Ann Althouse has an interesting piece on why Kerry lost her vote in November. I have a feeling that it’s emblematic of a number of people who are either swinging towards Bush as the devil they know, or will just stay home or refrain from voting on the Presidential ballot. It’s interesting watching the Democratic party lose the swing vote as only the rabid partisans remain.
What’s killing Kerry isn’t so much the Swift Boat issue anymore (for the most part they were always preaching to the choir anyway and their last ad was simply atrocious), but his own character flaws. As Althouse notes, Kerry’s plan for Iraq has always been either non-existant or incoherent. After months of reading news stories and following the campaign closely, I still have no idea what Kerry’s plan is other than nebulous talk of bringing in foreign troops. What troops and from where remains entirely unanswered.
I also agree that Kerry’s idiotic snub of Prime Minister Allawi will likely mark the end of his campaign. He looked small and shrill by attacking a world leader from Columbus and he betrayed his own rhetoric about “respecting our allies.” How can the United States be respected in the world when John Kerry and his campaign staff are publicly insulting the leader of a country that is depending on us to protect them from chaos? If John Kerry were to be President, does he think that Allawi would trust him now? He would have to work with Prime Minister Allawi, and he’s preemptively sabotaged that relationship with his careless words. At the very least Kerry should have fired Joe Lockhart on the spot, but we all know that Kerry doesn’t have the guts to do something like that.
Now, this race isn’t over, not by a longshot, but Kerry continues to make it more and more difficult for himself. His inability to formulate a coherent message has hurt him, and his own arrogance is coming back to haunt him. If this is the John Kerry we can expect to see in the debates, this race may be nowhere near as close as it was six weeks ago.
With constant bad news coming from Iraq, more Americans are inclined to believe Kerry’s assessment of the situation in the country than Allawi’s. While it’s a fair point to say that Kerry is establishing a poor relationship with Allawi, and in the event he becomes President, will already have to mend some fences after bad-mouthing him last week, it’s more important that Kerry acknowledge Allawi’s primary allegiance is to George Bush rather than reality. It’s also highly unlikely Allawi will be alive by January, and even if he is, his authority will probably be even further eroded. It’s easy to understand why Kerry’s exercise in truth-telling about Iraq blows the minds of partisans like yourself who will spin the Iraqi situation until you faint. The majority of Americans who now feel Iraq was a mistake appear to be paying attention, however, and if Kerry can articulate himself at the debates as well as he did last week, he will swing far more voters his direction than the Ann Althouses going the other direction (notice how she still didn’t say she was voting for Bush).
It strikes me as pretty comical that you and other GOP shills are betting the farm on women voters holding to their current flirtation with the Bush campaign. It strikes that, if you are not gay, you should spend a little less time in front of a computer and a little more time getting to know the female gender. If you did, your swagger about Bush’s improvement with women voters would turn into knee-buckling fear. Most of the women who turned Bush’s way after the GOP convention can be counted on to change their minds at least a dozen times between now and the election, and will probably change their minds several times during each debate, after hearing a couple statements they like or dislike from each of the candidates. Women may very well end up siding more with Bush in 2004 than they did in 2000, but only after shifting their opinion several times between now and then and ultimately swinging Bush’s way at the right time (seems like if Kerry really is a flip-flopper, he’d be getting 90% of the female vote). The truth is, there has never been a guaranteed election outcome since the Woodrow Wilson era. As soon as the fickle female gender was granted voting rights, every election has been completely up-for-grabs, at least to some extent. Neither you or I is qualified to predict the outcome of this race….unless Ann Coulter gets her wish and women’s suffrage is revoked.
Don’t get much from the ladies do you?
For the record, both my incredibly lovely, gracious, and intelligent significant other and my formerly liberal sister are voting for Bush this year. Accusing women of being fickle is also blatantly untrue. Women’s voting patterns tend more Democratic than men, but are remarkably stable.
There must be some kind of pathological need for Democrats to start insulting everyone when they’re losing an election. Last time I checked, accusing women of being unable to make up their minds is hardly the kind of argument I’d want to make if I were trying to win the female vote.
I’m not trying to win the female vote as I am not running for office. Any woman immature enough to read my accurate statement and penalize me by taking it out on John Kerry and the Democratic Party was probably not mature enough to be voting for Kerry in the first place. I realize the truth about women voters is as painful for you to accept as the truth about conditions in Iraq and the devastating consequences of Bush’s tax cut, so you do your usual….step up on the hamster wheel and start spinning. Still, you must be scared to death every time you think of Al Gore’s female voter-fueled double-digit convention bounce that stemmed from his prolonged kiss with Tipper. One debonair move by Kerry in the last week of the campaign could just as easily be enough to produce a Kerry landslide. Damn, that must scare the hell out of you. 🙂
By the way, citing two females constantly inundated with your right-wing propaganda who plan to vote Bush isn’t exactly a representative sample. I’ve persuaded more than a couple young Republican women into the Democratic fold. I guess that makes it official! Kerry wins!
Hint: When in a hole, it’s a bad idea to keep digging.
Any comments about the voting patterns of women aside, yeah, Kerry isn’t getting my vote in November, but it would probably take more intensive mind control than anything the pentagon could ever whip up to get me to vote for Bush. So Badnarik it is, I guess. 🙂
(In truth, if I lived in Minnesota or another swing state, I’d probably hold my nose and pull the lever for Kerry as I did for Gore in 2000, but I’m a South Dakotan, and can afford to be principled…)
Last year at this time, I flirted with the fantasy of a blue South Dakota on November 2, 2004. It would have taken ideal circumstances and a better candidate than Kerry, but the state has always had a variety of attributes that should make the Democrats more appealing than the Republicans. Of course, the state has underwent a sea change since the days of George McGovern and the first election of Tom Daschle. The union meatpackers of Sioux Falls have been replaced with Citibank and Gateway yuppies. Populist East River farmers constitute a substantially smaller share of the state population than they did in 1975. Trends are not favorable to Democrats and even if Daschle and Herseth are re-elected, the party’s continued high-profile presence in the state’s politics is living on borrowed time.
As a Western Minnesotan, I haven’t noticed a great deal of ideological difference between my neighbors and the South Dakotans I know, but my SD peer group is far from a representative sample as they all live east of the Mitchell-Huron-Aberdeen line. Political differences seem to alter dramatically west of that line more so than the frequently-cited Missouri River dividing line. Clearly, I am no longer harboring fantasies of “South Dakota for Kerry” and will be happy to see Daschle and Herseth return for an encore at this point.
Kerry would never play in SD, and Bush is too popular.
Now, on the other hand, South Dakota isn’t completely bleak for Democrats. The party breakdown is 36% Dem, 49% Republican, and 15% Independent. The Indies generally lean to the Democrats, and there’s often 20% crossover from the Republican party in congressional races, all of which evens things out a big come election day. Sioux Falls, though a “yuppie town”, still tends more to the Democrats than the Republicans on election day- if I recall correctly, Gore, Clinton, and Dukakis (!) all won Sioux Falls while being beaten like red-headed stepchildren in the rest of the state.
At the same time, I find it unlikely that a democrat could win this state’s measly three electoral votes, though a more moderate democrat with a bit more of a drawl could have stolen enough disaffected Bush voters to at least close to under 10% here (for instance, if Clark or Edwards had won the nomination, I think either would have gone over fairly decently here). But win? Short of Bush being caught naked with a duck, a jar of vaseline, and Keanu Reeves the night before the election, there’s no way in hell that would happen- and I think the voters of South Dakota would still pick Bush over someone like Kerry, even in such an unlikely event… 😉
Gore lost Minnehaha County by 10 points. I doubt he would have been able to win Sioux Falls, but lose the county at-large by such a wide margin. Alas, it will be hard to prove one way or the other because the South Dakota Secretary of State doesn’t break down returns precinct-by-precinct the way Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin do.
You are correct that Clinton won Minnehaha County twice, as well as Michael Dukakis in 1988. Keep in mind though that Sioux Falls was a blue-collar meatpacking town of 80,000 in 1988, as opposed to a yuppie town of 125,000 today. The margins in 1988, 1992 and 1996 were quite close actually. I believe Bush-41 beat Dukakis by 20,000 votes….Bush-41 beat Clinton by 12,000 votes…and Dole beat Clinton by 11,000 votes…all within single-digits. This was the old South Dakota where McGovern and Daschle thrived. The changing population has shifted political alignment to the right, and if the voter registration numbers you present are correct, the gap is growing (the last I heard, SD had a 7-point GOP registration advantage).
I agree that a Clark or an Edwards would have had a better chance at being competitive in SD than will Kerry, who I predict will lose by 12-15 points (but not 20 points like Gore lost by), but both would have fallen short against a Republican in a Presidential election.
Actually it’s a thirteen point gap- the state is 36% Democrat, 49% Republican, and 15% Independent.