posted
Okay, here's the deal. Kerry ran his whole campaign on a single idea, "I'm not Bush." Bob Dole did the same thing in 1996, except it was "I'm not Clinton". So effectively, this campaign was between Bush, and Not Bush. So effectively, Kerry lost by not realizing the majority of Americans (51% to be exact) didn't buy his BS. Now, as far as I see it, there was an incredible voter turn out this time around. It's amazing. What I want to know, is how does anyone plan on finding upwards of 100,000 people in Ohio who were forced from the poles? And why the heck is he doing it, when the popular vote went to Bush?If this election were any closer, and by that I mean a 50-50 split on popular vote with the same Electoral results, I'd say fire up the lawsuits and see what happens, because that would result in BOTH parties being investigated for Fraud. Don't even think about assuming the Democratic party is all-mighty and wonderful. I'm just HOPING I'll be able to determine if my Democrat, dead Grandmother voted this year in Florida. You wanna dig up crap in Ohio, let's do it all over the country, then. Let's see how many of those votes Kerry got were actually legal votes. How about that? But I don't see any movements for that. "Every Vote Counted" only seems to be happening in Ohio, even though Iowa is a much more likely target. Does anyone NOT SEE THE HYPOCRACY IN THIS ACTION?!!??!
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Kerry also didn't credit the religious right enough...they showed up in force to vote for Bush.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Also because, well, in an election where so many voters went to the polls holding their noses (unhappy with the choices), the incumbents have a leg up.
Really, the Dems put a candidate forward who made Gore look exciting and new in comparison.
Not to mention that the Democrats haven't been able to elect a non-Southern president since Truman.
Kerry surrendered the South, except for Florida, early on. They didn't even send Edwards in to do much campaigning in his home state, one that was a pretty close contest this time.
Basically, Kerry, like most Yankees, had disdain for Southern folks, and most importantly Southern Democrats.
He seemed to forget that Johnson, Carter and Clinton won, in great part because they were able to reach out to Southern Democrats.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I agree, Dag...that is the problem with making generalizations.
Not that there isn't some truth in them, but they often are too simplistic.
That being said, 80% of people who said "moral issues" were important to them in this issue vote Bush, particularily in the heavily religious bible belt....so I don't think it can be stressed enough how important they were to Bush.
quote:In an invitation to a Republican fund-raiser at his suburban Columbus mansion, O'Dell said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president next year."
The letter closely followed a visit by O'Dell to a fund-raising powwow at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch for six-figure fund-raisers known as "Pioneers and Rangers."
He said he regrets the wording in the letter.
"I'm a pretty experienced business leader, but a real novice on the political side of this. This blind-sided me," O'Dell said. "I don't have a political adviser or a screener or a letter reviewer or any of that stuff."
posted
And before, they voted for Clinton, Carter and Johnson.
But hey, if the Democrats figure that Southern votes aren't really important, they can just keep surrendering a huge block of electoral votes to the Republicans.
Do you think Kerry would have rather had NC and VA this morning over Iowa and NH? How about Arkansas and Mississipi over Maine and Hawaii?
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
We are so quick to assume that it is "Yankee" disdain for the Southerner (which certainly exists), but are we sure it isn't the other way around? It appears that the "North" is much more malleable, with smaller margins of victory, than the "South", which seems pretty set in its ways.
But sure, keep perpetuating the big "Amoral Yankee" coming-to-get-you myth.
I think the Evangelicals delivered this one for Bush, so congratulations to them.
posted
Bush won for the following reasons: 1) Osama bin Laden attacked American on his watch, virtually guaranteeing a victory for him no matter how badly he did. 2) The American people haven't really learned their lesson yet. Sure, we lost some people in Iraq, but we haven't really come to see what's so dangerous about unilaterialism and being the bad guy. 3) Despite losing for the same reason in 2002, the Democrats continue to be wimps. Rather than put out a candidate with a true, clear ideology (like Howard Dean) they continue to put up ambiguous candidates that they think will "appeal to the center".
The fact that it was even close considering all of these factors is a real testimony to just how poorly Bush has done.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
"But hey, if the Democrats figure that Southern votes aren't really important, they can just keep surrendering a huge block of electoral votes to the Republicans."
A Democratic Party that pandered sufficiently to a mobilized Southern evangelical base to win their vote would not be a Democratic Party that would have my vote. Heck, the selection of that knuckle-dragger Lieberman nearly cost Gore my vote in 2000, and I wasn't alone on that one.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:In an invitation to a Republican fund-raiser at his suburban Columbus mansion, O'Dell said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president next year."
Thanks, Sara. I hope that he and his company are held accountable for this, and that this is investigated to determine the honesty of their voting system.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
My perspective on why John Kerry lost comes down to two semi-related factors. First, the majority of the American populace doesn't take responsibility for the (relative to history) tremendous freedoms and advantages that being an American in 2004 grants them. A majority of people who voted for any of the candidates did so for poor reasons. The American political process has some major problems, most of which have been allowed by the public's insuitability for membership in a populist government. I think it's time to stop pretending otherwise.
With a population than is neither informed nor educated nor mature, the majority of the good effects of a populist government is that it protects from tyrants (which is a not inconsiderable benefit), not that it results in actual positive governance. The majority of the great things that America has accomplished or stands for have resulted from things that either are or started out as non-populist sources.
The second reason that is somewhat tied to this one is that John Kerry was a very bad candidate. Even people who were planning to vote for him polled out as having more confidence in the President (low confidence to be sure, but still higher than Senator Kerry's). If the democrats had run a good candidate, I think George Bush didn't have a prayer to stay in office. He's done a very bad job.
It's possible that there is just an overwhelming majority of American's who irresponsibly vote Republican. I don't actually think that this is true. There are some people of various voting inclinations who actually do fit the requirements for good populists. Had John Kerry offerred an alternative to the likely poor job that George Bush is going to do that we could have confidence in, he would have gotten a lot more of this, perhaps smaller but hopefully significant, group.
In 2000, the Democrats put the blame for their loss on Ralph Nader. Now, they have no one to blame besides the poor candidate that they ran. I said it months ago. That George Bush could possibly win this election after the very poor job he has done shows that there are very big problems in the way we choose our leaders. Certainly some of that blame falls on the people who supported the President, but a large part of it also falls on the people who offered such a poor alternative.
I agree that George Bush winning this election is going to screw up our country, but I also think that John Kery winning it would have also screwed up our country (or maybe it's better to say both cases would have our country continuing done bad paths). He may have been less bad, but he still would have been bad.
Yes, many of the people who voted for George Bush should, if they had a proper sense oof the ways things should work, should be ashamed of the way they approach voting, but the same is true for many of the people who voted for John Kerry. If you're going to continue to play the game of their immature partisans are worse than our immature partisans, you're likely going to lose in 2008 as well. Outside of your own minds, you are not the good guys. At best, you are the "not quite as bad" guys.
There are plenty of people out there who aren't content with being lied to or deceived or spun. There are plenty of people who are desperate to have someone to believe in. Some are so desperate that they've convinced themselves that they don't even care anymore. John Kerry was not that person. The most appealing thing that he offered was that he wasn't George Bush. That's why he lost this election.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I don't think it's a matter of moving further to the right. I think it's a matter of getting back in touch. We are in a country where moral worth is determined by ones view on same sex marriage, abortion, and taxes, and there is something funny about that.
The democrats are not against same sex marriage, abortion, and taxes enough? Granted, the party could move a little on abortion. I don't have a moral issue with that. But both candidates were already against same sex marriage, so that shouldn't be an issue. And I'm flat out not going to pander to anyone who opposes a tax increase on the upper brackets to pay for a war fought by the lower brackets.
The democrats are out of touch not because they are radical, but because they fundamentally do not understand the middle and the South. Republicans like Keyes, Coburn, and Bunning are never going to be democrats, and I'm fine with that. The problem is that these Republicans define morality. I blame Clinton. He was too slick, to selfish, and too obviously amoral. Sure, he kept the economy on track, but he did so at the cost of the Democrat's soul.
I'm still putting it together. We are getting beaten because Ashcroft, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and Rice are more moral, and there is something wrong with that. Because they aren't. There is a fundamental disconnect, and it's not because the American people are stupid, it's because the Democratic party is slightly shallow and confused. The democrats need to become more radical, not in policy, but in regards to going to the root of our moral foundation. They need to show that the Democrat party has a common ancestor with Protestant America, and the relationship is closer than that of the neocons.
Democrats aren't going to win by playing republicans, they'll win by remembering who they are.
In an article, OSC said:
"And I find it extremely discomfiting that, really to a shocking degree, love of money has pervaded Mormon society. It's something that as a people we have great cause to repent of. I think it will lead to our condemnation in the eyes of God. When I talk that way, there are some people who are extremely troubled because they think I'm saying that they're wicked. And they're correct -- I am."
As my idea of God is complex, I can't whole-heartedly agree about His condemnation, but I think a careful study of the place from where this line of thought arises could save the party.
The democrats are not going to be as smooth as Karl Rove, and we shouldn't try. We have too much of a sense of shame, and we would get killed every time. I tell my friends that you can't out white guy the white guy. Alan Keyes can't be Strom Thurmond.
We do fine when we remember who we are. It took Adlai Stevenson two losses to Ike, but in that time, we remembered who we were and led the civil rights movement a decade later. Barack Obama understands, I think. We aren't going to win this with savvy and technology. We'll win it by thinking morally and listening to the middle of the country, not necessarily obeying, but definitely more listening. We lost too many good mothers this election. We may not ever get all of their gun-toting husbands, but we lost too many mothers.
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It's not about winning elections; it's about remembering who we are. If we remember who we are, the elections will come on their own.
_____________
And I'm tired of hearing republicans who are so sure that Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee in 2008. It's not true. The only people who say it with earnest are Republicans. And I'm think they do it for immoral reasons, but then again, maybe morality only extends to abortion, same-sex marriage, and low taxes.
quote: And I'm tired of hearing republicans who are so sure that Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee in 2008. It's not true. The only people who say it with earnest are Republicans.
Okay - maybe I listen to too much of Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Hannity.... Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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"It's not about winning elections; it's about remembering who we are. If we remember who we are, the elections will come on their own."
And even if we do not win, at least we will have no regrets. If we're going to be damned either way, let's be damned for who we are.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
adam, actually that's not true. It depends upon which state you live in, but some states do not care which party you're registered with when you vote in the primary, just as long as you vote in only ONE of the primaries. Washington State is like that. I'm registered independant, but am probably really a Republican. I considered voting in the Democratic primary, though.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Bush won for a simple reason. The majority of America believes that Kerry has no core values about anything. He believes life begins at conception, but is pro-choice. He believes Saddam Hussein was a threat, but he shouldn't have been removed the way he was. There are more examples, but for better or worse America decided its better to be usually "wrong" and consistent than usually "right" and flip-flopping. "Wrong" and "right" being what the majority of America believes to be correct.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Before you make posts like this and attempt to take the credit for someone else's ideas, make sure the person you stole it from isn't Orson Scott Card (the UnBush speech) and you aren't on his website.
The dead grandmother thing, that episode was on yesterday and anyone who watches Simpsons could see that.
This is like Good Will Hunting and you are the blond guy with long hair, and I am Matt Damon. I will be Matt Damon.
Posts: 31 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Danzig, I'll fight booze and drugs until hell freezes over, then I'll buy some ice skates and fight it some more.
_________
I do wonder how much of this election is a product our acceptance of Clinton's infidelity. We gave him a free pass his cheating. We don't talk about the sanctity of marriage, which isn't in trouble from same-sex marriages, it's trouble from casual marriages- ones that aren't an expression of fidelity. That's the argument Democrats need to make. Talk up fidelity. Talk up trust, because marriage is about staying with someone for richer or for poorer, not for faster or for looser.
I've said it before, when you enter AA, they give you God and a sponsor, someone who is going to stay with you when you are your most unbearable. That's what a marriage is about. As much as I think that "Don't ask don't tell" is stupid, and should be declaimed so by someone with more authority than I, but civil unions are a perfectly acceptable substitute for marriage. _______________________
As to the rest of my life? I can tell you about the next few months. I'm trying to get a better understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. I start substitute teaching next year, and I pick up the projects which present themselves to me. I'm applying for two Jurisprudence programs, and if I don't get in, I'll just take it as it comes.
________________________
Belle,
We lost mothers on safety, and I think that Clinton's mess in '98 really opened up a wound to the democratic approach to family. I don't think it gives itself to an easy analysis, but in '92 and '96 Clinton skated a line that was destoyed with his affair. Family people never forgave him, his moral character was always in doubt, but after '98, it was inexcusable, and had he been anything but a Southern Baptist himself, the backlash would have been even more overt. And the Democrats embraced him because there wasn't anybody else with his gravitas.
Clinton is hard to peg , and he split America in a bad way. Giuliani works because he wasn't from Hope, Arkansas, but even he isn't going to get a free pass on his infidelities if he runs for President.
Clinton is a deeply complex man; and he provoked deeply complex feelings.
Bush should have lost parents for no other reason than his Jenna is an embarassing. She is the problem with America. Look at the Kerry/ Edwards kids, and even Chelsea Clinton, and tell me who were better parents. All of those kids seem bright, able, socially responsible, and with a sense of duty. (I haven't sized up Cheney's family.)
__________________
Prediction:
I think we are going to hear a lot about an "Ownership Society," in the next few years. It's going to come from honest republicans and scared and light-weight Democrats, like Harold Ford Jr. It's going to seem very plausible and moral at first, but upon closer inspection, there is something insidious about the concept.
posted
You people think into this too much, Kerry lost because he allied himself with John Melloncamp. Who has been a dead beat for years...
Posts: 1094 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Hey, dude, when you're talking Kant, you are talking my kinda language.
If you want to bounce ideas around or get a critical eye for a paper, let me know. Good luck -- fun (if dense) stuff. My favorite. Posts: 2919 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:I don't think it's a matter of moving further to the right. I think it's a matter of getting back in touch. We are in a country where moral worth is determined by ones view on same sex marriage, abortion, and taxes, and there is something funny about that.
Irami, taxation has been a moral issue since before there was a United States. People reflexively see government, not private citizens, as "the rich"--in power, and normally in money as well--and resist giving their tax dollars. The government is the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the Republicans are playing Robin Hood. Of course people like that. It may not be reality now, but it's how the world was for thousands of years: the haves taxed the have-nots to the verge of starvation (beyond it if they were short-sighted enough) so that they could live in luxury. That's the image the Democrats are going up against when they talk about raising taxes.
As for the other two issues: you created them. Take them out of the picture and the Republicans will lose massive traction with the Christian Right. Is the response to them out of proportion? Maybe. (Remember, the CR regards legalized abortion as legalized murder. Would you support a candidate who wanted to legalize murder, no matter what else he promised?) But there's a simple answer--give the fundies a little slack. Stop accusing them of evil motives and moaning about the slippery slope every time they win a minor victory. Acknowledge their right to have their way if they win instead of chanting "We'll take it to the Supreme Court!" (See below) See if you don't defuse the issues by doing that and open the way for desertions when the Republicans focus on the rich.
quote:A Democratic Party that pandered sufficiently to a mobilized Southern evangelical base to win their vote would not be a Democratic Party that would have my vote. Heck, the selection of that knuckle-dragger Lieberman nearly cost Gore my vote in 2000, and I wasn't alone on that one.
Tom, you're free to take that position, but it seems oddly self-destructive. Vote as you like, but remember this:
If we can win the election, we have just as much right to enact the policies we want as you do when you win. Religious conservatives fear the Democratic party for one reason: the Democrats are willing to impose their platform by way of unelected courts if they can't win elections. There are things I don't agree with the majority of the Christian Right about, but this is not one of them. You want to look fair and moral in our eyes? All you've got to do is meet us on the same plane--in the ballot box--and stop trying to get your way via the Nine-Person Oligarchy.
Acknowledge that, and you have a chance of getting our vote. Even if we don't have a chance in hell of getting yours.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Anyone who is fundamentally pro-life, and sees that as the only issue in a national election, even when there isn't chance to fully revoke Roe v. Wade, isn't going to vote for a democrat.
There are a lot of variables in that last sentence, but if all of those variables are fulfilled, then they aren't going to vote democrat. We don't make people have kids, under penalty of the law. We can be talked into banning partial term abortions and abstinance only education, but it'll be a sad day when we force parenthood on people who don't want it, or as a punishment for having sex.
That's as bad as government arranged marriages.
quote: Irami, taxation has been a moral issue since before there was a United States.
Edmund Burke considered it an extension of our English heritage:
quote:They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates; or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens, and most eloquent tongues, have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered.
Low taxes is a function of economic liberty, and what does economy ever have to do with religion. If anything, religion should see the virtue of taxes.
Re- reference to, concerning, again.
Ligere- Bind or tie.
A religion reminds of our ties, those bonds unseen. The negation of this is negligence. These aren't binds of our choosing, they aren't voluntary obligations, rather we are obliged by virtue of our being. In many other instances, religious people understand this sort of duty more than secular America. Jesus speaking of the Good Samaritan and turning the other cheek saw to this. We can blame our English heritage, but in the end, we know better and have gone too far.
There is a part of me which blames protestantism, and a convenient misunderstanding of free will.
quote:Anyone who is fundamentally pro-life, and sees that as the only issue in a national election, even when there isn't chance to fully revoke Roe v. Wade, isn't going to vote for a democrat.
If a Democratic candidate said, (and his actions showed that he meant to follow through) "If I do nothing else in my service to America, I pledge to reduce the number of abortions in this country to the absolute minimum: seeking only those where the life of the mother was endangered or the pregnancy was provably the result of incest or rape." I would vote for him. No contest, no hesitation. Even if everything else he stood for was abhorant to me, I'd vote for him.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:I pledge to reduce the number of abortions in this country to the absolute minimum: seeking only those where the life of the mother was endangered or the pregnancy was provably the result of incest or rape.
What about the morning after pill?
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I'm guessing, but any candidate who was willing to reduce abortions to only the cases I described, he/she would probably ethically object to the morning after pill as well. Death is still death, even if it's only hours (and a few cells) into life. But on the weird chance that such a candidate was split on the issue, I'd still vote for him. It would be a greater victory than we've had to date, and I'll take those where I can get 'em.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
This is what you get, Jeni. The candidate looks you in the face says,
"I don't like the idea of forcing women to birth children. It's our most precious process and should be done with joy, loving, preparation, and care. But being the President/Senator doesn't mean that I always get to do everything I want to do. If this is important to you, this is what I'll concede. I'll sign or vote for any legislation banning abortion short of the morning after pill, rape, or incest. I'll even filter any Supreme Court Justice who would seek to undo these restrictions. I'm going to raise your taxes, though. We are going to increase grants for parenting classes, preschool, and infant care. I'm also going to raise the number and the quality of higher education grants and part-time job assistance programs so that seventeen year-old single mothers, and there are going to be a lot of them, do not have to forgo college.
I'm opening up adoption care to those able and willing homosexual couples in stable civil unions. I'll say this on public record. You are going to have to trust that I'm telling the truth, and I'll just have to trust that you are going to vote for this Democrat."
posted
I don't know about Jeni, but I could live with that, Irami. Of course, I suspect before long the increased taxes would drive some other group of people into starving poverty--but maybe then the Democrats would finally get the clue that government can't pay for everything, no matter how important it is. So all in all, I'd call that a win.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:maybe then the Democrats would finally get the clue that government can't pay for everything, no matter how important it is.
I don't want to pay for everything, just diapers, school, and parenting classes for teenagers who didn't plan on being parents.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Irami, I trust you are still speaking as a hypothetical candidate. I have no problem with your proposed spending, at least in theory.
What I object to is the Democratic idea that "whatever people need, government must provide". It is a pleasant idea. It is an expression of benevolence. It is, however, also a failure to recognize that the government is up to its eyebrows in debt just trying to maintain the programs it already has. As long as that is the case (and I believe it is unavoidable), "not paying for a person's needs" is not morally equivalent to "allowing someone to directly harm a person", because the money must be taken from someone else (thereby harming them in the degree that the other person is helped).
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
They could just legalize marijuana and tax it like cigarettes... That'd help out the national debt a bit...
Posts: 1094 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I believe the principle of progressive taxation rests on the concept that it is possible to take the same amount of money -- even the same percentage of income -- from two people at different income levels and inflict hurt of different degrees. In other words, taking $5 from Joe to give $5 to Frank may not hurt Joe as much as it helps Frank, or as much as it would hurt Frank to take $5 from him.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I can tell you about the next few months. I'm trying to get a better understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. I start substitute teaching next year, and I pick up the projects which present themselves to me. I'm applying for two Jurisprudence programs, and if I don't get in, I'll just take it as it comes.![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
