troops and his Vietnam protests/book. The war on terrorism will become a big issue and Kerry will not be able to hold up under the attacks.
The economy will probably bottom out sooner or later and be on the upswing come November. Even if its still significantly worse than 2000, the general public doesn’t care. Its on the way up.
Bush will win in a landslide.
Whistling in the dark, aren’t we? If there’s one issue Kerry cannot be touched on, it’s his support for veterans in general and Vietnam veterans in particular.
Any attempt by Bush to smear Kerry on veterans will blow up in George’s face. And I, for one, will find it fun to watch.
The campaign really hasn’t started yet. Kerry has been the front-runner for, what, two weeks? You guys have him redecorating the White House already.
Am I the only one who remembers how scared the Republicans were supposed to be of Dean? He was the one who was going to sweep to the White House on a wave of popular revulsion over the conquest of Iraq. Now that his campaign has crashed and burned, Kerry is the unbeatable golden-haired boy. Uh huh.
Bush has a large and largely untapped campaign chest. We will see if Kerry can make up the difference with his latest wife’s ketchup money. And we shall also see what happens when the front-runner starts getting asked the hard questions, both by the media and the Bush campaign.
God knows the instant that starts to happen, there will be a rousing chorus of “No fair!” from the lockstep liberals of the SDMB. You would like very much for whoever the Dems pick to proceed unchallenged down the road to Jan. 20, 2005.
Ain’t gonna happen. It’s a campaign, and it not only isn’t over, it hasn’t really started yet. And, we aren’t going to confine ourselves ONLY to the issues you want to highlight, or take ONLY the positions you would like to see.
It’s a campaign. Some of it will be high-minded but meaningless rhetoric, some will be mean-spirited partisan bashing, some will be nitty-gritty positions on genuine issues.
From both sides.
The Bush-bashers won’t like any of it (coming from the Republicans), and the Bush supporters won’t like any of it from you all. As always, the election will be decided by the middle.
And the middle will start hearing from both sides, as soon as the campaign really gets going.
How will Bush try to win? By campaigning for it, just like Kerry (or whoever is the Democrat du jour). Bush has the advantages of incumbency, and we haven’t really started examining Kerry’s record.
Rest assured, we shall.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s the standard election situation- the Republicans are very strong when it comes to national defense, the Democrats are very strong when it comes to dealing with a faltering economy. So just as Kerry is attempting to play up the poor economy and job loss- while pointing out his war record but otherwise staying mum on anti-terrorism, Bush will play up his anti-terrorism actions and point out his education/medicare/etc. spending but generally stay mum on the economy.
Kerry will be portrayed as soft when it comes to really dealing with terrorists- his statements about being a “law enforcement” issue will be played up and played out, and Bush will make whatever hay he can out of future terrorist captures in Afghanistan or attacks in countries such as this morning’s in Russia.
The “gay marriage” issue will be played to the hilt. Kerry’s screwed on this one; either he stands firm against the issue- and alienates some of his support- or he waffles on it, and loses a lot of support. Either way, with it happening in his back yard, it’s going to be smeared all over him with insinuations that if he’s President, he’ll appoint to the Supreme Court the same people who ruled that Massachussets can’t allow ‘civil unions’.
As for the “angry voter”- all it will take is a few patriotic shots, a few reminders of 9/11, and a few vieled references to gay marriage to get Republicans to show up in droves at the polls.
Would that it were not so, but the US electorate is way to the right of the rest of the industrialised democratic world.
The Republican Party need only spend a fortune on TV commercials incorporating the US flag and some appropriately emotive power chords and the election is won.
One thing they will probably do is use subtle yet disparaging words and phrases to paint Kerry in a bad light, such as referring to his “latest wife”.
Regards,
Fiddle
Yeah, he’s had all of TWO wives! What a libertine! And his wife has been married before too! Of course, she was widowed in a plane crash in 1991 a few years before she met John, but maybe they’ll leave that part out.
His first divorce was unfortunate, but it seems to have been a case of his workaholic habits and her inability to cope; she was later diagnosed with mild mental illness, and he remains close to his two daughters by the marriage. There’s a good overview in the New Yorker article I linked to in the Kerry electability thread.
If you want a serious answer instead of just some rehashed anti-Bush platitudes, which is all that seems to be on this thread so far, here are the two most important things. First, he will make the argument the economy is recovering and it was the tax cuts that did it (first party of that is partially true, second part very questionable really). Second, he will argue that the War on Terror is far from over and that the Democrats will not be as tough on terror as his administration. This is what I anticipate being the biggest difference between the candidates. I think the Democrats will take a stance more along the lines of rebuilding international ties and coalitions and having a better plan for post-war Iraq and will not be as hard talking about future endeavors in the “war” on terror. They will focus, as they have thus far, on Bush being wrong about the WMD in Iraq and going in without evidence. While right now this seems like a winning issue for the Deomcrats, that could easily change by election time with the right spin on it by the Republicans. I am sure they will argue, again as they have so far, that the end justified the means, they were working on the best intelligence available at the time regardless of whether it was right or wrong in the end and, if you look at the big picture, the end result of Saddam being out of power and him being captured is much more important than the details of why the war was begun in the first place. I imagine they will also show how “fair minded” they are about it all by allowing a trial for Saddam and leaving his fate to the IRaqi’s.
I don't think the bad/made up intel on the War in Iraq is as much of a slam dunk issue for the Democrats as many of them like to believe. I do believe many AMericans buy the argument that while the reasons may have been shaky to begin with, having Saddam out of power is a huge triumph for the President. You also have to remember that the Dems are getting more press time right because they have contested primaries. The people showing up to voting booths and campaigning right now are mainly Democrats. This skews the polls at the moment. As the campaign gets closer to the summer and it becomes more of a, presumably, Bush-Kerry race, the polls will be more accurate.President Bush is going to play Iraq as a victory over a despicable regime, Americans should therefore be proud to spread democracy all over the planet. If the democrats (and by “democrats” I mean Kerry) just go back to the WMD issue I don’t think they will adequately answer that claim.
My solution for Kerry is to ask the President: “if ending Hussein’s regime was the MORAL thing to do, is it MORAL to use the US military in overthrowing other despicable regimes around the globe?” I can think of China for one, Halliburton has contracts to start pumping oil in Libya just as soon as we lift the trade embargo, why not re-evaluate this policy towards Cuba? Their are dozens of countries that are not democratically represented in the world, in fact since the demise of the Soviet Union the number of democracy in the world has decreased rather than increased; I wish our Presidential candidates would talk about these kind of big picture issues.
There’s another MAJOR issue that’s going to poke it’s head out sometime around late spring early summer: The expiration of the “assualt weapons” ban.
I’ve been saying this for sometime now, and every time someone comes on these boards, r:rolleyes:lls their eyes and proclaims that gun control isn’t a big issue.
WRONG!
There’s going to be one hell of a fight over this, and it’s going to happen right before the election. It’s going to be a HUGE issue! Gun owners are a large group of “single issue” voters. Bush Sr. made the mistake of backstabbing the NRA. I recall Lee Atwater saying something to the effect “where else are they going to go?” In November 1992 they found out.
If Bush makes the mistake of supporting renewal of the ban, he’s going to piss off a large bloc of regular voters. If he supports letting the ban expire, Kerry will use it against him. It’s a time bomb that was set 10 years ago and it’s sitting in W.'s lap ready to explode.
I suspect Bush will remain as silent as he can be on the gun issue.
I think he’s going to push the terrorism threat to the max.
Sure, flag-waving is a traditional approach for an incumbent, but I don’t think it will work this time. The method helps prevent doubts from becoming established about foreign-policy screwups, or about wars that are still being fought and can (in the public eye) still be “won”. But in the cases of Iraq and terrorism, he’s already used that approach, and we’re now past it into questioning his use of it. The drunkenness is over or almost so, we’re dealing with the hangover, and we’re not nearly as susceptible as normal to invitations to get drunk again.
Flag-waving is an issue by itself now - if he tries to do it again, and it would have to be waved much harder anyway, it will act more as a reminder of the lies that got us into this mess than as a convincement to “stay the course.”
Since he can do little to restore his shrinking positives, or stop the growth of his negatives, all he can do is go negative even harder on his opponent. Besides, that’s pretty much all Rove knows how to do.
I guess it is possible that Shodan was simply trying to be informative about Kerry’s marital history.
First campaign slogan of the season -
Regards,
Shodan
Somebody work on that for me; it’s not catchy enough.
This time they won’t **bother counting the votes **. This time the orchestrated attack on American soil will come just in time for Chaney to declare martial law. . .I’m not sure what they’ll blow up this time, but it’ll be big.
And by “they” I don’t mean a bunch of people following Osama bin Laden.
Just curious, Shodan. Were you simply trying to educate us on Kerry’s marital history, or was there an ulterior motive involved?
Today I read several articles about how domestic discretionary spending has exploded under Bush, and how this is angering his base. What no one here has pointed out is how hard he can play this to the center. Won’t seniors remember Bush as the guy who gave them the biggest federal entitlement since social security? Anytime it’s pointed out that government spending has grown under Bush, he can point to two things: presciption drugs and the war on terror, with a few pittances thrown towards the far right (faith-based initiatives and marriage counselling). That’s a lot of money with a plausible motive, and it takes a lot of complicated analysis to undercut it, something the general public doesn’t have a lot of patience for.
Good start, but it needs something:
Thanks for the inspiration Shodan. I think that might work for the swing voters. 
Actually it was more in reference to where he gets his campaign funding, and his wife’s reluctance that he run for President, which may affect his ability to draw on that money.
Regards,
Shodan