Why Did Kerry Lose?

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let's add yet another reason to the list of why kerry lost... latinos.

latinos are the fastest growing "minority" in the united states... bush and republicans have made HUGE gains with the latino vote, to the point where it pretty much cancels out the black vote, which has always gone democratic.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
let's add yet another reason to the list of why kerry lost... latinos.

latinos are the fastest growing "minority" in the united states... bush and republicans have made HUGE gains with the latino vote, to the point where it pretty much cancels out the black vote, which has always gone democratic.

:yes: We talked about this at work. I don't really know any latinos that aren't exchange students, but one guy at work was saying that many are REALLY into family and will often vote based on pro-life. I don't know if that's true or not, just what people were saying.
 
I think the reason Kerry lost was in what Kerry's mom uttered on her deathbed-
She offered 3 words of advise to him in discussing his upcoming Presidentail race-

those 3 words were-
"Integrety
Integrety
Integrety"
 
Kerry lost because he deserved to lose, the better man won.

George Bush stands up for the rights of the unborn, George Bush knows that blacks and whites are created equally - he doesn't have to give blacks bonus points (affirmative action) to make them equal to whites, George Bush knows that marriage is 1 man + 1 woman. George Bush doesn't use the Oval Office to cheat on his wife, he knows that Christians respect their spouse.

This is why Bush won again, and got the most votes in American history, my mother who is a Democrat that goes to church weekly voted for him.

Kerry, Dean, Sharprton, the Heinz woman, Michael Moore... they can call Bush a moron, dumb, a fool, a C-student, a southern redneck.... it doesn't bother the real Catholics though, as long as Bush keeps upholding our beliefs, we'll vote for him - and yes, we are more than willing to vote for Jeb Bush in 2008.

You can be with us or against us, but Christians are done sitting at the back of the bus.
 
What about the people who believe in the right to choose and let the woman decide for herself? What about middle-class people having to pay a hefty tax while the rich get to soil in their riches? I believe that it's okay for a man to marry a man if he wanted to, God is Love. A law banning love and saying that it's "Christian"- that doesn't make a lot of sense. God loves us all.
Who cares if the gays want to get married- how will it affect any of us? Look what Las Vegas did to the sanctity of marriage (Britney Spears and Jason Alexander, J.Lo and her 3 husbands, Nicky Hilton and her husband of 4 days) and we're not banning Las Vegas.
Yes, African Americans (and other ethnic races) and Caucasians are created equally- but are they TREATED equally? Fuck no. I'm being mistreated daily for my Native American heritage.
And you are referring to Bill Clinton, who has cheated on his wife, while running this country with no problems for 8 years, NOT John Kerry. Don't think all Democrats are the same.
And you cry for the thousands of aborted babies, but what about the brave and wonderful soldiers that went out there and all died from this war? Grrr, this war wasn't planned right, it's aiming at the wrong enemy, and it's only benefiting Dick Cheney's construction company, which is reaping in the billions.

And yes I am a Christian. That is why I believe that all people should be treated equal, and yes that means the minority races, the homosexuals, women who decide their own fate, and fellow Christians.
 
xtal said:
What about the people who believe in the right to choose and let the woman decide for herself?

Please specify, what is this 'woman' 'choosing' and 'deciding?' Are you talking about ABORTION? The DEATH of an unborn baby? Then have the guts to call it what it is. When you support the 'right to choose' and abortion, you are condoning and justifying the taking of a LIFE. No one should be able to 'choose' death for someone else. I believe in suicide but not murder, not abortion. I'm sick of all the sugar coating and shading of what abortion really is. Calling it a 'choice' does not make it noble, does not make it a good thing. Call it what it really is, and if you have a problem with that and feel the need to cover it up with the word 'choice' to justify it, then maybe you need to rethink your own position. EVERYTHING is a 'choice' but it doesn't mean it's right. There are laws against other bad 'choices' such as murder, rape and robbery!


What about middle-class people having to pay a hefty tax while the rich get to soil in their riches?

The rich save more in taxes because they PAY more! It's all based on what you make, so if you make more, you pay more, and tax cuts save you more. I can see this, and I am far, far from financially well off.



Yes, African Americans (and other ethnic races) and Caucasians are created equally- but are they TREATED equally? Fuck no.

No, but it isn't right to make them treated higher than someone else either. Everyone should be treated equal, but unfortunately you will never change the attitudes of everyone in the world. Is it fair that my white male nephew has been denied entry to his 3 favorite colleges because of his grade point average, but found out if he had been a minority he'd have gotten in anyway? He's from a poor family too! Affirmative action discriminates against poor whites. NO ONE should be discriminated against!
 
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Headache in a Suitcase said:
let's add yet another reason to the list of why kerry lost... latinos.

latinos are the fastest growing "minority" in the united states... bush and republicans have made HUGE gains with the latino vote, to the point where it pretty much cancels out the black vote, which has always gone democratic.

What do you mean with "huge gains"?
According to this breakdown by demographic, the latino vote still preferred Kerry, with something like a 58% to 42% difference.

exit-polls.gif
 
Popmartijn said:


What do you mean with "huge gains"?
According to this breakdown by demographic, the latino vote still preferred Kerry, with something like a 58% to 42% difference.

exit-polls.gif

:sigh: i said huge gains... i did not say he won the vote. notice the difference between the black vote and the latino vote. latinos still voted more for kerry than for bush. but in many of the swing states, the percentage of latinos who picked bush over kerry was up from 2000 as many as 12 to 14 points. even in new york state the bush's latino numbers were up 6%. that is a huge gain... not a victory... a gain.
 
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townhall.com

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The 51 percent nation
Michael Barone (back to web version) | Send


November 8, 2004


Love is stronger than hate. That is the lesson of the 2004 election results. Millions of Democrats and leftists have been seething with hatred for George W. Bush for years, and many of them lined up before the polls opened to cast their votes against him -- one reason, apparently, that the exit poll results turned out to favor Democrats more than did the actual results.

But Republicans full of love, or at least affection, for George W. Bush turned out steadily later in the day or sent in their ballots days before. They have watched "old media" -- The New York Times, the broadcast networks CBS, ABC and NBC -- beat up on Bush for the past year, and they have listened to the sneers and slurs directed at him by coastal elites for a long time. Now they had their chance to speak. They did so loudly and clearly, giving Bush the first popular-vote majority for president in 16 years.

The line among political insiders was that turnout would increase from 2000 and that higher turnout would favor John Kerry. Right and wrong. Turnout was up 11 percent, but Bush's total votes were up 18 percent from 2000, while Kerry's were up just 10 percent from Al Gore's.

The Democrats relied on labor unions and billionaire-financed 527 organizations for their turnout drives. They depended primarily on paid workers, some of whom were very good and some very poor; some signed up Mary Poppins, and one in Ohio was paid with crack cocaine. The Bush campaign built its own organization and relied primarily on volunteers, some 1.2 million of them. Volunteers were given varied tasks and numeric goals, and were repeatedly tested. They delivered on Election Day.

On election night, most observers were focusing on central cities to see how many votes the Democrats would roll up. Working for Fox News, I concentrated on smaller counties in Florida, Ohio and other target states in which all or nearly all the precincts had reported results. I found a clear pattern in state after state. In small and medium-sized counties, turnout was up, by 10 percent, 20 percent, even 40 percent in fast-growing areas, and the Bush percentage was up as well, by 2, 4 or even 8 percentage points. Aggregate those increases, and you have more new Republican votes than new Democratic votes in Cuyahoga or Broward counties. That, repeated over and over again, is the story of this election. Karl Rove's strategy of concentrating on increasing Republican turnout worked.

Four years ago, I wrote that this was a 49 percent nation. In the 1996, 1998 and 2000 House elections, Republicans led in the popular vote by 49 to 48 or 48.5 percent; the 2000 presidential election was a 48 to 48 percent tie. Americans seemed evenly divided, mainly on cultural and religious lines. In 2002, that changed a bit: Republicans won the House vote 51 percent to 46 percent, while Bush's job approval hovered around 65 percent.

This year his job rating has hovered around 50 percent or below. He has been the target all year of vicious and biased coverage from old media, many if not most of whose personnel saw their job as removing this scourge from the presidency. The "60 Minutes" story about Bush's Air National Guard service, which was based on obviously forged documents, is only the most egregious example. Old media have headlined violence in Iraq and reported almost nothing about positive developments there; they highlighted the charges of self-promoter Joseph Wilson and spoke nary a word when they were proved bogus; they have given good economic news far less positive coverage than they did when Bill Clinton was in office.

Yet the results of this election closely resemble the 2002 House results. Bush beat Kerry 51 percent to 48 percent; the popular vote for the House appears to be about 51 percent to 47 percent Republican. Voters knew the stakes -- polls showed majorities thought this was an important and consequential election -- and both candidates had plenty of opportunity to make their cases. Thanks to the 527s, more money was apparently spent against Bush than for him. So the results cannot be dismissed as an accident. We are now a 51 percent nation, a Republican majority, as once again in America, love has proved stronger than hate.
 
Well one sign for me of John Kerry's integrity is the story of Clinton calling him and basically telling him that, for political purposes, he should support the gay marriage bans.

Kerry told him he wouldn't do it. To me that's integrity. From what I've read, that cost him plenty of votes.
 
On this one point, however, Kerry showed two messages. When compared to GWB, Kerry said the matter should be left to the states (i.e., should be banned at that level - not by Constitutional Amendment). But when it came to individual state actions, he was silent.
 
Kerry's campaign relied too much on image and not enough on substance. He tried to sell an image of himself as a "brave Vietnam veteran" when he should have been articulating plans for the fiture. We vote for presidents, not a package from GM. Also, he tried selling Clinton's message without Clinton's political skills, and it didn't work.
 
Originally posted by diamond on another thread

2004_results_by_county..gif



Looking at this got me thinking about another thing that backfired on Kerry. He and his people were always pushing the 'this is the most important election of our lives!' thing, and 'the time is now, this will decide the future of our nation, we all must get out and vote, it matters!' Well. Apparently the message DID get out, because we had a record number of voters. However, unfortunately for him, he overestimated and misjudged how many people agreed, but not in the way he wanted;)
 
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/08/watson.policy/index.html

"Before criticizing the Democrats or Kerry too strongly, it is worth remembering that if out of the 115 million-plus voters nationwide, some 70,000 had switched sides in Ohio last week, we would be trumpeting President Kerry instead of President Bush. We would be discussing the groundbreaking miracle of a Catholic, a senator and a Northeastern liberal winning the presidency against a talented and well-funded wartime commander. But as my father taught me long ago, life is a game of inches, and so once again Bush won a difficult presidential election.

In analyzing the 2004 Democratic effort, many political observers will focus on "MMC": the messenger, the message and the campaign. Many of those critiques are likely to be right on. Kerry could have been a more charismatic and enjoyable candidate; Democrats should have had a clearer policy message -- a brand so to speak; and the campaign's television ads and get-out-the-vote effort could have been better.

But one critique that you may not hear is that the next Democratic candidate needs to love policy more. What do I mean? I mean that one of Kerry's real weaknesses may ultimately have been that he did not seem to love policy broadly and know what he wanted to do -- separate and apart from the political strains of the moment or the polls. And so when he discussed creating jobs, fixing the situation in Iraq or helping kids improve their education, the talk sounded to undecided or uninspired voters like just that -- talk. It did not sound concrete and real to many voters (including more than 80 million people who were eligible to vote but did not cast a ballot for Bush, Kerry or anyone else last week).

Part of that may be because while senators create new programs and guidelines, they do not implement them. They often do not see firsthand the jobs being created or destroyed, the list of parks to be cleaned up across a state or the number of new courses the state universities will offer this year. But governors do see such things.

Now that does not mean that any governor is automatically better than any senator as a presidential candidate. But it does mean that the most effective presidential candidates love policy, think deeply and broadly about it, and can personalize it as well. So as the Democrats head into 2008, they would do well to find not only a politically talented candidate or a candidate who just happens to go to church, but a policy-talented candidate whose ideas as well as her or his image and manner will connect with voters."
 
On another board that I frequent, someone mentioned that maybe the next Democratic candidate should be pro-NRA/ guns. They would still maintain the whole pro-abortion rights/ gay rights thing but just concede on that issue. That would swing some states supposedly. Interesting theory/ idea and something the party should consider...
 
Kerry's goose photo op didn't seem to help.

People who support gun control are anti-choice :lol:
 
Flying FuManchu said:
On another board that I frequent, someone mentioned that maybe the next Democratic candidate should be pro-NRA/ guns. They would still maintain the whole pro-abortion rights/ gay rights thing but just concede on that issue. That would swing some states supposedly. Interesting theory/ idea and something the party should consider...

Good grief, do you know which Democratic big shot has a perfect score from the NRA? None other than Howard Dean! He even gave John Kerry some passion, he might give it to the left again in the future. He's someone else to watch out for, in my book. I'm sure he's learned alot from his presidential run. If Iraq goes the way I think it will go, into the Quagmire From Hell--I'm sorry, I'm really pessimistic about Iraq's future-- we just might be ready for him next time.
 
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If Dean takes the DNC leadership post, he will not be able to run for 2008. He seems like he's seriously thinking about it.

I think it was funny how Dean got bashed by his own party and media for talking about trying to reach out to the guys in pick-up trucks, with confederate flags, and guns... LOL... now it seems like that part of the country/ populace may have cost Kerry and the democrats the election. The Dems must be scratching their heads sheepishly now...
 
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U2Kitten said:
Kerry's goose photo op didn't seem to help.

People who support gun control are anti-choice :lol:

The photo-op defintely did not help.

This isn't so cut and dried. I know people who are for gun rights but are pro-abortion rights. The south isn't all about/ filled with Evangelcals or southern Baptists.

Its not about taking a whole lobby/ group from another party. 4 years isn't enough time to do that. Its called dividing the base of your opponent so that they won't vote for the opposing candidate or for them to vote for your candidate. There are single issue voters out there who could care less about economic policy for instance. However gun rights are extremely important to them b/c it is personal. The NRA mobilizes their base well and when an election system such as ours in which an electoral college system determines basically the winner, these small voting blocs probably count. Some people look at gun rights an issue concerning individual freedoms. The democrat party proclaims to be a party of choice and civil rights and freedoms. IMO it wouldn't be hard for their party to embrace the "individual's right to own a gun." Of course it would probably antagonize some of the dems in their party, but politicians aren't above the idea of compromising their ideals in order to win.
 
True, if Dean takes the DNC post he won't be able to run in 2008. He might steer the DNC in the right direction as party head, however. Perhaps he's better off in the DNC role than he would be as a candidate, anyway. He's got some good ideas for the party.
 
The one potential negative for Dean would be, if by the end of Bush's 2nd term, Iraq becomes stable and relatively successful. Remember how much egg Dean got when Saddam was caught... sure he ain't Osama, but Dean came off as too negative when Hussein got caught. Personally, I hope for success and that by the end of the 2nd term, Iraq becomes a successful venture. Without that little Iraq thing, Dean IMO doesn't look as appealing. However, Dean is charismatic and seems to want to reach out for votes which doesn't hurt.
 
The one thing about being the head of the DNC is that he becomes an annoying talking head on every news station/ paper. People got on Dean for his scream and other verbal gaffes. Well the scrutiny stays the same if you are the DNC head IMO. Face it, Dean will be in everyone's face just as McCauliffe was b/c that seems to be the nature of the postion. I always wonder with Dean's temperment, how he will come across to being in the public eye.
 
Quite frankly, I think the "scream" incident in Iowa was a classic case of the press making a mountain out of a molehill. For some reason, Americans are a bit leery of politicians who express too much emotion. I think this is unfortunate. It's the passionate ones who are the ones who can ignite passion in the electorate if you ask me. But actually, I just officially joined Dean's group, Democracy for America, and signed up for a Meet-Up that will occur on the first of December. I can't stop now. It's amazing how many people have signed up with them just since the election. Maybe I'll find out more about his plans at my first meeting. :wink:
 
WASHINGTON - Leaders of several women's groups said Tuesday that Democrat John Kerry fell short in his bid for the White House because he didn't make a more direct appeal for support from women voters.

They noted 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore got 11 percent more support from women voters than George W. Bush did. Kerry's advantage over Bush among women was less — 51-48 in national exit polls.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said the candidate's support eroded from 2000 levels among white women, working women and married women.

"There was an assumption women would be behind the Kerry campaign," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.

The Bush campaign referred to the liberation of Afghan and Iraqi women to appeal to women voters, said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. But "Kerry never drew a very strong contrast with Bush" on women's issues until the end of the campaign, said Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations.

Kerry campaign strategist Michael Meehan said: "John Kerry got 5 to 6 million more votes than any Democrat running for president. Clearly, we appealed to a lot of people, but fell short.
 
I'm not going to bash democrats, but their party needs reformation and definition. They used to appeal to the working class, instead of Hollywood. Now they appeal to the rebellious crowd, which is not a good thing. Campaigning for issues like gay marriage, stem cell research, and abortion are not going to get you elected. Trying to appeal to gays and feminists is killing their party's moral standards. Dropping those issues altogether and focusing on what can benefit the working class - black and white - is how they could get my vote.

Karl Rove is a genius. I'm surprised Bush ran for re-election the way his term had been going. However, I think moral issues should matter much more than they do. People should vote for what they believe in, not just what they were raised with, or vote based on what their ethnicity is. I think it's headed closer in that direction though. The Hispanic population is finding that republicans are for a strong family, and breaking their ethnic gap.

I think the real reason Kerry lost is because he didn't show mainstream America how he could unite the country. Instead, the Kerry campaign I saw was loaded with Bush-bashing and bordered by radicals like Michael Moore, who would've badmouthed the president even if we found bin Laden.

My message is that we should work together instead of bash the president, because it doesn't do any good. People are tired of hearing accusations, so am I. You don't have to be in power to be patriotic and support your leaders, even if they have a different view.
 
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