Exactly the point I’ve made before. Fundy Republicans are going to vote in about the same numbers as they did in 2000–they always do. However, in these parts, there are a lot of very POed Democrats that stayed home last time. The polls may show a near 50/50 split, but the polls don’t reflect actual turnout. IMO Kerry could be down 5 to 10 points in the polls and still take Florida because of higher than usual Democrat turnout.
It is different, astorian. The “economic self-interest” of a multimillionaire celebrity who might be made slightly less rich by a progressive tax system is on a completely different order of magnitude from the “economic self-interest” of a working-class person who might see his job outsourced to Indonesia next year. Barbara Streisand can afford to support political positions that are in accord with her principles even if they are against her economic interests. Joe Sixpack cannot afford that (but often does so anyway).
Which makes Joe a hell of a lot more admirable than someone who is in support of principles provided she has enough money to shield herself from the consequences.
I have no idea why Streisand supports the causes she does. But if her motivations are as you describe them, that’s what I mean by a limousine liberal. You got a problem? Hire someone to make it go away.
But I think you are assuming that Bush’s perceived handling of the economy is self-evidently bad. As the recovery continues, that will be less and less plausible. If people vote their pocketbooks, and they often do, the advantage is to Bush. Although, as I have said often enough, it’s a long way to Election Day, and it is still essentially a tie.
Although astorian is quite correct. The higher the level of contempt for those who disagree with you, the greater the difficulty in understanding them and their motivations. It is going to be rather difficult to get an answer to the question “Why would you vote for Bush?” if the only answer you will listen to is “because I’m stupid”. And “vote for Kerry, you moron” is not a real persuasive slogan.
Regards,
Shodan
Eh, I don’t see the anti-gay marriage amendment being a particular hobby horse of the White House. Sure, they’re supporting it, but they aren’t behind it. The people behind it are the congressional republicans. And why? Well, they know it can’t pass. But it CAN leave a voting record that someone can campaign against. And given the increasingly gerrymandered voting districts making most seats safe seats for the Rs or safe seats for the Ds, the main action is in the primaries.
The republican leadership is looking to purge liberal or moderate republicans…they want to force the non-liberals to either vote to support the anti-gay amendment, or vote against it. Either way could hurt them. Support the amendment and you risk losing the general election, since most non-conservative republicans are in swing districts. And if they vote against the amendment, they face a primary challenge from the conservatives.
Why? What could be stupider than driving the moderates out of the party? The party’s success depends on its being a “big tent” open to a wide range of views.
If that changes, how can the remaining right-wing Pubbies ever hope to win another election?
I don’t see how any fiscally conservative, socially liberal person could even stomach being a republican anymore. For a long time, growing up, to the extent that I knew about such things, that’s what I thought republicans were. But GWB has completely and utterly decimated that idea, finishing what the Moral Majority started in the 80’s.
If the recovery continues as it has, it will be historic in that the vast majority of the recovery will be in corporate profits, without much improvement in wages and only marginal improvement in employment. While these usually lag a recovery, the current one is characteristic in that Bush removed many of the Clinton-era features and rules that helped spread the benefits of growth more broadly. The jobs being created just aren’t, just aren’t, anywhere near the quality of those that were lost, and it’s still going to take almost 20 months of growth to get us back to where we were.
Can you be more specific? What rules are you talking about?
The high paying dot-com jobs that disapeared had nothing to with either president. I know you are probably not talking only about these types of jobs, but they certainly represent a good chunk of the jobs lost in recent years.
It’s not that simple. The ultra-rich can benefit from government policies that retard economic growth, because they impede the merely rich from growing into competitors.
Moderates take the fun out of religious crusades, I’d wager.
As for “What could be stupider,” this administration has an amazing tendency to actually answer such rhetorical questions…
The feeling among most of the religious conservatives I know is (and this is a direct quote) “The president is a Godly Man,” we’re blessed to have him, and the opposition that he faces is because he’s following God and under attack by Satan.
yeah.
So, yes, if they vote, they’ll be voting for Bush… I think the weakness (if any) is that they may just not bother to vote. Last presidential election, a few million fewer RR/CC bothered to vote than were expected to. This year, if someone’s been out of work a bit too long, knows a bit too many people who have been deployed a bit too long, has been scared a bit too long - he/she might not vote at all…
I really think that this year, it isn’t about the undecided middle (I really think the country is so polarized that even the normally open middle has already been split), I think it’s going to be who can get their sides’ fringes to the polls - and that will win it. This crap amendment is an appeal to them.
Please tell me you made up that last bit.
Please.
I doubt it, unfortunately.
Please tell me you made up the First part!
The president is a Godly man. :eek: 
I have had the misfortune to deal with religious conservatives in politics. Some are sincere, albeit naive, people who genuinely think that being right with God and doing His will are of paramount importance to the exclusion of all other considerations of policy. The problem is figuring out who is telling them just what the Almighty’s wishes are. Some seek guidance, some just prey and find to their delight that what the Godhead wants them to do is just what they were inclined to do. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost have a tax policy, I am told. That tax policy is to collect taxes from somebody else, not from them. The Father is also opposed to interstate highway speed limits and restrictions on the ownership, carrying and use of firearms. He is against dirty movies, the presumption of innocence and, it almost goes without saying, abortion, homosexuality, strong drink and (unless from an area where it is an economically important crop, the use of tobacco). God also directs the hand of the nation to smite His enemies.
Some of these people, however, are cynical manipulators who have discovered that a very effective ploy when dealing with the first bunch (the neive believers) is pious noises and a firm insistence that what they want to do is precisely what Jesus would do if He had as complete as understanding of the situation as they do. Justice Moore of Alabama falls into this latter group.
The first group, the naive, will not abandon the President as long as he gives lip service to their particular version of the Peaceable Kingdom. If he talks the talk it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t walk the walk. The best that can be hoped for is that some of these people will become disenchanted with the present administration (stuff like the Vice-President’s outburst in the Senate a few weeks ago might contribute to some disillusionment) is that they will withhold their vote. The second group, the cynical manipulators, have latched on to the President with a death grip. I suspect they see in him a kindred spirit. They will vote for the President’s reelection early and often because their fortunes depend on his – what with faith based social programs, voucher funding for parochial schools, and Devine Guidance as a cover for just about anything you might want to do short of actually throwing the Molotov Cocktail in the orphanage.
The will not be enough deserters from the Christian battle line to give the file closers any amount of work.
to add to Apos’s reply to Shodan, the discussion made me dig for the previous issue of BusinessWeek:
If you’re waiting for the Fed to raise interest rates to improve things, look forward to some more bad news. Summarized from the same column, increases in interest rates, Kuttner says, will now harm the President in the eyes of ordinary voters in three ways:
- Dampen (slow down) the recovery, obviously
- “Higher rates and softer labor markets will reduce worker bargaining power just when lower unemployment is generating a little pressure for shared gains”
- Higher rates will also undercut the home equity loan, which was “the one element that has been sustaining consumption in the face of sluggish wage growth”
Kuttner goes on to ask why interest rates are being raised when core inflation and wage pressure are so low, and the answer is painfully obvious: the three famous tax cuts and the resulting “immense structural budget deficits”, that are now making Greenspan and the Fed regret the lapse in discipline during which they told Bush to go ahead with the cuts.
So no, the future gives little indication of being rosy, unless you’re seasoning that good old Bush propaganda with plenty of horse tranquillizer. Bush should not be boosted for economic reasons at the polls, because anyone with a fair grasp of economics understands what a mess he made. However Christian fundamentalism and stupidity will once again be the two biggest contributors to Bush’s tally, which still leaves him in a pretty strong position.
It wasn’t very long ago I was a religious conservative, and I still belive this fervently. Being “right with God” is paramount. How our pro-Bush religious conservatives can believe Bush is the man who will make us Right With God, given what we’ve seen of him, is utterly beyond me. (Unless abortion is the only issue worth considering. Many relatives of mine vote on this issue alone. I wonder if this explains all, and yet – abortion stats are scarce since 2000 but there is a trend of reduced abortions under Clinton vs. the Reagan/Bush era, and I’m quite skeptical they’re reduced further under Bush II. Even the National Right to Life Committee, who ought to be Bush supporters if anyone is, projects the same figures in 2003 as they did in 2000. http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html) Has Bush made progress (as defined by Pro-Lifers) on abortion? If abortion is my only issue (it’s not), should I vote for Bush, or does it even matter?
I agree. Unfortunately, I think a large portion of the religious right cares ONLY about Bush’s religion-fueled issues and not too much about any of the other issues. After all, if they play their religious cards right in this life, they have an afterlife to look forward to. What they do here isn’t really relevant to a lot of 'em.
I would also like cites on what you mean by the features and rules that Bush removed. And that new jobs being created now are worse than new jobs being created over the last several recoveries.
The rest is standard economic debating tactics. When jobs weren’t growing, Bush was bad because jobs weren’t growing. Now jobs are growing, so Bush is bad because wages aren’t rising (although, as you mention, this is something that typically doesn’t happen early in a recovery). Then, when wages and jobs are growing, Bush will be a bad President because of inflation. Then, when jobs and wages are growing and inflation is low, Bush will be a bad President because corporate profits are growing. Or just change the subject to the war in Iraq.
In other words, wages are increasing four times faster than core inflation.
If your definition of a bad President is “anyone under whom the economy doesn’t do as well as it did during the dot com bubble”, then most Presidents will be bad. Indeed, it is more important than ever to elect Bush, since the proposed Kerry tax and spending increases will stifle the current recovery.
Assuming that Kerry is elected, and has a better record of getting legislation passed as President than he did as a senator. Obviously a stretch, I grant you. I have said before, Kerry’s best chance at success is not to be able to do much, and then try like hell to take credit for the recovery he was unable to stall.
In which he will have the assistance of everyone for whom all economic news is bad if Bush is President, but a cheery sign of approaching prosperity if Kerry squeaks in. Which is to say, 80% of the SDMB.
Bush inherited a recession, exacerbated (to say the least) by 9/11. We are recovering from the recession, job growth has resumed, and things are looking up. If the economy were really as gloomy as the Democrat spinners would have us believe, Bush and Kerry would not be tied, as they essentially are.
Spin works to some extent, but on the economy, people tend to vote their pocketbooks. And they judge their pocketbooks based on personal experience.
Regards,
Shodan
Come on, there really shouldn’t be a place for this kind of unfalsifiable victim-bellyaching in GD.
I don’t think that is that relevant in this case. Aside from the unnaturally depressed (and unsustainable, owing to tax cuts and other factors) current level of interest rates, the wage-to-inflation ratio is not that telling an indicator here because it is the lack of wage pressure that helps keep core inflation so low; were there the kind of economic recovery one would expect historically, or the sort much heralded by the White House, one would expect to see stronger growth in these areas, not decimals that barely scrape by.
I didn’t say anything about Kerry, mind you. I am sure he exaggerates his facts almost as much as the Bushites, since it seems elections bring out the worst in people.
The other point I was commenting on is that corporate profits do indeed appear to make up this recovery, not increases in wage earnings, as Apos originally stated; the average rates for corporate profits and wage growth after previous recessions were provided as indicators suggesting limitations in this recovery. So while the corporations are getting richer at a healthy clip, individuals have it far less easy; that means that unless ex-corporate growth takes place (or I seriously misread things), the money the recovery is generating won’t be in the wallets to sway a vote. Even assuming a trickle-down effect will take place (and that’s by no means a given) it may be too little too late to make a difference to the election.
Well, as far as I can see Kerry perceives that the system is stressed and needs to start paying for itself. That’s part of the reason the Fed will be raising interest rates, so at worst you trade one evil (interest rates increases not to cool a heated economy but to pay debt) for another (taxes), but with Kerry I can at least see how the proposed road leads to a more permanent fix than the patchy economics Bush is perpetuating. Money has to come from somewhere, it can’t just be moved around to pay for large tax cuts.
The argument can easily be made that Bush himself also exacerbated the recession with his risky policies – expensive military engagements, large tax cuts that consisted of magic money, etc., but frankly that’s not what I was talking about. The economy is very simply nowhere near as good as Bush makes it out to be (and not quite as bad as Kerry may suggest).
That was the original issue we all agree on, but it would seem that the holders of pocketbooks do not appear to be sharing in the current recovery, and jobs have grown significantly below expectations. The populous recovery may be coming, as you mention a few times, but it certainly does not appear to have arrived yet and one wonders whether it will arrive properly in time for re-election (or at all?). And this without considering the swelling national debt, the high trade deficit, and the export of jobs, among some of the more pressing issues.
It’s a paraphrase, (only the parts inside the quotation marks are the direct quote), but no, I didn’t make it up. That’s the content (if not the exact wording), and I’m sure that the people I was referring to would check “agree” to “Do you agree or disagree with this statement?”
I wish I could say that I made it up - but that’s what’s out there.