“Again, that was smart (though disgusting) campaigning by the Republicans. It wasn’t really an outside factor.”
It was an outside factor as far as Kerry was concerned. What could he have done that would have blunted the issue? And yet it may have cost him the election. And though the Republicans were effective in exploiting the issue they were lucky that it was such a big issue in the first place for reasons outside their control.
“If you look around during this campaign, there has been no end of praise for Obama’s get-out-vote operation, and Rove’s operation for Bush in 2000 and 2004 was also widely acknowledged as being good.”
It’s revealing that you use Rove’s operation instead of Bush’s operation. Obviously Bush was lucky to have someone like Rove working for him. And in general a campaign is much bigger than the candidate. The quality of the campaign depends on the quality of its staff, the support given to them by the party,outside groups and so on. A candidate might influence all this by making key decisions but there are limits to what he can do. And again just because one team is better doesn’t mean the other team is crap. They might just be a decent team which got beaten by a slightly better team or by poor luck.
I guess the basic issue is how easy or difficult Bush was going to be to beat in 2004. I think you are underestimating the advantage of incumbency. When was the last time a president was beaten without a bad economy? Sure Bush had some weaknesses but they didn’t wipe out this huge advantage. It was a 50-50 election and there is no shame in losing it narrowly.
Okay, you’re right - while there may have been some little things he could have done to dampen the impact, he couldn’t have stopped it from happening.
There’s no luck involved, there’s just smart hiring. Bush had Rove, and Kerry picked Bob Shrum, who is best known for having advised so many failed Democratic presidential campaigns. This is the candidate’s choice.
That’s true. But the candidate is the one in charge, and he’s supposed to choose the direction even if he doesn’t necessarily handle the nuts and bolts of strategy. Bush’s people had a strategy and executed it: they painted Kerry and indecisive and unsteady, in contrast to Bush, and it worked.
I didn’t say Kerry’s campaign was crap because he lost. I said it was crap because of crappy decision making. I don’t think he lost because of bad luck. He lost because he made a few bad choices and the other campaign did a better job.
I made that point many times in 2004, actually, but in hindsight, incumbency was not the reason Bush won. Incumbency is an advantage, and Kerry had the misfortune of running while the Iraq war was becoming unpopular but wasn’t yet deeply unpopular.
2004 was an election that was going to be very close no matter what. The quality of the campaigns and turnout makes a difference, and the GOP was absolutely better in those regards. There’s no luck involved in that, it’s the result of planning.
The thing I remember the most from the SDMB during the 2004 campaign was how anti-Bush the board was. It wasn’t particularly pro-Kerry. Lots of rants and hate for Bush, but I don’t remember a lot of discussion of how good Kerry was. Kerry failed to fire up his base and that’s really his fault, no one elses.
And you can’t talk about how good Obama’s campaign is and give credit to Obama, and then turn around and lay the blame for the poor 2004 campaign on anyone but Kerry’s shoulders. The person on top is the one that makes the big decisions about a campaign’s direction. Choosing good managers and other followers is part of what makes a good leader.
“There’s no luck involved, there’s just smart hiring. Bush had Rove, and Kerry picked Bob Shrum, who is best known for having advised so many failed Democratic presidential campaigns. This is the candidate’s choice.”
Sure but the issue is whether there was a Democratic Rove whom Kerry could have reasonably been expected to hire. Rove’s relationship with the Bushes goes back decades. Ultimately it was a matter of luck that Bush had such an effective operative with whom he had a longstanding relationship.
Maybe he didn’t need a Rove. Maybe he needed somebody who just wasn’t repeat loser Bob Shrum, who apparently Democrats believed was some kind of good luck charm despite his record. Or maybe it was pity or tradition, I don’t know.
There are some things Rove is good, but I’ve actually argued many times on this board that his genius is overstated - meaning in this case that Kerry could have found someone else with comparable skills. It was going to be close regardless, but I think Kerry could have won if he’d run on something other than his Vietnam service, not screwed up with the “I was for the bill before I was against it” quote, answered the Swift Boat attacks better and maybe kept his VP on message, and been up to date with the get-out-the-vote operation, where Democrats were outclassed and worried Republicans would be ahead of them for years. There was more than luck involved here, there was a series of failures by the campaign.
Do you have any idea though how popular and respected Teresa Heinz is in Western PA, though? Or what she has done for the area? The Heinz family is a MAJOR force here in Pittsburgh.