A good place to start, IMHO, is to see where the money is. Betfair have a market on the election. About $1.5 million has been traded on it so far. Bush is currently priced at around 1.5 which is 2 to 1 on. Kerry is about 3.0 which is 2 to 1 against. I have been following the market and Bush has come in from around evens since the Republican convention.
But then what is all the fuss about? If there is no great need for “societal transformation”, why all the anger about the Bush policies? Aren’t they just a little more right than Kerry’s?
It doesn’t take a “larger plan” to wipe out Bush’s follies.
But pessimistic predictions could have the opposite effect. An apparent Bush lead may be just the thing to give Kerry supporters the sense of urgency necessary to win.
Thanks but I don’t think that that really addresses my quesion. I was asking dre2xl if he had any cites to back up his staement that the polls are greatly overestimating the Replublicans.
What do you consider to have been Reagan’s vision?
What do you consider to be Bush’s vision?
What type of “vision” would you like to see from the Democratic party?
Would this qualify as a “vision”?
I’m not asking whether you agree with it or not, just whether this is something you would describe as a vision. (i.e. “representing and protecting the interests of working Americans and guaranteeing personal liberties for all”)
I thought it was *liberals * who were supposed to be the ones with bleeding hearts, not conservatives.
Yeah, because we all know that John Kerry and John Edwards PERSONALLY tore that sign up!
:rolleyes:
OH wait…it seems there’s more to this story. Did Father Stage Alleged Attack?
And what the hell is this guy doing go to Democrat rallies bearing Republican campaign signs? And all three times he was attacked in almost the exact same manner?
(Please understand, that I am not aware of the Times-Patriot, at least not to how reliable they are).
He’s one unlucky guy, isn’t he?
Seems he’s been picked on by Dems in almost exactly this fashion in three straight Presidential elections. What are the odds? :rolleyes:
Whoops! Guin, you beat me to it.
On the ‘vision thing’, it’s hard to get one’s vision onto the news if the news doesn’t cooperate. For three weeks before the GOP convention, the Swift Boat Liars hijacked the news, then the past week and a half, they’ve been running Rather and the alleged Bush National Guard documents into the ground.
Merkwurdigliebe, I see that your first item that the Dems should have a vision on is health care. Oddly enough, that’s Kerry’s most substantive proposal: he’d have the government pay 75% of anyone’s health care costs over $50K/year, which would remove an enormous piece of risk from employers who provide health insurance. The chance of getting unlucky with one really sick employee is one of those costs that makes health coverage too risky for a lot of small businesses especially, but the cost on a governmental scale is pretty manageable.
That’s just the problem. Sure, he’s got healthcare plans. But he never says why. I want someone to come out there and say thtey have a different vision for America. EG. Heltcare is a right just like free speech or press. I don’t have healthcare problems, but I care about those who don’t. I know it won’t be a problem for me, most likely, but I would like to know that we are moving in this direction. I want to see evidence of serious change rather than just superficial. Sure, Kerry can overhaul the healtcare system in America, but I don’t want it because of a campaign promise, but because it is part of a vision for a better America.
See, people just don’t realize how important it is to have a vision. Those who don’t like the democrats understand, but most democrats don’t understand. Don’t be suprised if Kerry loses. I know I won’t be. All he has to say is that no family should have parents working over X number of hours a week (where x is some reasonable number of hours to work a week. I like 40 but I’m flexible) and that he will change things to make that happen. That will win him the election right there.
Plans are nice but there has to be more to a cantidate than that. We want to know why he wants to change healthcare, and what his philosophies on it are.
Can’t say that I hate the Dems, my feelings are closer to pity or humor. Understand that I was raised in a Dem household-my Mother would vote against Jesus if he was a member of the GOP. As a youngster, I recall the charisma that Kennedy had, the tough old boy that was LBJ, and after that, the candidates seemed more like cardboard cutouts. Humphrey? Mondale? Dukakis? Gore? Carter was a man of great personal integrity and knowledge-a bright spot among a string of stumblebums. Then there’s Clinton. Enough threads about him have been written, so I won’t go there.
Then I see the folks who speak for the Democratic party. Let’s look for some integrity, there. Ted Kennedy? Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton? All that’s missing are the red noses, floppy shoes, and squirting flowers on their lapels, because they’re a pack of clowns, in my opinion. Lying, manipulative clowns.
The GOP candidates aren’t without their weaknesses, either. Nixon was undone by his own paranoia. Bush Sr. has admitted that he should have let Norman Schwartzkopf finish the job-had he done so, his son would have other issues at hand. So, there’s no hate in me for Dems, they just haven’t offered anything of substance since Carter.
So much is going to change in the next few weeks.
This election is going to be considered, “too close to call” by election day…and as others have pointed out, rage against Bush will be a motivating factor that will overcome the traditional hardy, but consistant in numbers Republican turnout.
If even 5 percent more people vote in this election than in the last one, Bush is history.
I doubt even Republicans on this board can imagine a larger than normal turnout on election day to be a good omen for Dubya.
Dmark?
Do yo even live in the United States? Perhaps in New York and LA rabid hatred of republicans is the norm, but across the country you will find a pretty even split down the middle when it comes to left/right divide with the majority hovering somewhere in the middle.
Granted if the Democrats had put up anyone but an unabashed leftist and admitted war criminal, the right of center would be flocking to him in droves. God knows what I think of our supposedly “right wing” pres. I’d have jumped party if the Dems put up anyone resembling a centrist.
Ask anyone here, I am a dyed in the wool right wing reactionary. Even I think Bush is an ass clown. It saddens me, but I think Hilary in 2008 and there aint nothing no-one can do about it.
It just might. You might not get elected without one. 
You mean, for example, something like this?
Hey, I get it; I’ve been arguing for a Dem version of a Contract With America since about 1998. I’m the guy who started the “Memo to Dems: You can’t beat something with nothing” thread the day after the 2002 midterm elections.
However, I still have the odd belief that to beat a guy who’s gotten us into a worse quagmire than Vietnam for no apparent reason other than ego, who’s given short shrift to the War on Terror in order to get us into that quagmire, who’s taken our country from balanced budgets to truly astounding deficits without any observable offsetting benefit to the economy, and who has lied to us about all of the above and done his damnedest to keep us from finding out what our own government is doing - I still have the odd belief that it should only take some semblance of being a semi-responsible and semi-intelligent adult to beat such a guy.
I realize that this may seemingly go against my thesis, but this ain’t something positive that we’re trying to beat.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
But both parties are guilty of violating their own principles for expediency. Look at the Republicans - the party of small government has now presided over the most ‘liberal’ administration since at least Jimmy Carter. Spending is up across the board - not just the war, but things like the Department of Education (80% increase over 4 years).
[quote]
Well, Sam, someday perhaps, you small-government conservatives will come to realize that high government spending is not “liberal” but in fact is delivered to us as much if not more by most of the so-called conservatives that get elected, at least here in the U.S. One difference is, to some extent, where that spending goes. (And, by the way, if you are relying on groups like Heritage for the claims about where the spending has gone, you may be deceived into believing that more of it is going into non-defense, non-security as is actually the case [and that more of the budget woes are due to spending and less to the tax cut as is actually the case], as this and this fact sheet from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explains.) Another difference is the extent to which they are willing to pay for the spending, i.e., the conservatives tend to increase spending while cutting taxes (especially on the wealthy).
But, the fact is that conservative politicians may “want” small government but they don’t want to be the one to deliver it. It’s never popular to cut programs…Plus, their constituencies (big oil, power companies, pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, etc.) want welfare and pork too. The closest they seem to be coming to delivering small government is an indirect “starve the beast” route whereby they cut taxes but increase spending, forcing a fiscal train-wreck down the road, hoping that this will lead to cuts in government that will have to be made once those who do not need adult supervision are back in charge of things.
…On the other hand, there is now evidence that conservatives do truly vB code their posts better than liberals do…