Bush gloating. “That’s all you got??”
Why Kerry Lost
by John C. Dvorak
It will be fun to watch the right-wing bloggers revel over a Bush victory as if they made it happen, and it will be fun to watch the Democrats kick themselves for not doing enough. The big turnout was supposed to mean a rejection of the incumbent, but it meant a lot of church-goers voting for their man. It was the churches, fear, and Democrat incompetence that won this election for Bush. But there was also one more factor: John Edwards.
I blame the whole Kerry loss on the choice of John Edwards for VP. Wesley Clark would have been the winning choice. Exactly who counseled Kerry on Edwards is the culprit. That said I was someone who liked Edwards when he was running in the primaries but would have never suspected his pathetic performance as VP candidate. He couldnt even deliver his own state! In fact his own state, North Carolina, was huge for Bush. Did anyone in the Kerry camp have a clue?
This campaign decided not to choose Clark because he was seen as a Clinton Democrat and that wing of the party has been feuding with the dying Kennedy wing. Its a known fact that Kerry was from the dying wing. And with this mediocre performance you can see why its dying. Exactly where was Kennedy during this entire election, anyway? I never saw him chime in once.
This election leads straight to a Hillary run at it in 2008 unless Bush ends the Iraq conflict soon and cranks up the economy. I cannot see this group doing much more than what theyve done for four years — bumble. Their allies in all this are those folks in places like Idaho and North Dakota who are shaking in their boots about terrorists. As if Boise was a target. Still, the strategy worked. Scare the crap out of the good hearted American and youll get attention. The cowardly Lion rocks large in the Dakotas. Booo! The terrorists are going to get you! Vote Bush!
If the dumb Democrats had Wesley Clark as VP they could have convinced these same hand-wringers that an even better job of protecting the fearful was ready to roll..
The other botched opportunity is the war in Iraq. Clinton won against the first George Bush by harping on read my lips, no new taxes comment. Harping on a lie.
The WMD threat was a lie that was a softball down the middle of the plate for the Kerry campaign to pound. Michael Moore and Jon Stewart showed the contradictory TV clips. Kerry could have taken it to the next level with ridicule. Instead he soft-peddled. Wimped out.
Then there were the debates. Bush, who cheated with a wire on his back, was never challenged about this. Kerry could have slapped him hard on that thing after the debate. Then asked about it, in shock! Nothing. After all was said and done Kerry barely won the debates, but nobody cared. Nobody cared because Cheney killed Edwards with his assertion that they never met. It was a classic. Cheney made it sound like he was at the Senate all the time (he wasnt) and never met this Edwards character who obviously never attended any sessions. Edwards, who had sat next to Cheney at a prayer breakfast folded! He could have said, Ive never seen you running the Senate, do you ever? And, I was sitting next to you at a prayer breakfast, are you telling me you dont remember? Why are you lying about this? But instead we get nothing. Stunned silence. The next day all the democrat supporters roll out video tape of the two sitting next to each other. Too late! It was Edwards job to slam the guy, not Jon Stewarts job.
The only time I heard John Edwards get rocking was on the is anybody listening? Al Franken Show. Yeah, show off your chops to the already converted.
And lets go back and ask exactly why the overly youthful-looking Edwards was picked in the first place. While the elder George Bush had the youthful Dan Quayle as his running pal to supposedly attract the gah-gah female vote, it should be noted that this only worked once. The younger Bush picked a mature worldly man as VP. And in a time of terror, this is exactly what you want. Kerry should have done the same and picked Clark.
Then there is the advertising. The Swift Boat angle worked to an extreme for Bush but it was eventually neutralized over time. Meanwhile, we hear of the million of dollars that George Soros and other billionaire Democrats were going to spend to grab Ohio and Florida. And we hear about the Liberal media. And we hear about the creative talent in Hollywood, all liberals. And with this huge intellectual advantage they cannot get Florida, already the laughing stock of the country from last time. And then they lose Ohio? This is an important industrial state with no job opportunities for the next decade. Are the Ohioans that dumb or are they just afraid of those terrorist bogeymen blowing up Dayton? Hm. Couldn’t they be slapped into reality?
None of the results make any sense to anyone unless you admit that the Democrats are complete incompetent boneheads. I mean, really. They knew exactly what they had to do. They had the skill sets to do it. Yet, they couldnt do it. Nothing budged. Hey boys, good job wasting all that money!
Having said all that I actually think the economy will rebound, but only because of observable cycles. Bush, to get re-elected, kept the war active, now he can wisely cut and run. He did accomplish two things his dad never did. He caught Sadaam. And he got re-elected. Now if he doesnt get us all killed we can see what happens in 2008.
Kerry’s problem was that he appealed to too many different people and thus the Republicans brandished him a flip-flopper. I agree on Edwards. What exactly did he contribute to the campaign?
I remembr that there used to be Southern Democrats.
Strong Democrats that controlled the south.
They are gone and replaced by the Moral Majority in the south and it’s base is the church.
This Moal Majority is very conservative and leans heavily toward the Republican Party though they are still registered as Democrats.
It was very evident in this election that they crossed over.
The Democrats will run into problems with Hilary in 2008 on defense. This time they had a Vietnam vet and couldn’t convince people he was strong on terrorism and defense. Hilary, with no military experience whatsoever and now a New Yorker, will have a extremely tough time taking any state away from the Republicans without someone very popular from the deep South as her running mate.
Now here’s an interesting question for you. Technically, the 22nd Amendment says absolutely nothing about the Vice-President. I wonder what people would think if Hilary named her husband as her Vice Presidental running mate? Although highly improbable, it is an intriguing possibility.
“It is unfortunate that gay marriage became a deciding factor” – Thomas
Are you weeney’s so deficient in brain power as to blame Rove for that? Are you certified morons?
Massachussetts Supreme Court started the gay marriage issue in an election year.
Massachussetts torpedoed Kerry; don’t blame Rove. No one forced the Mass Supreme Court to open pandoras box; they did; the democrats paid for big time when those amendents appeared on the ballots.
The dems sunk the dems; quit crying about your own liberals slashing your own wrists in an election year. And you blame Rove — pathetic and so foolish.
for Tomlaureld, if you want to track this phenomenon look into the so-called “Southern Strategy” developed by Richard Nixon. Google has a lot of good links that explains it. It’s not that recent. The Dems have found nothing to beat it.
Actually, at no time have I ever stated that Rove had anything to do with Bush’s win. However, it does appear that the Republicans whipped up quite a bit of anti-gay sentiment both in constitutional amendments and in voters which had the effect of improving Bush’s results with church goers.
Keep in mind I wanted Bush to win because of his economic and foreign policy. But on social issues like gay-marriage, the Republicans, the moral majority, are morally wrong. Unfortunately, no one, especially the Democrats have really worked to convince people that is the case. Trying to force the issue down people’s throat through the courts is the wrong approach.
Somehow, we need a plan to get a viable third choice in the mix. If memory serves, the only viable third choices that have been offered in the last 25 years is Anderson, Perot and Nader (in 2000). The problem is that people are so gun shy after the 1992 and 2000 elections that they have been scared away from voting for a third candidate.
Thomas, who put gay marriage on the plate for 2004?
Answer: The Mass. Supreme Court with their early 2004 ruling.
So, you say Republicans whipped up anti-gay sentiment. Agreed, but it was never an issue until the Mass. Supreme Court decided to toss that issue on the Republican’s plate.
Had the Mass. Supreme Court done their ruling in 2005, Kerry would be president. Instead, they did something fundamentally stupid and did such a ruling in 2004.
I agree that the Republican’s stance is morally wrong, I think there definitely should be an expansion of rights for same sex couples.
But the Mass. Supreme Court tossed a court legislated hand grenade into the religious right’s hornet nest in an election year, and the churchs loaded people in buses by the hordes and drove ’em to the polls and the Democrats paid dearly for this election year stupidity.
The Mass Supreme Court threw the religious right a hanging curveball and the religious right socked the ball out of the park.
The Mass Supreme Court is a bunch of idiots, now King George has a 2nd term and it is ALL their fault.
Oh — and even worse — King George thinks he has a mandate. God help us all.
I’ll just say that it really comes down to the 130k votes in Ohio (barring provisionals). All the hand wringing about what the Dems did wrong here or there would evaporate and we’d have the same level of “incompetence” with regards to the Republicans and the same type of Monday Morning QBing if Bush had lost.
But what it comes down to is, as people mentioned above, the Anti-Gay Marriage crowd. If that wasn’t on the ballot in Ohio, we’d be looking at Kerry in the White House come 01/05.
So while I don’t disregard Dvorak’s points about Democratic mistakes, Republicans weren’t flawless either. Each side could have done X, Y or Z to pick up votes here or there and I think it’s a bit of a wash, overall.
Rather, the crucial issue is how well the Anti-Gay Marriage ballot initiatives got social conservatives to the polls. That’s the real crux of the election. I think it had more of a direct and verifiable impact on the final tally than any other aspect of the race. For example, you could guess that Clark could have provided one benefit to the ticket, but who knows what his liabilities he would have brought as well (e.g., William Safire would probably spend every week claiming that Clark was a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton).
On related topic, I think a lot of Democrats are now keenly aware of the power certain issues to drive right-wingers to the polls. As a result, while it might be entertaining to ponder, I think the chances of Hillary Clinton getting out of the Democratic Primaries is slim to none if she chooses to run in 2008.
Are you weeneys so deficient in brain power as to blame Rove for that? Are you certified morons?
I wasn’t blaming Rove for anything, I was just in awe of the stories giving him credit for so many strategic victories in the campaign. He didn’t make it (gay marriage) an issue, but he apparently led a nationwide organization which could capitalize on opposition to it.
Massachussetts Supreme Court started the gay marriage issue in an election year. … The dems sunk the dems
So, the Mass. Supreme Court is a “loose cannon” of the Democratic party? 🙂
Anywho – Similar thing happened here in Oregon, where I live. Multnomah County (includes Portland, Or) officials decided to start issuing marriage licences to gays/lesbians – without public hearings – since they decided (privately) that it was probably unconstitutional to deny licences to gays/lesbians. The public backlash was loud and long. What do you know? The “One Man, One Woman” constitutional amendment passed – easily. With “friends” like those Mult. Co. officials, gays & lesbians don’t need any enemies. 🙁
Since when does the VP make any difference?
Gore/Liebermann (great VP choice, no win)
Dole/Kemp (another great choice, no win)
Bush/Quayle (terrible choice, decisive win first time)
Reagan/Bush (limp compared to Reagan/Ford, BIG win anyway)
Ford/Dole (good pairing, no win)
The VP can influence but ultimately doesn’t win or lose for the Presidential candidate. And *why* do people continue to think Clarke would have helped *anything*? Wouldn’t Dean have been better? Or Hillary?
Edwards shouldn’t have called Cheney on the prayer breakfast thing. Arguing about it just brings more attention to Edwards’ Senate attendance.
There was 2 big problems with Wesley Clark in addiion to the Clinton connection. One was that he made a derogatory statement about Kerry,”He’s a lieutenant and I’m a general.’ The other was that when he was in Kosovo, the Russians took over an airport, he ordered troops to take it back, but his British counterpart refused, saying I won’t start World War 3 for you.
Actually, I think Dean might have been the best choice for VP. Despite his apparent tendency to get a little emotional (or perhaps because of it), he was managing to create quite a large grass roots movement to bring in the disenfranchised Liberals. In retrospect, I think that is exactly what the Kerry candidacy needed.
Of couse, the question to me is whether that would have been offset by the Republican dirty-tricksters finding ways to bash him. That is what they excel at, after all, rather than talking about issues.
The Democrats are caught in a trap of their own making, c. 1972, when the progressives grabbed control of the party from the likes of Richard Daley of Chicago. The progressive wing of the party seized control of the party apparatus in state after state, winning in the process the right to name delegates to party conventions.
The result since then has been two nominally moderate Southerners elected, and a number of (mainly Northeast) liberals shot down in flames. A Jimmy Carter or a Bill Clinton could at least talk the red state talk, if they couldn’t quite manage to walk the walk. The others — Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry — were sunk before they started.
Elections are won in the center, and the American center is and has been considerably to the right of where CBS and the NYT would like it to be. The Democratic party nomination process, dominated as it still is by the far left of the party, can only produce left-leaning candidates. Now that we have entered the age of on-line fact-checking (see Kerry’s famous plea for a Delete button on Lexis/Nexis), it is no longer possible to hide what candidates say during the primaries so that they can tack toward the center, however implausibly, during the general election.
Hillary Clinton is the most likely outcome for the Democratic party nomination process in 2008 — but Bill Richardson is probably the most electable.
The real reason Bush won is that Americans are war-prone and wanted to continue the Bush-plan-Omega. The plan to take over the world that NASA has been planning since they gave up on StarWars…