How will we explain the losing campaign of the 2004 election?

Great Debates
1

Might as well ask this before the election, because we’ll have too lopsided an answer afterward. Either George Bush or John Kerry is going to lose this election next month (presumably.) After it’s over, we’re going to hear all sorts of reasons for why one lost, or the other, as if it could all be attributed to one simple gaffe or one piece of bad luck. Of course, even expert historians spend years debating these sorts of things, and will wind up with no solid conclusion. Nixon lost in 1960, for example, but why? Was it that he wasn’t ready for prime time? Did he not stand a chance against Kennedy’s youthfulness? Did Kennedy cheat? Did Nixon fail to cheat enough? Were cat lovers turned off by Checkers? Or was Nixon just not the best candidate? Ah, but that’s not interesting at all! And if Kennedy had lost, we’d be discussing his inexperience, his failing to cheat enough, etc. The fact remains that the election was damn close, and neither candidate really botched his campaign.

No one really seems to be botching theirs this time, either. Suffice it to say, I find both campaigns to be pretty well organized, pretty tight. But we’re going to have a loser pretty soon, and we’re going to be discussing why he lost. So what are the reasons the conventional wisdom will offer to explain the failed campaign of George W. Bush? Or the failed campaign of John Kerry?

For Bush, they’ll say that he was done in by the economy and the war in Iraq. They’ll also point to the debates, where his performance was less than stellar. Some will give Jon Stewart some credit, and some will credit the downfall of Bush cheerleader Bill O’Reilly. Unease with the Patriot Act will also be offered as a way to explain it. A failure to get the evangelical vote to the polls, a success at getting blacks to the polls.

If Kerry loses, we’ll hear that people were comfortable with Bush, that they were afraid to change horses in midstream, since Bush has gotten us bogged down in a war in Iraq and folks would want to see the same guy finish it. People will say that Kerry is stiff, that Bush is likeable. Some will say that evangelicals got to the polls, and blacks didn’t.

The fortune of either could be determined by late-breaking Scandal X that gets splashed across the headlines around October 27.

I’m not saying that I necessarily think any of the above will cause the success or failure of either candidate; I’m just saying that those are some reasons people will cite. The answer is probably too complex to nail down, and impossible to recognize at this point, since we don’t have a loser yet. But what else will people say caused the downfall of either candidate, once all the votes are (hopefully) counted?

2

If Bush loses, it’s simple: Having squandered all of his post-9/11 good will with continued rabid partisanship, he got the country into a war that he could not post facto adequately justify the reasons for.
If Kerry loses, it’s more complex, and will likely have to be parsed out of the post-election polls showing which groups he was weak with. But I expect the main explanation would be that he did not convince enough Americans that he could effectively lead the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Security moms and all that.

3

I think whatever side loses pretty much will explain that the country is divided today like it was in 2000.

I believe, though, the Democratic party would fare better in presidential elections (and in other races, where they’ve been losing ground) by nominating moderates instead of dogmatic liberals like Kerry and the 2000 incarnation of Gore.

Ironically, Howard Dean would have been a smart choice, except for his strident anti-war stance, which isn’t what America wants right now. Mark Steyn noted that the Democrats rejected a dull centrist governor pretending to be a nut, and nominated instead a nut pretending to be a dull centrist.

Dean’s pro business and pro gun stances would have played very well in most of the country, and would have made big trouble for Bush had Dean not been so stridently anti-war.

4

Bush could lose if Florida tips the scale and the privatization of Social Security is the apparent cause. Other than that possibility, Bush will rise and fall with the war. If it’s going well on election day, he may win. If not, he may not. A loss will almost certainly be blamed on the war, save the Florida proviso above.

If Kerry loses, he can blame the fact that people just aren’t comfortable with him. Style trumps Substance like Paper trumps Rock.

5

:stuck_out_tongue:

Speaking as one who backed Kucinich in the primaries and really respects (with reservations) Ralph Nader, I can assure you, Moto, that if you count either of those men as a “dogmatic liberal,” you are looking at the whole center-to-left side of the spectrum through the wrong end of a telescope!

6

IMHO - Honestly, it’s all an exercise in myth-building now isn’t it? The ONLY explanation that holds any water is that the defeated candidate received fewer electoral votes than the winning candidate. I know it all sounds rather circular. But we always seem to insist that the guy who comes in second is some kind of big loser and then we waste a lot of breath justifying why they’re a big loser when in fact, of all the people on the entire planet, they finished the race .00002 seconds later than the winner.

Look at how Gore was treated in 2000, he received more popular votes than Bush, yet because he lost in the electoral college (through means either fair or foul) he was branded Mr. Big Loser and the chattering classes went to work justifying this label.

7

Right. I can as easily say that your views are colored by your position on the political spectrum, if you regard these men as moderates.

Kerry is clearly a liberal senator. He’s not a moderate in the mold of Bill Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, or indeed Dean. That’s just reality.

Most Americans aren’t comfortable with political liberalism. That’s why Dukakis and Mondale and Carter lost so badly their respective races, and why Clinton could win only by toning down the liberal message.

8

I like this formulation. Howard was a decent governor, although I was not of his party. He then turned into a barking moonbat.

My question, though, was, Which side of Howard was the pretense, and which was the reality?

9

I believe the barking moonbat was all pretense. He all along warned his supporters that his rhetoric in the general election would be far different than how he sounded in the primaries.

10

Carter a liberal … oh my aching sides …

11

It will be interesting how you defend this observation when Kerry wins.

12

Preach it. I have been saying the exact same thing for months. The only people who would disagree are those who see the above liberals as moderates. John Edwards could have won this election…John Kerry will not.

The question is how will the Democrats rationalize Kerry’s defeat internally? If they are not willing to face the fact that it was ideology first and foremost, then they are in for more of the same in 2008.

13

If I may interject without speaking for you, Mr. Moto…

Bush is a polarizer, much like Clinton was. He is taking action that some people strongly agree and disagree with. This naturally leads to a very split electorate and a nasty campaign. In a post 9/11 world, people are going to turn to a Republican because their party has a stronger record on national security issues. Republicans control the majority of the governorships, the House and the Senate. And the more the Democratic Party moves left, the more they are marginalized. 2008 will be an interesting election indeed. Will the Democrats nominate Hillary? If they do, they’ll regret it.

14

If Bush loses, it will be a two-fold reason. From a policy standpoint, it’s Iraq plain and simple. From a campaign standpoint it will be Debate #1. In that debate he failed miserably to defend his Iraq war policy. Up til that point, Kerry’s campaign was dead in the water, and it looked like Bush might cruise to a win in November.

If Kerry loses it’ll be because his campaign focused too much on the “anyone but Bush” strategy. He has spent essentially zero time talking about his 20 year Sentate record and so people really don’t who he is, other than what he says he WILL do (as opposed to what he has done) and how the Bush campaign has tried to portray him.

15

How is Kerry more liberal than Edwards. You might be right, but I’ve never seen any evidence that Kerry is an “out of touch” liberal. Certainly the “most liberal senator” thing has been debunked to death. Kerry certainly holds some liberal positions (prochoice, guncontrol, affirmative action) but these are things supported by more or less 50% of the populace (depending on whose doing the polling). Given things like Cheney’s vote against MLK day, I’d say he is at least as much of an out of touch conservative then Kerry is an out of touch liberal

16

I’ll add that I agree with John Mace, if Kerry looses, it’s because he lacked the charisma of Clinton or Regan and failed to bring his own vision and style to the campaign. Without his own story, he’s been swamped by the charactatures of the Repub propaganda machine.

I think he will make a good chief executive, but he is a lousy campaigner. He better hope the Repubs run Dan Quayle in 2008.

17

We know you predict Bush will win. However, that wasn’t the question. How will you justify this prediction when Kerry wins?

With regard to the rest of your post, this has little to do with who will win this election, because it ignores Kerry’s ace-in-the-hole; voter turnout. Republicans have historically had a high voter registration and turnout, so they have very little room for improvement. However, based on past elections, Democrats are notoriously lazy, and if properly motivated, can increase voter registration and turnout with election-changing results. I believe a combination of Florida 2000 and Bush’s polarizing effect are just the ticket to produce enough of an increase in turnout to make all the difference.

This is the issue Republican strategists are afraid to talk about, and this will be the reason Bush will lose the election; just by being his divisive, exclusionary self, he will drive Democrats to the polls in historic numbers.

18

I wonder if its even possible to dissect why a candidate lost or won an election which will be this close. Like last time, this election may be won by less than 1,000 votes in a key state.

Can either side claim to have “won” in anything but the most literal sense in this case? Anything, from bad traffic or a cold spreading around a workplace, to a candidate’s choice of ties, may make significant differences this time, and may very well tip the scales.

Of course, we can speculate on why one didn’t run away with it, but we’ll never be sure if any hypothetical strategy would’ve worked.

As for next election, when the election hinges on a virtual coin flip, “flip it again” sounds like a halfway decent strategy. Absent some visionary genius emerging on either side, look for a repeat in 2008. Without an incumbent, the Dems might think they’ll have the edge this time.

19

“Flip it again” is essentially what the Democratic Party did. Their campaign this year is strikingly similar to the one waged in 2000.

Of course, the Democrats lost that race. And the odds are that they’ll lose this one too. At the very least, they should be coming up with strategies to win more decisively.

I personally don’t think they can do this with liberals, much as that choice delights the party faithful.

20

Of course, can the winning side really claim to have won when their grand prize is skyrocketing deficits and a quagmire on the other side of the world?

Mr Moto: I’d love to hear why you think KE04 is similar to GL2000, given that Gore was essentially the incumbent, running in a time of peace and (relative) prosperity, and KE is the opposition candidate running in wartime and recession. To me, they’re nothing alike, aside from the obvious similarities in their positions on the issues (which is predictable, given that they’re from the same party).

And I’d also like to hear why you think the Democrats lost 2000, aside from the electoral vote; since GL2000 received over half a million more votes than the other side, isn’t it more than fair to assert that from an ideological standpoint more Americans sided with the Democrats?

As we have plenty of responses for if Kerry loses, let me try the other side of the coin. If Bush loses, the pundits in their reductive thinking will point to debate #1 as the turning point, which is correct, but not because of GWB’s demeanor or “What about Poland?”. The debates turned the tide for JFK because of the relentlessly negative campaign waged by the Republicans. After the relentless smears, the “flip-flop” label, the RNC convention and the Swift Boat Veterans campaign, voters didn’t get an unfiltered view of John Kerry until the debates.

Then when the debates started, they saw a rational, calm, sobering presence, who articulated his positions clearly and in general showed a presidential bearing.

The contrast between JFK and GWB, especially in debate 1, was jarring. (Although I think the president closed the gap in #2 and #3, and it could be claimed that he won #3; but “winning” a debate doesn’t really matter too much for the incumbent, since he’s really running on his record and voters should already have a clear view of his administration.)

It’s been said elsewhere, but if Kerry wins, it would ironically be because BC04 lowered voters’ expectations of him.