What happened? Election analysis

College Confidential Community
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<p>It's a good theory, except that Kerry had truly given the 7 million students and single women, etc. who stayed home a reason to vote for him that they could understand, he'd be President today. (It's easy to forget, but the way the election stands and assuming what the pundits do about Ohio, Kerry, for all his huge faults, lost by fewer than 100,000 votes. So it's rather difficult to come to macro-conclusions, other than to say he was a loser.)</p>

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<p>I think that would be a bad way of looking at the election for the Democrats. Big picture, the 100,000 votes in Ohio isn't really the issue. It's the 4 million votes nationwide that should be the concern to the Democratic Party. Of even more concern should be their inablity to carry a single state outside of the shrinking union rust belt and the left coast. Don't forget, the Democrats lost considerable ground in Florida and their traditional base in that state is not getting any younger!</p>

<p>I do agree that this particular Republican President was beatable, as he was four years ago, because he is not a terribly effective candidate himself. But, that shouldn't cloud the big picture because the domination of the Republicans in governor, House, and Senate elections means that they have an increasing pool that could well produce some very attractive candidates in future elections. Just one example: Jeb Bush would be a much stronger candidate than his older brother.</p>

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<p>7 million stayed home. (And false about Florida - huge influx of young Hispanics to Florida more than offset elderly. Do you think they had a clue what Kerry's position on immigration really was? Do you? Jewish voters couldn't figure him out on the Middle East. Unemployed folks couldn't figure out how he was going to stop outsourcing, and bring their jobs back. College kids couldn't figure out how he was going to add troops to Iraq without a draft, or manage to bring them home. Folks concerned with globalization couldn't figure out what he planned to do about the WTO. Folks without health insurance couldn't figure out how they were going to be covered. Educators and parents couldn't figure out how he was going to make the schools better. Folks in the middle didn't trust him, with good reason, even when his positions were designed to attract them - they couldn't figure out what he was saying half the time. Folks in the theoretical base didn't trust him, because from what they could figure out, he sold out. Lots of theoretical Democrats just stayed home. Just a bad, a really bad candidate.)</p>

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<p>Veritas indeed. I walk under it, over it and wear it daily. Sgiovinc, your interpretation of facts is questionable, but many people believe as you do. Bush did not start outsourcing in motion. Clinton is much more responsible. Anyway, it was inevitable and won't effect Xiggi if he keeps his eye on the ball. As for education through reading, etc., the issue is we as adults select our sources of information. Liberals do not generally subscribe to the National Review or watch FOX. Conservatives don't read Michael Moore and Maureen Dowd. So we become selectively educated.</p>

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<p>I don't think that Democrats should assume automatic support from the Hispanic community. Note that Florida, which is heavily Hispanic, has a Republican governor and elected a Cuban-American senator yesterday, giving the Republicans a long-time Democratic seat.</p>

<p>I agree with you that Kerry was a particulary bad candidate, arguably as bad as Michael Dukakis -- not surprising since they shared many of the same strategists. However, I would ask, where are the good Democratic candidates going to come from?</p>

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<p>Many people I know commented that the churlish demonstrators who disrupted New York and the Republican convention just because they disliked Republicans were only hurting the Democrats. The mainstream media treated these charlatans as if they were political heroes. Had Republican groups behaved similarly in Boston, the election would have been over. But they didn't. That's your problem. How can you guys nominate a Sam Nunn or a Scoop Jackson or a Joe Leiberman when your foot soldiers are such nasty little brownshirts? You're stuck with radicals or poseurs as candidates until you straighten out your base. Obviously, it wasn't just the demonstrators in NYC that caused the image problem, but extrapolate the example to include the vapid Hollywood crowd, the extremist quasi-intellectual faculty members at our colleges and universities, and where can you possibly go with that? I actually think the low turnout among young voters makes a lot of sense, and I commend them for (apparently) not being duped by Michael Moore, all the absurd 527 ads, and the blatent manipulations of the major media outlets.</p>

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<p>I really don't understand the electoral college. I see states that are marked "red" but if you dig deeper for numbers the numbers are 50% for Bush 49% Kerry. So why do we have all of the electoral votes of that state going for Bush?
Shouldn't people feel like each vote makes a difference?</p>

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<p>"Shouldn't people feel like each vote makes a difference?"</p>

<p>No, that would be unAmerican. There was a time following the Constitutional adoption that Senators were chosen by state legislatures, to prevent the wayward actions of popular voting. All through the Federalist papers, the common theme is the threat of democracy and how the popular voice must be curbed. </p>

<p>The system works just fine.</p>

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<p>Sgio, I would love to answer your posts, but there are simply too many points to address. I agree that President Bush deserves a lot of criticism. Not unlike Carolyn -and many others- I DID hope for an alternative, and I strongly regretted that the democrats ended up with a candidate such as John Kerry. I expressed that view many times on the old board, and it is not worth repeating my subjective analysis of John Kerry, whom I considered to be an empty Washingtonian suit. Since almost one-half of the country supported John Kerry, I suspect that many people would disagree with my assessment, and nothing I say would change that. </p>

<p>The subject of this thread was to discuss why Kerry lost. I still believe that he lost because he was a bad candidate and a poor alternative to George Bush. Again, your opinion will be different and I respect that. </p>

<p>However, there is one issue I'd like to address: the outsourcing that is on everyone's lips. Even if it this issue is, by its mere nature, a global concern, the repercussions of outsourcing are mostly local. I fully understand that extolling the virtues of outsourcing to a unemployed steel mill worker would be a hard task. The reality is that the job market is far from static and that the globalization of all trade is hastening the demise of a number of jobs. Slowing down the process of jobs moving overseas will not eliminate the issue. Simply stated, the jobs that are threatened by outsourcing have been doomed for a while. Lamenting about the disappearance of a particular line of services will not help; focusing on increasing our competitiveness will. Also, we cannot forget that the global shifts of income create huge markets for our products, which are in huge demand among the new rich we help create. The Indians and Pakistani who answer your phones love to use their Motorola phones, drink Coca-Cola at the local McDonalds, and wear Levi's. I think that profitable sales and exports tend to do do wonders for a company balance sheet. </p>

<p>It is interesting that you mention Dell as an example. Do we know how many computers are exported by Dell because they can offer competitive prices? Considering the number of jobs created by Michael Dell throughout the world, I think that it would be disingenuous to criticize the company for protecting his interests. </p>

<p>Speaking about protection(ism), I find it interesting that you criticize Bush for not doing enough to protect the domestic jobs, yet condemn him for being too insular in foreign affairs. I assume that you would support and applaud imposing trade restrictions and sanctions on foreign and domestic companies to support our employment? From my vantage point, I think that foreign governments, while showing some mild annoyance at our political imperialism, tend to get extremely irate when you hit them in their wallet, and retaliate with unabated vengeance. </p>

<p>None of this will make the unemployed steel worker happy, and I would not like to be the one explaining it to him. This does, however, not mean that the underlying theories that support the development of outsourcing in the global arena are flawed. The repercussions are not only hard to accept but also inexorable.</p>

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<p>Senators were chosen by state legislatures until about 1913, I think. For Electoral College info:
<a href="http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm&lt;/a> Mini takes the "populist" view that this was a deliberately anti-democratic view, when in fact the Federalist makes it clear that it was in fact a federalist intent, to provide state governments with representation in the national assembly. House of Reps elected by the people, Senators elected by the state governments. </p>

<p>Red/Blue state really doesn't have to do with the EC. It comes from an analyst who took a county-by-county chart of the US after the 2000 election and colored each county in by which one went for Gore or Bush, to provide a visual of how democrat votes were concentrated in cities/suburbs, and the rest of the country tended to vote overwhelmingly republican. The red/Blue then became shorthand for other political maps.</p>

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<p>i believe that the most important issue in this campaign and the reason Kerry lost was so called "moral values". this is supported by information given in exit polls that can be found at cnn.com. These "moral values" are the values of the religous right, and i resent when the values of the extreme are represnted as the values of the majority. but perhaps i am mistaken. i do not personally know any fundamentalist christians, so i don't understand the movement at all. i will admit that i myself don't believe in god and have no hesitation in saying that. but i would like to hear from people who are fundamentalists or who know many fundamentalists so that i could better understand this country. i feel that i have no idea how most of this country thinks. that being said if you are not a fundamentalist i do not see how you could vote for bush. there was an article in the nytimes magazine about 2 or 3 weeks ago describing bush's faith. it scared me, the thought that the leader of our country makes his decisions based on what he thinks god is telling him is ridiculous. also another misconception in this country is that religion and moral values are inseperable. but i firmly believe that one can be a moral person and not a religious person.</p>

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<p>Xiggi, right on target. Something I'll add is that when Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement which immediately had a tremendous effect on manufacturing jobs, he put no money into retraining programs. Many warned at the time that it should be part and parcel as today we need education programs that address the outsourcing of white collar jobs. This is not at all about Bush folks.</p>

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<p>raggidyanne: "there was an article in the nytimes magazine about 2 or 3 weeks ago describing bush's faith. it scared me, the thought that the leader of our country makes his decisions based on what he thinks god is telling him is ridiculous."</p>

<p>Ridiculous indeed. What are you doing relying on the NYT for your opinions? Haven't you ever heard of the blogosphere? The NYT is nothing but a propaganda organ of the left these days, as you will soon learn now that they have failed to topple a sitting president despite intense effort. You need to expand your reading horizon...try instapundit.com as a start, and check out his (U of Tenn. law professor Glenn Reynolds) links from there. There's a whole big world of information out there, with all sorts of cross-checks.</p>

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<p>"None of this will make the unemployed steel worker happy, and I would not like to be the one explaining it to him. This does, however, not mean that the underlying theories that support the development of outsourcing in the global arena are flawed. The repercussions are not only hard to accept but also inexorable."</p>

<p>If there is anything I know from the study of economic history, it is that NOTHING is inexorable. Just as the corporation itself as we know it today was a creation of political muscle in the years following the Andrew Jackson presidency, just as we know that the New Deal and Keynesian economics (debt financing by sovereign states to create employment and economic opportunity) was a political creation, just as the very market system we know today in China is a political creation, so decisions about globalization are political ones. But the differences between the two political parties in the U.S. are so small really (as you so well describe them), that the unemployed steelworker isn't presented with any real choices. (Hint: he isn't supposed to be.)</p>

<p>Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.</p>

<p>(Driver -- don't think we disagree. Since the federalists knew full well that the local legislators were controlled by moneyed men, and, as I remember, some of the states still had landholding requirements, representation of state governments was another way to prevent rule by the democratic mobs.)</p>

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<p>i resent your indictement of my reading selection. although the nytimes is a left leaning paper it is still a nationally read and well respected paper. they have two regular columnists who are conservatives david brooks, and william safire. i also watch fox news to get a perspective from the other side. the question i asked was how you as a religious person or non religious person see bush's personal religious veiws affecting his politics. i asked on this forum because i wanted answers form individuals.</p>

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<p>I think you are mistaken. IMO, the "moral values" as used in this election is not entirely short-hand for the religious right as much as a description of traditional middle-class American values. The thing the Democrats have missed is that your typical middle-class suburban family despises "Political Correctness" and the range of issues pushed to the forefront by the PC crowd.</p>

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<p>One of my daughters friends is an evangelical christian. My daughter has attended church camps with her several times and I know the family well. I live in an area with a substantial population of evangelicals and the article in the NYTimes was not so far off. I would recommend the Jesus factor on PBS. They believe in the rapture, in being a Christian only as a born again Christian. Otherwise you will not be saved. They think Christianity is the one true religion. Some may have more moderate views but in general evangelicals have an "exclusive" view of God rather than "inclusive" and a very fundamentalist view of the bible. My daughter went to their camp and we had many discussions so I know what they preach. I've also attended one or two services a few years back when we were looking for a church.</p>

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<p>pc values such as equal rights for homsexuals, equal rights for blacks, these values are despised by the typical middle class suburban family. what "pc" values do you think the middle class suburban family hates.</p>

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<p>I don't really care about Bush's personal religious views. Just like Ted Kennedy's Catholicism or Joe Lieberman's Jewish faith or Jimmy Carter's born-again evangelical Christianity never stopped me from voting for them. I just don't feel that it is for me to judge someone's faith. Rather, I view it as a personal issue.</p>

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<p>Questions for everyone:</p>

<ol>
<li> Is there a democratic candidate that you could have enthusiastically supported, or is this more a vote along party platforms? If there is, who/which would those be?</li>
<li> What do you predict during the next 4 years in terms of the economy?</li>
<li> Do you foresee military action in any other countries (leaving out the unknowns about terrorist attacks from new countries, imminent nuclear threat, etc.), and if so, which ones? Do you anticipate a draft?</li>
<li> Id: what specific issues do you feel the "PC crowd" has pushed to the forefront (and are despised)?</li>
</ol>

<p>I agree that now is the time to try to understand each other's opinions and hopes, and I'm trying to do that (through a haze of sleeplessness)...</p>