Okay, now for some expanded, yet still uninformed, speculation.
Why did Bush beat Kerry? And what does that mean in four years? Four big reasons seemed to be the focus in exit polling and general chatter I heard:
- The War on Terror: It’s probably simplistic to say that people just voted their fears, or that those same fears were fanned solely by the GOP in order to win the vote. 9-11 was, after all, just three years ago, and we’ve seen other al-Qa’eda (attributed) attacks since then, elsewhere, so a certain degree of concern over world terror is justified. And, for whatever reason, we’ve not had another attack on US soil, so there’s a certain credit given to Bush. And, beyond that, there was the sense that Bush was willing to send in the Marines, while Kerry would call INTERPOL.
So, then — what happens in four years?
If there hasn’t been a further Big Attack on US Soil by then, I think people will be (perhaps irrationally) willing to move on. The situation will seem to be handled and under control. Beyond which, the person to whom folks looked in trust (Bush) will be leaving the scene, and even his endorsement won’t ring quite the same way.
If there is another big attack, that might not be to the GOP’s benefit, either. Sure, there will be finger-pointing, but it will be an attack on Dubya’s watch (the second, depending on how you count ’em), and folks might decide a different approach, or a different protector, is called for.
In other words, the WoT will not be nearly the GOP vote-getter in 2008 that it was in 2004. Heck, probably not in 2006, either.
(This, as well as the rest, assumes the Dems run a competent candidate. ‘Nuff said.)
- The War in Iraq: There was a lot of anger about Iraq, and, as even more than Bush supporter has noted, the President has not yet sold the American people on the war, just on the need to conclude it well. They trusted Bush to do this more than they trusted Kerry, who was expected (again, with some justification) to cut and run.
If things are still dicey in Iraq in four years, though, the GOP will be in serious trouble. Heck, make it two years, at the mid-term elections. And “dicey” in this case means ongoing major insurgency troubles regardless of whether US troops are there. At that point, the question of whether we should have gone in will be moot — it will be what we did once we were there, and the fault will lie fully on Bush, and, by extension, the GOP. (The Dems may, in the long run, be thankful that they and Kerry didn’t get stuck with this.)
If Iraq is going well in ’06 or ’08, it will bolster the GOP to some degree (especially if the Dems nominate a major war opponent). It will stand as proof that the Republicans are serious and effective in foreign policy. But it will not be nearly the electoral factor that it was this time around (foreign policy rarely drives elections — just as George Bush in 2000).
- The Economy: Just as Clinton benefited from a bubble that wasn’t primarily his doing, Bush suffered from the bursting thereof which, along with other factors, led to a recession. While not as effective in doing something about it as might be desired (though, in reality, the tax cuts probably did help spur the recovery), he managed to duck most of the responsibility and fallout — largely by depending on the previous two factors to cover for it. After all, you expect hardship in wartime, right?
But if the recovery is too sickly, or too brief, the GOP will reap the punishment in ’06 and ’08. Indeed, they may have done Dems a favor this year by winning, if things go south again in the economy.
If, on the other hand, the recovery is strong and lasting, the GOP will benefit. But, then, so will everyone else, right? So it’s not exactly something anyone would want to root against.
- The Culture War: As noted previously, there’s speculation that the populace is just plain ol’ getting more “conservative,” and this helped Bush this year (to get out the vote, if nothing else).
The question remains, is this just a hiccup? A last hurrah? Or perhaps it’s just folks holding up their hands for a moment to say “whoa” and catch their breath. Or maybe the pendulum really is swinging back.
What comes from that, though, is open to question. If the GOP pushes this too hard, then moderates who aren’t comfortable with gay marriage but who certainly don’t want to see Uncle Fred tossed in the clink because he lives with a “friend” are liable to defect in ’08, or even ’06. Folks who don’t like screwing around with the US Constitution are unlikely to go along with that sort of thing, either. And if the general population doesn’t want to see old traditions and mores tossed out by activist judges and left-wing loonies, they’re probably going to not be happy to see new rights that affect their family and friends tossed out (or not protected) by activist judges and right-wing loonies.
The general shift of the population back to the “right” may not be real or persistent. But if it is, it’s probably the most serious, long-term threat to the Dems and their constituency groups of any of these, since, after all, it would represent the will of the majority. I don’t think it’s a card the GOP can play too overtly, or too often, though; the populace may want to pull back a little to the right, but they don’t want to be pulled that direction too far, too fast, any more than they want to be pulled to the left too far or too fast. If the Dems are targeted and effective in their protestations and opposition, they will do a lot better than if they just reflexively resist anything that the GOP puts forward.
To that end, the biggest concern is probably that Bush & Co. will nominate all sorts of “awful” judges. The Dems have to be careful how they react here, and pick their battles carefully. Too much obstructionism makes them out as being solely partisan in their actions, and gives the GOP ammo for the next election. It’s dangerous to let bad judicial nominations through, but it may be necessary to let sub-optimal ones by in order to effectively stop the really bad ones.
There are a number of other factors that could come into play over the next four years.
- The way the Bush Administration comports itself could play a small part of future electoral decisions — bullying, or arrogance, or continued refusal to let the buck stop there will not, in and of itself, affect an election, but it will leave a taint, a bad taste in the public’s mouth that could tip a balance.
- It’s unlikely the environment will play a substantially greater part in folks’ decisions — those swayed by it already took that into account this time around — unless things get much more obviously worse in the next four years, the GOP is too overtly destructive of environmental laws, or there’s some sort of disaster that can be laid at their feet. But, again, for most voters the environment is a background issue, something that flavors the election decision, not something that decides it.
- A lot of folks are worried about civil liberties (on the Left and on the Right), but it seems unlikely that anything short of a major homeland security effort that would have much of the GOP in Congress in rebellion would actually make it a significant factor over the next few elections. Things will get a bit worse, but I don’t expect to see bar codes on everyone’s forehead and Orwellian televiewers in everyone’s home by 2008.
- Other foreign policy hot-spots could play a role. Iran and North Korea are obviously trouble spots. China is probably smart enough not to overplay its hand against the US just yet, but miscalculations could occur. Beyond Iraq and the WoT, if there are significant foreign policy blunders by Bush, it might have a small effect (though, again, foreign policy rarely decides elections.
- A scandal of some sort is possible to tip the scales — there are any number of skeletons rattling around in the White House closets. The problem is, I think folks are getting tired of the scandal shtick, largely because it’s been used indiscriminately as a club by both parties, rarely with the significance matching the sound and fury that accompanied it. It’s all too likely, though, that a major scandal in the Bush administration wouldn’t seriously hurt the GOP in ’06 or ’08, both because of their control of Congress (which would be expected to take the lead in any sort of inquiry) and because the population will attribute it more to being a political attack than a substantive indictment, all things being equal.
Bottom line, some of the bigger items that Bush was able to leverage this time around — Iraq, and the War on Terror — are unlikely to be significant benefits in 2008, but hold the risk of being significant dangers (assuming the Dems don’t self-destruct). The economy could affect the next presidential election in either direction, depending on where it is as of July 2008 (to that end, it might be best of the Dems to not win back Congress in ’06). The culture war aspect may be the biggest problem for the Dems and the Left to overcome, assuming it’s real, but that also assumes that GOP arrogance doesn’t create a backlash toward the center.
Of course, there may be a completely new factor in the next two years, and four, that nobody can predict now. After all, nobody in 2000 would have predicted either of the first two as major election-deciders.
It should be an interesting (cue Chinese proverb) next few months, seeing which way things are starting to go.
UPDATE: Doyce has his election post mortem. Good stuff — and, if what he says is true, probably not his “last political post for awhile,” regardless of the title.
“with some justification”
What justification? Kerry flat-out said he would hunt down and kill terrorists. Can’t get much clearer than that, can you?
The administration is already crowing about the victory, and Tom DeLay is on record as stating “we can really get something done now” with the larger GOP base in Congress.
This bodes ill for us. I refuse to support Bush — I will not be a moderate in dealing with him, since he cares not one whit about reaching across the aisle and building bridges. His record shows that, and that’s when he didn’t win the popular vote.
History will not look kindly on Bush for what he’s done, and the coming four years may make the past four look like a warmup. I seriously fear for our futures.
With respect to the culture war, it is the whoever goes first loses. Because the gay community went for broke and moved first, they lost. If there was no triggering event, the FMA would have been a debacle for the Republicans. That’s because the responder is viewed as more “reasonable” by moderates. The following is a good synopsys of the phenomenon known as mentally-anguished fence sitters. An interesting discussion thread was on my blog last year, here.
February of this year, I had a discussion discussing this issue. In it, I predicted a backlash as a result of San Francisco. An ironic part of this was that the subject of the thread was Mary Cheney!
According to NPR most of the new GOP Congresscritters are from the conservative side of their party. Expect them to push hard. Add in the likely new neocon Supreme Court justices and things will get interesting. Kiss the right to choose goodbye, for instance. (And rightly so; America’s women have spoken.) School prayer? An increasingly imperial presidency. Prisoners’ or defendents’ rights dwindled away to third-world (or Texan) levels. Further gerrymandering without much court interference. Possible reorganization of the tax code to some sort of flat tax — has that been tried anywhere successfully?
My guess for when the new Draft fires up: three months after the next congressional elections. They won’t want to backtrack on their promises for a year or so, and after that they’ll be too worried about the elections. The Guard and Reserve should last another year or two before being completely ruined.
Designing a new Selective Service system presents some challenges. Our high-tech, highly trained military needs better educated, more motivated guys than the armed services of two generations ago. Nor can they be properly trained in the old style two year enlistment. At the other end, back in the day they could make sure that the sons of privilege were exempt with college deferments and the old-style Guard and Reserves. Nowadays a greater percentage of people go to college and the Guard and Reserve are no longer safe havens. What to do?
No teenage males in my family but I’m a little concerned for Justin.
I think your concerns are exaggerrated (and I look hopefully back to the last time a pack of freshman Republicans invaded Congress, and how long that lasted), but time will tell.
Not really. The list assumes they can get half again to twice as much of their agenda through as in the first 4 years. With a bigger majority of more extreme congressfolk, and more Supremes backing them up, what’s to stop them? GWB already ignores the Supreme Court’s decisions when he doesn’t like them and he treats the Geneva Convention as something he can ignore whenever it suits him. With no effective blowback so far.
Roe v. Wade has been on life support for a while, with most American women unwilling to guard the plug. If it goes, what will happen? Some poor women will suffer, RU-486 will gain black-market popularity, the lower middle class can vacation in Mexico (as of old), the upper middles in Europe (as of old) and the rich can go abroad or have their personal physicians attend to the problem (as of old). It might become a bit harder for young men of modest means and personal attractiveness to get laid, but it’s not like they vote much.
As to the Draft, Rumsfield himself said that Iraq will take a good long time and the military is showing the strain already. Iraq ops alone will require more people and unless the economy tanks it’ll be hard to recruit them. We may or may not have other calls on our military at the same time. GWB is limiting our commitments to Darfur to occasional hot air, despite clear genocide by Islamic militants and a bunch of people who desperately need Freedom. If we’re letting that go then Mugabe is safe. North Korea has nukes so we’re staying the hell away. If China decides it’s time to eat Taiwan we’ll do nothing (“Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy,” Powell told Phoenix TV.). Iran is a possibility, if we act before they go nuclear. On the other hand, Iran has nearly three times the population of Iraq and a generation ago they were so fanatical that they routinely used child volunteers (Iranian children) to clear mine fields by walking around in them. Oofah.
Four More Years: the Best from Elsewhere
Since I’m still somewhat dumbstruck, I’ll give you a roundup of some of the best stuff I’ve read from others about the Bush re-election…
Well…
Listening to the real ‘mericans yesterday and this morning at work I got a little in-site as to how they were thinking on the second.
1. The SCOTUS. Yeppers, that was the biggie, and swayed two religious Dems over to bush. They want to overturn , Roe and Griswald, and let Roy’s Rock Rule. They want to force everybody to pray to something, and if you don’t you don’t get to be a citizen.
2. Gays are liars, and just because they themselves don’t want to have sex with people of the same sex, doesn’t mean that gay people are the same. Gay people can and should be changed to be just like everybody else. Gay marriage is somehow a special right, even though they don’t see this as a special right for themselves. Hetero’s living together is also wrong and should be punished. Gay people should become hetero’s, go back into the closet, or they will forcibly put back there.
3. And oh yeah, Everybody who is not like us (I’m confused on this on), needs to be rounded up and put in camps and or deported. Hollywood needs to forced to go back to the days of the Hay’s office becuse there is just to much non-christian things out there for people to see and read.
4. Nothing on taxes, the “WoT, SS, health care, or the economy. Nothing to do with anything for a positive future.
Boulder Dude, that’s looking at it too much in an issues-oriented fashion. Values transcend issue. See my post this morning for a more extended analysis.
Sadly, no Rich.
I am looking at this from a “values” perspective, and just because my values are different from yours does not make them somehow into issues. People on the left and on the right just have very different world views and those world views shape their Values. The right and the left are reaching a point in which can longer communicate with each other because when they look at something they each come away with a completely different perspective.
I know that the right has Values, I just happen to disagree with them, or disagree with how they want to go about achieving them, which is all the more painful from a left perspective. The left Values freedom, choice and Liberty. We really have no problem with the right doing what ever it wants to do (as long as it doesn’t effect us), but what causes us heart burn is that the right has a tendency to deny, restrict, and do away with those freedoms, choices, and liberties that we fought so hard for in the first place.
I have no problem with god, or religion. In fact, some aspects of it I find quite enjoyable (I love the choir at St. Johns Cathedral, and the blessing of the animal’s service). I feel that people can do what ever makes them happy as long as it doesn’t get up the noses of others. I tend to see good and evil in every form of religion, and when one religion becomes the “one true belief” in a pluralistic society bad things tend to happen. I do not want to have to pledge to something I don’t believe in at every game I go to (I either sit, or leave out the under god part).
I also so see no way to bridge the gap when for the past 12 years the following has been true:
Liberal=Evil
Liberal=Traitor
Liberal=sub-human
Liberal =both the Elite wealthy, and some how evil commie bastards.
All this has done is to bring both sides of the divide to the same level of communication.
I am not talking about convincing “the right”. I am talking about convincing religious folk in the Red States. Many liberal causes can and have been justified from Scripture. For example, William Jennings Bryan was an evangelical and a pacifist who opposed WWI. Machen opposed prohibition. Sojourners is a liberal evangelical group. Much of the civil rights movement had relgious motivations. My argument is the Democrats by framing the argument as secular vs. religous shoves evangelicals into the Religous Right by default. Bill Clinton got 1/3 of the white evangelical vote in 1996. John Kerry got next to none. He also lost a significan proportion of African American evangelicals. That alone was the difference between winning and losing. There is a way for the left to convince evangelicals to vote for them but they aren’t doing it.
Ok…
I’ll bite.
What is the thing that the Democrats can do to get the Evangelicals on board.
Who are we going to cast off of the life boat.
Also, for every example you listed above the majority were using religion to justify the opposite.
I’ll requote from my blog:
1. Make sure your value system is coherant.
2. Don’t impute motives. Don’t assume you know why we do things unless we tell you. You rightly felt indignant when the right did the same to you. This is just a universal human thing. No one likes being lied about. Evangelicals are no exception.
3. Avoid worldly sophistication. In other words, don’t color something gray unless the complexity of the moral situation warrants it.
4. Don’t belittle faith but leverage it. I’ll expand on this because this is the lynchpin. White evangelicals elevate “values” over “self-interest” because to do otherwise is to be selfish. (This. by the way, distinguishes us from the faux evangelical, Rush Limbaugh. He said the biggest thing he learned in Sunday School was the famous Franklin quote “God helps those who help themselves”, an utterly unbiblical concept.) You want us to raise taxes even though it would mean less money in our pocket? Show us it is the right and Biblical thing to do. This was successfully done in Alabama over the screams of the Religious Right. Getting back to number 2. If you believe that you are being lied about, invoke the Ninth Commandment (Protestant numbering). This would actually be a good way to peel us away from the right because we absolutely despise hypocrites since hypocrisy is the thing which angered Jesus most. Case in point: check out Keyes’ poll numbers. Evangelicals abandoned him early on because of his hypocrisy.
Bottom line, while evangelicals are currently aligned with the right this is not a permanent alignment like African Americans with the left. We are to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and God that which is God’s. Who I am is more defined by my religion than by my politics. Show me what you believe is the right thing and I will change my politics in a heartbeat.
Per an e-mailed comment, an interesting and fitting commentary by Juan Cole about just this theme, with an example of how the gay marriage/union thing could actually be turned to the Democrats’ side in more conservative areas:
But if Democrats were sly, there is a way out. The Baptist southern presidential candidate should start a campaign to get the goddamn Federal government out of the marriage business. It has to be framed that way. Marriage should be a faith-based institution and we should turn it over to the churches. If someone doesn’t want to be married in a church, then the Federal government can offer them a legal civil contract (this is a better name for it than civil union). That’s not a marriage and the candidate could solemnly observe that they are taking their salvation in their own hands if they go that route, but that is their business. But marriage is sacred and the churches should be in charge of it.
If you succeeded in getting the Federal government out of the marriage business, then the whole issue would collapse on the Republicans. You appeal to populist sentiments against the Feds and to the long Baptist tradition of support for the US first amendment enshrining separation of religion and state.
The difficulties here would be it’s a suspicious libertarian solution for many liberals/progressives to buy into, and it is perhaps too obvious a “sly” scheme (or could be spun that way). I dunno.
On the other hand, I’d be perfectly happy to see this arrangement.
Rich, I think Riley tried very hard in Alabama to get the taxes raised and failed. One or the other of our memories is wrong. And if people can’t see that corporations and the wealthy are paying less and less of the income taxes, and more and more of it is coming out of the lower and middle classes’ pockets (possibly including their own), then why should I think they can be persuaded of anything more abstract?
I have been under the impression that it is the Religious Right and some of their allies who have cast the debate in terms of the faithful and the irreligious liberals. I’m thinking of republican pols like Bush who were the first ones that I noticed who used their religion to attract faithful voters. Perhaps I’m just missing the democratic equivalent, but I can’t think of any cases that would demonstrate that the democrats expressly took the stance that they were non-religious. I think there’s more talk of the separation of church and state from the left — is that what you (Rich) mean when you say the left frames the debate as secular versus religious?
And if people can’t see that corporations and the wealthy are paying less and less of the income taxes, and more and more of it is coming out of the lower and middle classes’ pockets (possibly including their own), then why should I think they can be persuaded of anything more abstract?
Okay, everybody say it with me. “Corporations don’t pay taxes.” Corporate executives pay taxes. Corporate employees pay taxes. Corporate shareholders pay taxes. Corporate customers pay taxes. Corporations don’t pay taxes.
While it is true that more taxes are being paid by the middle and lower classes, by far most remains being paid by the upper classes. For example,
A Kerry ad that claims to tell “the truth on taxes” falls short of doing so. It says that “after nearly four years under George Bush, the middle class is paying a bigger share of American’s tax burden and the wealthiest are paying less.”
That’s true as far as it goes. However, the total federal tax burden on all income groups has been reduced, just more for some than for others. It’s true that the top 20% of income earners now pay a smaller share of the reduced tax burden, but so do the bottom 40% of earners.
Those in the middle 20% now pay an average of 14.5% of their income for all federal taxes, a reduction 1.9 percentage points as a result of the Bush cuts. That middle group pays 10.5% of the reduced overall federal tax burden. That share has gone up as the Kerry ad says — by 2/10ths of one percentage point.
In a progressive tax system, we expect that those who have more “disposable” income (and who benefit most from a healthy society) will pay more in for taxes. What exactly that progressivity should be remains open to debate, as does what level of taxation overall is acceptible or productive, and tax cuts and spending increases play together.
Perhaps I’m just missing the democratic equivalent, but I can’t think of any cases that would demonstrate that the democrats expressly took the stance that they were non-religious.
I can’t think of any in the mainstream who do so overtly, but certainly there are plenty who feel and express to different degrees that the particular kind of religiousness of the Right (socially conservative evangelical Christianity) is more dangerous and less good than other forms of religiosity, or the secular, humanistic values that were among the underpinnings of this nation’s founding.
Or, to turn around BD’s formulation above:
Conservative=Evil
Conservative=Oppressor
Conservative=Elitist
Conservative =both the Elite wealthy, and some how evil Deliverance yokels.
I think both pictures (of Liberals and Conservatives) are only the grossest of stereotypes (and I say that as someone who has been accused of being both).
Or, to put it another way, it’s all about ideology. Religion, particular branches of religion, are ideology. So is the concept of tolerance and inclusion. So is communism. So is the idea of each person deserving to make their own personal choices in life. All of those are ideologies, of greater or lesser organization. The person on the Left who frames the debate in terms of “All of us freedom-minded, loving, tolerant, true adherents of the American Way, vs. those Other Guys Over There” is being just as ideologically divisive as someone on the Right who frames it in terms of “All of us God-fearing, moral, family-supporting, true adherents of the American Way, vs. those Other Guys Over There.”
Kevin Drum suggests:
Here’s the thing: we’re never going to win over the hard core evangelicals, the ones who want to ban abortion, teach creationism in biology classes, and recriminalize gay sex. What’s more, we shouldn’t try. Religious extremism conflicts with the core values of liberalism, and the only thing we can do is continue fighting these folks tooth and nail. No amount of “reaching out” is going to touch them.
But the fact is that we don’t need to reach them anyway. We didn’t lose the election by much, and there are plenty of red staters who aren’t extremists. They’re the ones who are uncomfortable with homosexuality, but understand that a steadily increasing acceptance of gay rights is probably inevitable. They don’t want to ban abortion, but feel like it’s common sense to require parental notification. And they’re ready to agree that we need to do something about global warming, but that doesn’t mean they take kindly to thinly veiled accusations that they’re personally responsible for it just because they drive an SUV or eat a Big Mac.
In other words, they disagree with us, but not so much that they can’t be brought around or persuaded to vote for us based on other issues. Too often, though, a visceral loathing of being lectured at by city folks wins out and they end up marking their ballots for people like George Bush.
So maybe we should knock it off. I know it’s fun, but most of the time it’s pointless and misguided — and it costs us elections and prevents even modest progress on issues we care about. That’s a high price to pay for a bit of fun.
Or maybe the whole “the nation voted on moral issues/the crazed theocrats won” interpretation is simplistic. As Michael Totten puts it:
The Republican Party has a nut-job wing. Pat Robertson is real. James Dobson is real. Michael Savage is real. These guys have fans, and they voted. There’s no denying it. But there’s also no denying that if John Kerry faced Pat Robertson in an election the Republican Party would have to dig itself out of a smouldering crater.
Kevin Drum belittled us for fun?!? I am one of those moderate Evangelicals Kevin is referring to. Is there ANY core in the Democratic party?
“Corporations don’t pay taxes.”
Your definitions are different, apparently. Every annual report I’ve ever perused has an expense item for income taxes. For that matter, one of the tools people use in making investment decisions is called EBITDA, or Earnings Before Income Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization.
So what exactly do you mean by your statement?
Unless you’re saying that the shareholders are the ultimate payers of the taxes by virtue of a reduction in their returns, in which case it’s pretty abstract, but ok.
One comment on the Totten quote. 4 million evangelicals did not vote in 2000, largely due to the DUI charge against Bush. The evangelicals who did vote in 2000 were the so-called “crazed theocrats”. So, the difference in the election is not the Religious Right but the Religious Middle. The “values” angle was not to insure that the FMA was passed. In fact, I wish they would have polled the people who voted for the ballot issues because it would have probably shown a large plurality would oppose the FMA. What was offensive concerning the whole San Francisco/Massachussetts thing was that it was imposing morality from the left. Thus, people could vote for the ballot initiatives but oppose the FMA because that is imposing morality from the right.
Here’s what the “values” thing mean to moderate evangelicals. We vote based on the perceived character of the candidates. We don’t know which issues a president will face, so voting based on the “issues” is foolish. One candidate embraced what we hold dear and the other trashed it (cf. Whoopi Goldberg). Guess which candidate we voted for. We did not reject gays. We rejected a straight man named John Kerry. Values is not an issue. It is a meta-issue.
Unfortunately, I believe the left has succesfully spooked gays who supported Bush. I was optimistic that some common ground between us could have been found as a silver lining from the Mary Cheney incident. I am more pessimistic on this score now.
P.S. From a political calculus standpoint, Bush/Rove were brilliant. Note that I called this in advance. They got the moderate evangelicals out and held the gay vote which was the same percentage as 2000.
So what exactly do you mean by your statement?
I’m saying that corporations pass on taxes, as a cost of doing business, to others. They pay their shareholders lower dividends. They raise their prices. They try to reduce their costs (either through eliminating inefficiencies, reducing investment, or by workforce management).
With the exception of eliminating inefficiencies (which they’re incented to do already), the cost of taxes are passed on to everyone else the corporate touches.
Commentary from another person who had plenty of foundational reasons to vote Kerry and instead voted Bush. And it has nothing to do with opposing gay marriage …
And commentary from David Brooks about how, looking at the numbers, this was not an electoral decision by a groundswell of evangelicals, pro-lifers, or pray-ers, but of folks approving of Bush (vs. Kerry) on the issues, particularly security/Iraq/WoT stuff.
If so, and if my first two numbered points at the top of this (long) post are accurate, then this should be less of an issue (or dividing issue) in 2008.
Here’s the money quote from Brooks:
I saw the cocooning that Brooks labels as insularity on the left-hand side of the blogosphere prior to the election. It is one thing to say that my candidate is better than your candidate but that my voters are better than your voters is another thing altogether. I have a neighbor who has a home-made bumber sticker, “I voted with the 48% who weren’t stupid.”
If the Democrats keep this up they will turn a single election defeat into permanent irrelevance. There are positive signs that there are some Democrats including former President Clinton who are trying to understand us. I will do my best to help them out. Even if we don’t agree, mutual understanding never hurts.
The only mitigating thing I can say, though, is that I’ve heard a lot of similar rhetoric (“Those people are just stupid”) from some on the right-hand side of the blogosphere, and it’s as unfortunate there as on the other side.
Dave, please point me to this so I can give them a “spanking” from the same side. Knowing what it feels like to be misunderstood should be a powerful incentive to make sure that we are not just as guilty of this concerning others.
I will do so as I run across it again. (I’d just as soon give everybody an amnesty for the last several months.)
I am willing to give amnesty for the other side, but a little “friendly persuasion” on my own I believe would be helpful.
The Kerry voters I know voted because of the depressed economic conditions here in Colorado, outsourcing, and because of Bush’s education policy. Only one was a virulent ABB type. None of them were stupid.
According to Rich, “Here’s what the “values” thing mean to moderate evangelicals. We vote based on the perceived character of the candidates.”
Just off the top of my head:
When GWB was Governor of Texas he did nothing to reform their famed notions of “justice”, like that it’s just dandy if a defendant’s lawyer sleeps through the trial, despite the fact that the stakes are high in Execution Central.
Google ‘bush geneva convention’ and look for the articles that cite the portions of the treaty America has violated on GWB’s orders. You remember the Geneva Convention, it comes up a lot in movies where the Nazis or Soviets or Imperial Japanese Army is pissing on it, proving them to be very bad people indeed. I feel sooo proud to have my nation join such a fine group. Other, less cinematic members: Saddam’s Iraq, Sudan right now, Argentina during the Dirty War.
Values, eh?
BTW — Whoopi Goldberg wasn’t the candidate and wasn’t his spokesperson.
Now I am Six!
When I was One, I had just begun; When I was Two, I was nearly new; When I was Three, I was hardly me; When I was Four, I was…