Moral Values did not win it for Bush. Terrorism did.

[John_Mace]

The Democrats are in a tough position on any defense related issue. The idea that Repulicans are strong on defense and Democrats are weak on defense is pretty well entrenched in the American psyche. I don’t know how this can be changed. You also have to keep in mind that what many here decry as excesses by Ashcroft et al in jeopardizing civil rights just isn’t echoed by a large segment of the American public. The “if you haven’t commited a crime, you have nothing to worry about” sentiment is very common in the US. People WANT to come down hard on the “bad guys”, and are not so concerned with the fine points of due process.

I’m not justifying this mentality, just pointing out that it’s something that has to be taken into account.

[John_Mace]

@Diogenes the Cynic

It was the hate vote that put Bush over the top.

The problem with that statement, DtC, is that it’s not only impossible to prove, it is so vauge and amorphous that it simply offers no insight into the issue at hand.

[RTFirefly]

@BobLibDem

He really was in an impossible situation regarding Iraq. Having to condemn a war and then say he could wage it better.

I disagree. Nice, simple declarative sentences:

"My opponent has gotten us into a serious mess in Iraq. In the year and a half since the invasion, everything he’s done has only made things worse. He doesn’t seem to have a clue of what he’s up against. His team didn’t even have a plan for what to do after we toppled the statue. And he’s been winging it ever since, jumping from one bad plan to another.

“Whoever is President next year will have to make the best of a bad situation. Who would you rather have to try to get you out of this mess - the guy who made the mess in the first place, by going in without a plan and without a clue, or someone new?”

[Walloon]

Philip Klinkner, “Money Matters”, in The New Republic:

For all the talk of how religious voters made Bush’s victory possible, their performance didn’t change from 2000 to 2004. Four years ago, those attending church once a week or more were 42 percent of the electorate and gave Bush 59 percent of their vote — for a performance of 25 percent (that is, 42 percent multiplied by 59 percent). In 2004, these voters were 41 percent of the electorate and gave Bush 61 percent of their votes, for a performance of 25 percent — no change from 2004.

[Bill_H]

Stoid wrote

Once again: the people with the best grasp of facts were overwhelmingly in support of Kerry!

Let me break this down: the people who were hopelessly misinformed, clueless, ignorant, and wrong about Iraq, terrorism, WMD, etc., went overwhelmingly for Bush.

The people who were well-informed, with a clear understanding of the facts of terrorism, Iraq, etc, went overwhelmingly for Kerry.

How many times do you have to be told that the PIPA thing is nonsense?

It was funded by a strongly left-wing organization. It was not non-biased. It was designed to be a tool for the discrediting of President Bush. Had it been funded, organized and run by someone neutral, who knows what the results would’ve been?

Further, it lacked in scientific credibility on several fronts, that have been pointed out to you several times before.

Do you get that the straws you cling to have already sunk?

[elucidator]

@Bill H.

…Do you get that the straws you cling to have already sunk?

Calling you out. Prove it. Open a GD thread and prove what you said, in a situation where counter-arguments can be offered.

Caveat: you may be right, kinda hope you are. I don’t find the PIPA results exhilarating, on the contrary, they provoke hopelessness and despair.

But lets see what you got. Bring it on.

[Huerta88]

@John Mace

The Democrats are in a tough position on any defense related issue. The idea that Repulicans are strong on defense and Democrats are weak on defense is pretty well entrenched in the American psyche. I don’t know how this can be changed.

Agreed, but if anyone could have taken this on, it would be a Dem. vet with war experience. Yeah, his experience was questioned, but there’s still a compelling argument, a la:

I’ve seen combat. I’ve seen men die. I know that sometimes we have to pay the ultimate price for America’s freedom; I was willing to risk paying that price, and some of my best friends who fought alongside me did pay it. I fought for my country, as I and all our fighting men always will. And it’s precisely this knowledge of what war is, its terrible cost on the precious lives of our young men and their families, and the need to preserve this strength, this willingness to sacrifice, that breaks my heart when I see our soldiers’ faith betrayed by a civilian leadership who sends them into fight not for America’s safety, not where our real enemies are, but in a tragic, wasteful distraction from the real war on terror. Mr. Bush, we trusted you. I myself voted for your Iraq resolution, based on what you and your advisers told us: that Iraq was the front line in the war on terror and that Saddam could had the capacity and desire to attack us with “some of the deadliest WMDs known to man.” But Mr. Bush, you were wrong. I’ll assume you were being honest with us, because I don’t want to have to think otherwise. But even assuming that, you were wrong, your advisers were wrong, and their informants were clueless or corrupt. And because of that, and your failure to make sure that we fought only the right battles, the Congress and the American people were dragged and duped into a war they would never have supported if they’d been properly led. Let me make this clear: If our Commander in Chief had conveyed to us honest and accurate intelligence reflecting the true facts about WMD and Saddam’s crumbling empire; if he hadn’t muddied the waters with alarmist and un-provable claims of an imminent WMD threat from Iraq; and if he’d let us know that the true impetus for his Iraq plans arose long before 9/11, in the crackpot “nation building” plans of unelected think-tank hacks – then we should not, could not, and I, for one, would not have supported sending a single American boy over to make a heroic, but wasted, sacrifice in such a unjustified, and futile, effort as we find ourselves engaged in now.

I don’t think that sounds wussy. Or can Dems. just never be against any proposed military adventure, at this point, for any reason?

By failing to attack the fundamental issue (was the Iraq war justified? – which doesn’t require giving up now), Kerry inevitably made himself into an armchair critic: “Yeah, well, it was a good war and stuff, but I don’t like the way you led us into it, not that it wasn’t fundamentally justified to vote for it even so, I just wish you’d given us better intelligence, and besides, though I’ve never been CIC, I’d do a lot better job over there.” Sounds weak to me, and he didn’t have to be so weak.

[RTFirefly]

@John Mace

The Democrats are in a tough position on any defense related issue. The idea that Repulicans are strong on defense and Democrats are weak on defense is pretty well entrenched in the American psyche. I don’t know how this can be changed.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot this past week. To elaborate on your point, people think the Democrats are weak on defense. The Democrats can’t really prove they’re not, until they’re in power. But people won’t vote for them while defense issues are at the fore because people believe they’re weak on defense.

It’s kinda like the old job applicant’s complaint that the help-wanted ads are looking for someone with experience, only how can you get experience if nobody hires you because you don’t have experience?

If Kerry had been elected, I think that he would have been able to make a major dent in that meme. (Or if Gore had been inaugurated in 2001, for that matter.) Clinton’s team started off pretty tentatively, but its relatively minor but successful interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, along with a growing antiterrorism effort, were giving that team an increased sense of what could and couldn’t be done with military force in the world. A Gore or Kerry administration would have been in a position to build on that foundation of experience. Hopefully we won’t be back to square one by 2008, but if we’re out of power until 2012 or beyond, we probably will.

Clinton had the advantage of running in 1992, when defense issues were less important in the nation’s psyche than at any time since WWII. That won’t be the situation in 2008.

[Stoid]

@elucidator

Calling you out. Prove it. Open a GD thread and prove what you said, in a situation where counter-arguments can be offered.

Caveat: you may be right, kinda hope you are. I don’t find the PIPA results exhilarating, on the contrary, they provoke hopelessness and despair.

But lets see what you got. Bring it on.

Thank you, bubelah. Exactly. Because I haven’t seen one refutation of the PIPA study anywhere. In fact, (and I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, I simply haven’t seen it) Bill’s post is the first time I’ve seen any of our righties even directly addressing its existence! They just keep whining that we are mean to say Bush voters are stupid.

So I’m very excited to see this proof of Bill’s claims. Should be interesting.

[scule]

I’ve seen combat. I’ve seen men die. I know that sometimes we have to pay the ultimate price for America’s freedom; I was willing to risk paying that price, and some of my best friends who fought alongside me did pay it. I fought for my country, as I and all our fighting men always will. And it’s precisely this knowledge of what war is, its terrible cost on the precious lives of our young men and their families, and the need to preserve this strength, this willingness to sacrifice, that breaks my heart when I see our soldiers’ faith betrayed by a civilian leadership who sends them into fight not for America’s safety, not where our real enemies are, but in a tragic, wasteful distraction from the real war on terror. Mr. Bush, we trusted you. I myself voted for your Iraq resolution, based on what you and your advisers told us: that Iraq was the front line in the war on terror and that Saddam could had the capacity and desire to attack us with “some of the deadliest WMDs known to man.” But Mr. Bush, you were wrong. I’ll assume you were being honest with us, because I don’t want to have to think otherwise. But even assuming that, you were wrong, your advisers were wrong, and their informants were clueless or corrupt. And because of that, and your failure to make sure that we fought only the right battles, the Congress and the American people were dragged and duped into a war they would never have supported if they’d been properly led. Let me make this clear: If our Commander in Chief had conveyed to us honest and accurate intelligence reflecting the true facts about WMD and Saddam’s crumbling empire; if he hadn’t muddied the waters with alarmist and un-provable claims of an imminent WMD threat from Iraq; and if he’d let us know that the true impetus for his Iraq plans arose long before 9/11, in the crackpot “nation building” plans of unelected think-tank hacks – then we should not, could not, and I, for one, would not have supported sending a single American boy over to make a heroic, but wasted, sacrifice in such a unjustified, and futile, effort as we find ourselves engaged in now.

See, this is the part I don’t get about this election you had. I’ve never really followed US elections before, not being American, but this time I really did, and I’m sure you can guess who I would have picked. What I can’t understand is this: from watching all the coverage, reading this message board and the complete usurpation of pretty much any other issue normally discussed by the election, getting the actual facts and not, as you all say so often, “having a dog in this fight”, I approached it all neutrally. I could care less about party designations and loyalties, I just want to know what a person has done and can do. And with all the massive perfidy and lies and genuine lunacy enacted by the incumbent administration, why, why, why, why, why, why could Kerry not come up with a speech like Heurta88’s above? I just don’t get it.

They must spend millions on these campaigns, they go on for fucking ever, and in all that time and with all that money and all those advisors, why couldn’t Kerry really come out and just straight-forward say something like this? I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.

[elucidator]

@Stoid

…So I’m very excited to see this proof of Bill’s claims. Should be interesting.

Full disclosure. I don’t really know that much about the PIPA study, it is entirely possible that what friend Bill says is true. In which case, he will have very little difficulty in proving it, and it will expose the issue to criticisms of methodology, etc. from Dopers who have some expertise to bring to the question. More importantly, it won’t be some side issue distracting from the essential thread.

So either you or he should start the thread. I would feel kinda stupid to start a thread of argument with the proviso: I don’t know shit about this, why don’t you guys argue about it.

[RTFirefly]

Huerta88 - very well said.

@jayjay

So why was this basically the last we heard anything from the Kerry campaign on these themes, then?

I heard at least half of it in the debates. (It’s hard to get everything into the debates.) As far as the rest of it, I don’t know what Kerry was saying in his stump speech; the WaPo wasn’t reporting it. I don’t know what his commercials said; I don’t live in a battleground state.

But any candidate has to pick a few main themes to run on, and Iraq and the WoT sucked a lot of oxygen away from the domestic issues that Kerry raised in that excerpt.

@Bill H.

How many times do you have to be told that the PIPA thing is nonsense?

It was funded by a strongly left-wing organization. It was not non-biased. It was designed to be a tool for the discrediting of President Bush. Had it been funded, organized and run by someone neutral, who knows what the results would’ve been?

Further, it lacked in scientific credibility on several fronts, that have been pointed out to you several times before.

Your argument here is completely dependent on your last sentence here. The fact is that organizations with an agenda can do (or fund) intellectually honest work that turns out to support their beliefs. The question is, was the study scientifically sound?

I don’t know where you and elucidator have gone 'round about this one before (there’s clearly some history here), but you two aren’t the only ones in the thread. A link that demonstrates the PIPA survey’s problems would be welcome.

[Huerta88]

@scule

They must spend millions on these campaigns, they go on for fucking ever, and in all that time and with all that money and all those advisors, why couldn’t Kerry really come out and just straight-forward say something like this? I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.

I’ve heard four theories:

1. The Dems really are absolutely TERRIFIED of being soft on defense “again” (Dukakis with the tank helmet clearly shook them to the core), and NO DEM is willing to be fundamentally “against” any particular military action – so he can only criticize tactics, not procedure, while “of course” supporting the basic invasion/bombing/whatever.

2. Kerry was terrified of the flip-flopper label and convinced that questioning the underlying decision to attack Iraq would fatally wound him as Bush played back tapes of his votes in favor of war and his previous statements against “the madman.” I think this could have been entirely neutralized by the “Yes, but I was supporting it only based on the very same fibs that Mr. Bush told me, so far from being a flip flopper, I’m yet another victim of the disinformation.” I think it would work, maybe master spin artists in the Kerry camp disagreed.

3. Kerry thought there was a substantial domestic constituency who thought the war was a great thing. I dunno, seems like “the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake” hovers right around 50%, sometimes 60%, in the polls. Maybe he thought he risked alienating important sub-constituencies, such as the pro-Israel voters who believe that any attack on an Arab country is “good for Mideast peace” or will hasten the Rapture or whatever.

4. Kerry is just fatally tone-deaf and thought Americans would respond better to a “nuanced” criticism founded largely in second-guessing Bush’s tactics once the invasion was underway, faulting his advisers, and decrying the failure to gain “international consensus and cooperation.” All a very inside-the-Beltway, academic, proceduralist approach. Not one swing voter cares whether Bush followed parliamentary procedure in the UN (I take that back; many are kind of happy he ultimately blew off the UN) – they care whether the war makes America safer.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

5. Kerry gave the public credit for being smarter than they actually were.

[Huerta88]

@Diogenes the Cynic

5. Kerry gave the public credit for being smarter than they actually were.

Again, the first impulse (rather than the last) is an explanation that assumes stupidity and evil on the part of all your opponents.

If Kerry told me (or anybody) that his fundamental position was: the war is a good thing, and we should have done it, but you should take my word for it that I will clearly do it better than the guy whose idea it was and who’s been fighting it for two years – the smart thing to do would be to say: That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?

Nah. Kerry’s the dumb guy on this one.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

No, the people who think that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, or that Iraq had WMD or that the US had international support for the invasion or that Kerry voted for the war…you know…Fox News viewers…those are the dumb ones.

[Bricker]

@Diogenes the Cynic

5. Kerry gave the public credit for being smarter than they actually were.

Well, I’d say this conclusively proves the Democrats are unqualified to lead this country.

Gore was stunned when the public wasn’t as smart as he gave them credit for, and that’s why he did not win the election, despite coming off an eight-year run as VP to the most successful President in modern history.

The 2002 mid-term elections were a real eye-opener for the Democrats, who were shocked to discover that the country was not as smart as they thought, and that’s why they lost seats in the House and Senate.

The 2004 election was a completely unexpected surprise. With no warning, no foundation, no reason whatsoever to suspect it, the Democrats learned that the public was not as smart as they thought.

The Democrats, we conclude, are absolutely incapable of responding to this particular datum. They are therefore unqualified to lead the country.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Gore won the popular vote.

[Walloon]

@scule

I could care less about party designations and loyalties, I just want to know what a person has done and can do.

Then don’t you mean you could not care less about party designations and loyalties?

[Orbifold]

@Bricker

The 2004 election was a completely unexpected surprise.

Nice over-generalization, there. This particular supporter of the Democrats wasn’t all that surprised by the result of the election. The polls from Ohio and Florida were consistently close enough that a Bush win was always a possibility.