Liberal attitude did NOT cost the election

The BBQ Pit
21

Unless I miss my guess, this is precisely what the OP was talking about. We did something wrong in a big way? We lost by a margin so goddamned thin you can’t see it if you look at it sideways. We lost in a fuckin’ tiny way. We don’t understand the American center, Bricker? We got 49% of it. How does that translate into “not understanding” it? Sorry, but this election doesn’t prove crap about the legitimacy of the Democratic platform or our method of getting it across to the voters. Did we lost because we used too many insults? Take a look at the man in the White House right now, and how he got there, and tell me with a straight face that we didn’t lose this election because we didn’t use enough insults.

Sooner or later, we’re going to have to learn this much from the Republicans: Americans don’t want bipartisanship and mutual respect. They want mud. They want blood. They want WWF politics. That’s what won the White House for the Republicans in the last two elections, and if we’re ever going to get it back, that’s what we’ve got to start doing, too.

22

Do you want to win next time? Yes or no?

Treating people like contempt isn’t the way to do it.

I learned this a looooonnng time ago, when I was a kid. It was on the somewhat trivial subject of musical tastes. I liked a certain kind of music that was odd for someone my age (Classical). My friends and schoolmates gave me a hard time about it. Insulted my musical tastes, never tried to understand my musical tastes, never bother to even look into what my viewpoint was. They just gave me a hard time, day after day. They insulted what I liked while simultaniously trying to convince me to listen to what they liked. (“Why do you listen to that Classical shit?”)

It didn’t work. I never was going to be won over to “their” side with that kind of treatment.

Same here. You can be right, right, right, but if you are an obnoxious asshole about it, you will convince no one and you will lose the fight (which is to convince people to your side). It works both ways. You’ll never convince people to be pro-choice, pro-life, pro-gay, pro-Metallica, whatever, if you’re an asshole about it.

But if being right is all that matters, continue to behave like an asshole, and continue to piss people off and turn them away. They’ll never be swayed to your side, but oh, you’ll be soooo right.

GaWd: Understood. No harm, no foul. (And stay off the dope, ok?) :wink:

23

MaxTheVool wrote

I did; I voted.

Seriously, you can’t honestly look at elucidator’s comments and consider them serious debate points, can you? I mean really.

However, as you asked, I’ll state for the record that
a) I thought that the Iraq invasion was a wise decision at the time with the information at hand.
b) I don’t believe Mr. Bush lied in the matter, and I haven’t seen any reasonable evidence to the opposite.
c) I believe some things are worth sending our children to war over.

Now, do I believe the war could’ve been prosecuted better? Do I believe we should’ve lined up better international support? Well, I have opinions on those too, but elucidator wasn’t concerned about that. He’s just spouting the same muck that turned off me and alot of other voters, and inspired us to vote against him.

Oh, and on preview, I see another sucker of the liberal philsophy teat has joined us with more of the same.

So, Congratulations, elucidator and now jayjay! Your words were heard and had effect. You’ve made a difference in the world. You’ve swayed an election.

24

No…that’s exactly what it proves! As others have eloquently noted in other threads, the Dems were handed an easy target, and you blew it. You got a slow pitch straight down the middle of the plate, and you whiffed. That should tell you that you are doing something seriously wrong! If you can’t get your message out to enough voters to convince them to dump a lousy president (or a catastrophic one, in your opinion) how in the hell do you think you’ll fare against a good one? The left is dead. The way to power is through the center. Bill Clinton showed you that, and you’ve turned your back on that lesson.

25

Did he also tell you that shit works best of all? And did you ever ask him why on Earth you would want to catch flies?

26

Miller wrote

Uh, you lost. You miss by an inch, you miss by a mile. You lost the White House, and you lost seats in Congress, and it’s highly likely you lost some seats on the Supreme Court too. You lost. lost lost lost. 49% is the same as 0%. Get it?

I can’t speak for most of America, but I can speak for me. And I’ll tell you that the lies, mistruths and insults I heard again and again and again really steeled my vote for Mr. Bush. And most of those were from this board.

I don’t know what that means; I assume it’s the tired Moore-complaint about feeling you really won in 2000? Well, you didn’t. It went through alot of process, it was rehashed again and again, and when it came out the end, Bush won.

Please. You lost because you couldn’t get a majority of the people to back you. You didn’t lose because you were too honest, or too smart, or mistook the American people for anything but sheep. You lost because people didn’t believe you had the right stuff to run this country.

27

Congratulations to you, as well. This war is yours now. You ratified it, it has your stamp of approval. “Best information at hand”, my ass! There was contradictory evidence all over the place, he simply chose what he preferred.

He looked you right in the eye and told you he was sure. Turns out it wasn’t true, but you vote for him anyway. For the life of me, I cannot understand why.

28

Is this the inclusiveness you were asking about in the other thread?

29

Sure, if that’s what you want to believe.

I spent $250 to fly down to my hometown just to vote in person, because I did not trust the county or USPS to get and process my absentee ballot in time.

Before the election, I was predicting a Kerry landslide. I was telling my liberal friends that the only states Bush would win would be Utah, Alaska, Wyoming, and a few others. Here in Rochester, NY, I saw the anger of the ABB crowd up close and personal. It scared the **** out of me.

On Election Day in my extremely red county, I showed up at the polls 30 minutes before they opened. There was already a line an hour long–I cast my ballot at 7:20, 50 minutes after they opened. When I left, the line was winding around the large church–about 3-4 hours long in my estimate.

As I drove around the county during the day doing errands for my parents, I saw similar lines in other precincts. It was not simply a “morning rush”. These lines persisted all day long, and if anything, got even longer as the day wore on. :eek:

I knew that college students, as angry as they claim to be, are the laziest gits on earth. They’d turn out a bit, but not like these people, and they certainly wouldn’t stand in line for 30 minutes much less than 4 hours.

:confused: For the first time, I had hope that Bush could actually win. Not even the exit polls dampened my hope.

In the end, President Bush got 10 million more votes than he did in 2004.

And if you want to know why I spent $250 to vote for him when I would’ve been happy to gamble with an absentee ballot any other election year, and why so many people and Christians in particular were droven to the polls, read this post I made last night. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5451194&postcount=122

Don’t take my word for it? Read this article and see how frequently Moore, and Europe in general, is mentioned. BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | Why did you vote for Bush?

Yes, Bush has many problems. But, it is not neither stupid nor ignorant to vote for the incumbent when the alternative is a bunch of insane nutjobs who have no solution to the important problems and spend all their time on the most trivial things, Reeder-style. We watched the debates and saw it for ourselves.

Go ahead and believe that it was all Karl Rove brainwashing and stupidity, but you do so at your own peril. Based on what I’m seeing with the exception of a few that have seen the light and have accepted that they live with people who deeply love their country and their god, I’ll be expecting a 60-seat Senate majority in 2006.

30

Inclusiveness means bringing those closer to the center in to your views. It doesn’t mean pandering to (or not standing up to) those on the extreme opposite.

31

Oh, but it cuts both ways. My opinion was steeled against Bush for the same reasons (though not on this board.) Lies? Check. Mistruths? Check? Insults? Check. And most of this was from the President himself.

32

Just a few snips:

-and-

-and-

I hope I’m being one of those level-headed liberals and politely asking if someone can explain this to me. If charts are necessary, by all means go ahead. Sometimes a LOT of things go right over my head. So if I’m just dense, I apologize for the intrusion.

However, as I’ve requested some help on this time and time again since yesterday all to no avail, is this how it seems most people vote? To make decisions based on how much you can’t stand what the other sides’ supporters say? Again, if I’m reading it wrong, or that’s just part of it, then I stand corrected. But from this point of view, it comes across that people who didn’t really want Bush back in the White House, or were undecided, let the bad behavior of a few (many?) influence their resolve to push back against them, rather than for specific platforms, etc.

Please help me understand this. Because truly, as I’ve said before, the vitriol coming from anothers’ opinion isn’t what I base my choices on. It’s not even a teeny, tiny part. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong, but I’m very curious to know (if my perception is correct) how that works. What goes into forming beliefs if that’s a contributing or prominent factor? What holds the most weight? When do issues exceed it? Thank you for any answers.

Oh, and I also would like to know if, given how it’s appeared to me in my 36 years, that when the pendulum swings back the other way, and say we have as of 2008 two terms of a Democratic president, will anyone say that Republicans/conservatives are “out of touch with the mainstream center of the US” or need to completely overhaul their system because they’ve “lost, lost, lost” and will continue to do so? I’m not sure if that happened during the Clinton years, but if so, I’d be interested to hear it and future predictions as well. Unless, of course, you (generally) feel we’ll NEVER see another opportunity.

33

Yes, it absolutely tells us we’re doing something wrong. The democratic presidential campaign was very poorly run. Kerry was an uninspiring candidate. I don’t think anyone is saying “oh, we did everything absolutely perfectly”. What miller was saying, however, (I think), is that this election doesn’t prove that the Democratic positions are WRONG. It proves that they were less popular, on that one day, in that one context. It proves that the Republicans did a better job campaigning, getting out the vote, etc., than the Democrats. It does NOT prove that the Republican positions are right, or that the Democratic positions are wrong.

34

Let me take a crack at it, briefly.

40% are going to vote Democrat even if the AntiChrist is running for their party.
40% are going to vote Republican even etc.

The 20% in the middle is what is in play. And they were told repeatedly that they are idiots. They were told that America should be more like Europe. They were told that they should roll over to other countries. This list goes on and on.

The natural reaction is to be stubborn. To say “Screw you. Just for that, I’m voting the other way.” This is especially true if the voter is truly in the middle. If they favor parts of both sides, then they are only left with emotions to run on. They go with their gut feelings. Tack onto that the fact that the Dems gave them absolutely zero to vote for, and you get the results of this election.

And yes, I think that if the Republicans lose those seats in Congress, and the Presidency, it will be because they have lost touch with the pulse of the American voter.

35

I was arguing more for the latter part of Miller’s post, where he mentions “our method of getting it across to the voters.” In that, you have to admit, the Dems failed badly.

36

Faithfool

When the vitrol is all the party represents, then yes, we do not vote for them. The Democrats offered no solutions. I listened to all 3 debates, and I still could not understand what Kerry wanted to do with Iraq. His “I have a plan, just trust me” agenda was not very credible when seen together with his running mate’s stupid promise that crippled people will get out of their wheelchairs and diabetes would be cured if Kerry was elected.

All campaign long, the left never offered an alternative. They focused their energies on smearing Bush without a solution. They painted Europe and Canada as some kind of utopia.

It wasn’t that there were good ideas and solutions and a solid platform, with a little vitrol coming from the extremists.

The platform of John Kerry, as defined by Michael Moore and George Soros, WAS the vitrol.

37

You know, I just can’t take this complaint very seriously. This is a left-leaning board. That is an obviously true statement. Thus, in any thread, there are more liberal opinions than conservative opinions expressed. And some of those opinions will be stupid, or wrong, or poorly expressed. And some of those posters will be assholes who treat you poorly. But many, many, many will not. You seem to be judging and condemning the SDMB based on its worst qualities instead of its best.

(Granted, its easy for me to say that… if there was a board which had the same level of general erudition, content, and signal-to-noise-ratio that the SDMB does (and let us not forget that the SDMB is truly exceptional in those regards) but which was as conservative-leaning as the SDMB is liberal-leaning, I’d go there and try to suss out what life is like for you here. But even that wouldn’t really be fair, unless I also did so during a heated presidential campaign with a liberal incumbent who most conservatives hated FAR more than any liberal president in living memory.)

Anyhow, as faithfool points out, if your vote-deciding process was actually influenced by how many liberal jerks there may or may not be on the SDMB, well, that strikes me as pretty frickin’ bizarre.

Who told them they were idiots? Who told them we should be more like Europe? Who told them they should over to other countries? Seriously, what, precisely, are you talking about? Is there some Democratic Party Ministry for Making Overbroad Statements that I’m unaware of? Or are you assuming that members of that 20% all read Diogenese and Reeder threads?

38

Facts are facts, regardless of how much you dislike the “assholes” who are spouting them, or what their “attitude” is. The truth doesn’t have a “side”.

There are plenty of people here who I personally can’t stand, or who I feel have been rude or dismissive towards me, but when they’re right, they’re right. Personal feelings don’t change that (even if I don’t post to acknowledge their acumen).

I take the information on board, whether I respect the messenger or not.

Maybe ego needs don’t allow many to concede this on a messageboard, but do any of you really act on what you’re saying here???

Now I wonder what effect the “spite” vote has on elections. Any polls or studies on that?

Kerry won the “middle” vote. And the left. The GOP managed to rally more of the hard core right (the “no matter what” vote).

Anyway, have you got a cite for when the Kerry campaign called the middle “idiots”? I don’t remember that.

39

** Liberal attitude did NOT cost the election
**
Well, if it didn’t this time, looks it might next time.

40

But you have to convince them that you are right. They don’t know that you’re right. They need to be convinced.

How do you convince somebody to do something—to change their mind? To see a different perspective? Do you berate them? Insult them? Ask them “Why are you such a moron that you believe that”?

Or, do you try to see their point of view, as in, "I understand that you believe this but did you also know . . . "

Another personal example: one of my old friends “persuaded” me to be vegetarian. How did she do this? Did she do it by pointing at the meat on my plate and screaming “MEAT IS MURDER”? Did she do it be tsk tsk-ing at me and telling me how evil and stupid I was because I ate meat? No. She showed how well she was doing with her vegetarianism, she shared information and data regarding the issue (in a non-confrontational way) and most importantly, she shared some fabulous, tasty vegetarian dishes with me. That’s how she showed me how “right” she was.

You can be “right” and be an asshole and turn people away, or you can be “right” but respectful, and actually persuade people to see your way. Choose. Don’t blame other people because your shitty, hostile attitude turns them away before you even have a chance to make your case and perhaps inspire them to change what’s in their heart, or their perception of things. You only have yourself to blame if you drive someone away because you’re an asshole. Only yourself.