An Ironic and Fearful election

[David_Parker]

I am neither Dem or Rep as I have been an advocate for a third party for quite awhile. It seems obvious the third party, if allowed (in reality) would be in the middle, right where I put myself (a little left actually). I voted against Bush, by voting for Kerry. I believe in most everything Nader has to say, but he is not a politician and therefore, by self- admission, unelectable. Thank god he didn't affect the outcome this time.

 

I found a lot of irony in the exit polls. Claiming “morality” was a bigger issue confuses me. I do not find Bush any model of morality. He lies too much. It only serves me to believe that there is a huge mass of uneducated republicans who rely solely on faith to face fear. Bush stands there and says he wants to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage. It doesn't matter what side of that policy you stand. What does matter to me is the IM-morality of that attitude! I mean who the fuck does he think he is...GOD? Apparently too many actually do. It is quite clear that it remains imperative that there is a separation of Church and State in America. It is in the Constitution. So while Bush totes morality through religion in his campaign and people actually buy it, it really pisses me off that they are too stupid to see what they are really advocating... bringing religion into politics. (I thought Kerry did a wonderful job addressing this issue in the debates.)

 

The other thing I found ironic was the amount of people that voted for Bush because of his stand on terrorism (not to be confused with Iraq War). Again, the red people were clueless about the real affect Bush has on whether we will be looking at more or less terrorism in the next 4 (50?) years if we put him in the White House again. They thought his tough cowboy attitude was good. Well sorry, but the Cowboy approach is about the worst thing we can do at this point. The chagrin of the rest of the world shows it. They feel, as do I, that the Americans have effectively promoted more, not less terrorism in the world by electing Bush.

 

Terrorism is the only way any enemy of the US can effectively attack us. Our military superiority demands it and leaves them no alternative. So all we can expect from our enemies is terrorism. Like Indians sneaking up on Cowboys. The real fight on terrorism begins with intelligence; finding out who they are, where they are hiding, what they are planning. The only way to get good intelligence is through cooperation with our allies. What kind of intelligence do you think we are getting right now by alienating the UN, Western Europe, and other normal countries? Not much GOOD intelligence. We have to buy it and they feed us bullshit because they are starting to hate us too. The big bully on the planet is not going to stay at the top for long if he is alone. Secretly, our allies will find satisfaction, not empathy for future attacks on our soil. We will forever be looking over our shoulders wondering who really is our ally and who is a terrorist. Just as in Iraq, they will be harder and harder to identify. And so it will become easier and easier for them to launch successful attacks.

 

So by putting this Cowboy in the Whitehouse, we have not decreased the propensity for terrorist attacks, but increased it. This is the irony and the reason I will stand by my statement that there are too many voters who are not qualified to vote! They really don't know what they are voting for.

 

I think there were a lot of republicans who did not want to vote for Bush. My father was one. But he could not vote for Kerry (or Nader) either because he was to far left. If ever there was an election that demonstrates a need for a third party, this was it.

 

 

This election reminded me too much of a divorce. Each side felt they needed to be far out on a pendulum to find the middle. What the hell is wrong with trying to begin closer to the fence from the start? Is there something wrong with the middle?

 

I honestly believe that had Kerry been elected, there would have been a general feeling that we were actually beginning to mend the divide from which this country is so severely suffering. I don’t think the people on the fence who voted for Bush would be as upset about Kerry winning as the people close to the fence who voted for Kerry are about this result.

 

This election was about fear. Churchill said, “the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” I blame the press for terrorizing the American public with fear. I am not afraid of terrorism and just like the rest of the world we need to live with it. But I am afraid about the message we have sent to the rest of the world. I do not begrudge people who rely on faith to face fear, but don’t make your religion part of my morality and especially my government. Your blind faith gets in the way of seeing the reality of what really is at stake in the world right now. Try education sometime.

[wally]

[JayB]

A restatement of the obvious from "The Economist"

 

The great Democratic crack-up

 

Nov 4th 2004

From The Economist print edition

 

 

Hillary may not be the best person to put her party together again. But she is better than the rabid left

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOVEMBER 2nd, which will be remembered as the blackest of days for the Democratic Party, did not dawn that way. Democrats had thought that the stars were aligned in their favour—a problem-ridden war in Iraq; a president with iffy job-approval ratings; a sputtering economy; and, on the day, a huge voter turn-out together with exit polls that showed John Kerry with a clean sweep of the battleground states. By early next morning elation had turned to despair. The battle for the future of the Democratic Party had begun in earnest.

 

How is this battle likely to shape up, and who will be the warriors? Mr Kerry and his running-mate, John Edwards, are destined for the terrible limbo that the People's Party reserves for its failed champions. Mr Kerry's fate will be a little easier to bear than Al Gore's: he has a fabulously rich wife, a brace of mansions and a seat in the Senate. But he will draw bitter criticism for running an ill-conceived campaign. Mr Edwards is well on the way to becoming a man with a brilliant future behind him. What did he add to the Democratic ticket other than a boyish smile and a well-honed stump speech? He failed to deliver either of the Carolinas to the party (even though he was born in the southern one and represented the northern one in the Senate). He has no clear ideological constituency.

 

 

 

Now, unite us

Nov 4th 2004

Four more years

Nov 4th 2004

 

 

 

United States

 

 

 

US Election 2004

 

 

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton is the big Democratic winner from Tuesday night's debacle. Mrs Clinton is very much the front-runner for the presidential nomination in 2008. By then the country may be desperate for respite from Republican rule and the Iraq war may at last be over. She has plenty of credibility with the left because of her record (particularly on health-care reform) and her sex (remember that the majority of voters in the Democratic primaries are women). But she has moved to the centre since becoming a senator for New York: she has been careful to support the Iraq war and has found herself a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Clintonistas control most of the party machinery, from think-tanks such as the Centre for American Progress to get-out-the-vote organisations such as The Media Fund. And her husband is one of the best political operators on the Democratic side.

 

Yet Mrs Clinton can expect no coronation. The left of the Democratic Party is spoiling for a fight over what it sees as the party establishment's instinctive centrism. The left is convinced that the problem with Howard Dean was not the message but the great screamer himself. And they are equally convinced that the best way to beat George Bush is to fight as hard for the left of the political spectrum as Mr Bush has fought for the right. They believe that Mr Kerry's campaign caught fire only when he decided to confront the administration over Iraq. And they argue that the left needs to build a network of supporting institutions—from think-tanks to pressure groups—that will be able to drag their party (and the nation) in their direction. For them, the internet-based campaigns of groups such as MoveOn.org are harbingers of a rebirth of left-wing politics that will return the Democratic Party to its radical populist roots.

 

 

 

First, decide which end has the head

The Democrats certainly need to engage in a vigorous debate about the future of a party that has been in relentless decline for the past 50 years. A machine that once enjoyed a huge advantage in voter registration is almost at parity with Republicans; a party that once lorded it over Capitol Hill is now a minority in both houses of Congress, as well as being locked out of the White House. Worse, the defection of the white working class to the Republicans has left behind an awkward alliance of the upscale and the downscale—of educated elites (with a few billionaires thrown in) and ethnic minorities.

 

Moving the party farther to the left is unlikely to do the job. Democrats need to learn how to relate to a culturally conservative country. Mr Kerry made some feeble attempts to do this by claiming that he was a champion of “conservative values”, and by donning goose-hunting kit from the L.L. Bean catalogue. But this did not disguise his (Swiss) boarding-school roots, or the fact that his party is dominated by urban professionals who have little in common with flyover America, or his party's failure to come to terms with American religiosity. Supporting partial-birth abortion may be fine in France, where only one in ten people say religion plays a very important role in their lives, but not in America, where six in ten people do.

 

If the Democrats have never been entirely at home in church, they also often seem ill at ease in the suburbs: the world of family homes, anonymous office parks and stores the size of football pitches. In 1996 Bill Clinton proved that Democrats can win the suburbs by focusing on issues such as crime and education. Since then they have been in retreat. The danger for the Democrats is that they will shrivel to their metropolitan heartlands. They may be tempted to emphasise cultural issues, such as gay marriage, that galvanise educated professionals but have little resonance in the suburbs. And they may even be tempted to progress from Bush-bashing to sneering at middle America.

 

Mrs Clinton may not be the ideal candidate to put the Democratic donkey back together again. But she is better than the Michael Moore left that flourishes so luxuriously in college towns. (What happened to the much-ballyhooed youth vote in this year's election, anyway?) And she will bring two big advantages to her party. She is extraordinarily disciplined, far more so than her husband. And she has a Bush-like ability to bring out the worst in her opponents.

 

Conservatives may rule the suburbs at the moment. But will they woo security moms if they come across as misogynists who want to keep a strong woman down? Hillary's time may yet come. But, for the moment, the donkey is riderless.

[catbirdseat]

Nice post, David.

[David_Parker]

I had not read that. Excellent point. I only wish Hillary's last name was not Clinton. I'll bet she's wet in her undies right now from excitement!

 

I'm still more afraid now than I was two days ago.

[klenke]

Nicely said, David. And since you, as a proclaimed moderate, failed to equally berate the democratic party, Jay's article has done so for you in an equally cogent manner.

 

I'm a lot like you. If the Kerry camp had won I could see its benefits from a "healing the global wound" point of view. Nonetheless, Kerry just didn't do it for me on a personal level. Neither candidate did it for me, really.

 

Where are all the slam dunk candidates in the democratic party? I respect Hillary but I have issues with her. Plus, the fact that she's a woman makes her less likely to be elected. I have no problem with seeing a woman as president but 225 years of history is working against her. If the dems nominate her in 2008 the GOP better have a poor candidate itself else she will lose. For instance, if McCain wins the GOP ticket, he will surely beat Hillary. Frist vs. Hillary is a better match for her.

[j_b]

good post david.

 

those who think that a republican-lite pro-war candidate could have won this election or the next one are seriously delusional. there would be huge defection to 3rd party candidates and it would guaranty another republican for president anyway. i just shudder at what this all means for iraqis.

[Jason_Martin]

Try education sometime.

 

I recieved the following in an email from a friend:

 

State Avg. IQ 2004

1 Connecticut 113 Kerry

2 Massachusetts 111 Kerry

3 New Jersey 111 Kerry

4 New York 109 Kerry

5 Rhode Island 107 Kerry

6 Hawaii 106 Kerry

7 Maryland 105 Kerry

8 New Hampshire 105 Kerry

9 Illinois 104 Kerry

10 Delaware 103 Kerry

11 Minnesota 102 Kerry

12 Vermont 102 Kerry

13 Washington 102 Kerry

14 California 101 Kerry

15 Pennsylvania 101 Kerry

16 Maine 100 Kerry

17 Virginia 100 Bush

18 Wisconsin 100 Kerry

19 Colorado 99 Bush

20 Iowa 99 Bush

21 Michigan 99 Kerry

22 Nevada 99 Bush

23 Ohio 99 Bush

24 Oregon 99 Kerry

25 Alaska 98 Bush

26 Florida 98 Bush

27 Missouri 98 Bush

28 Kansas 96 Bush

29 Nebraska 95 Bush

30 Arizona 94 Bush

31 Indiana 94 Bush

32 Tennessee 94 Bush

33 North Carolina 93 Bush

34 West Virginia 93 Bush

35 Arkansas 92 Bush

36 Georgia 92 Bush

37 Kentucky 92 Bush

38 New Mexico 92 Bush

39 North Dakota 92 Bush

40 Texas 92 Bush

41 Alabama 90 Bush

42 Louisiana 90 Bush

43 Montana 90 Bush

44 Oklahoma 90 Bush

45 South Dakota 90 Bush

46 South Carolina 89 Bush

47 Wyoming 89 Bush

48 Idaho 87 Bush

49 Utah 87 Bush

50 Mississippi 85 Bush

 

The IQ numbers were originally attributed to the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations", though they do not appear in the current edition. The tests and data were administered via the Raven's APT, and the The Test Agency, one of the UK's leading publishers and distributors of psychometric tests. This data has been published in the Economist and the St. Petersburg Times, though this does not mean it should be taken as fact. Though the data does correlate somewhat to IQ of students per state based on SAT/ACT data, though this would be biased for those that had completed a high school education. Someone has also taken 2000 census data on percentage of state residents that have earned a college degree and used that to compare the voting in the 2000 election, it's funny, but that seems to correlate as well.

[Norman_Clyde]

Claiming “morality” was a bigger issue confuses me. I do not find Bush any model of morality. He lies too much. It only serves me to believe that there is a huge mass of uneducated republicans who rely solely on faith to face fear.

 

Dave, posts like yours keep me going. Well said.

 

Anyone remember Robert Byrd's speech in the Senate before the Iraq vote? He should have been the Democratic nominee. Too bad he's 80 something years old.

[pope]

Thanks for the data Jason. Now I think I get it. You cannot understand the logic and message of W's statements unless your IQ falls below 100:

 

"I will be your president regardless of your faith, and I don't expect you to agree with me necessarily on religion," Bush said. "As a matter of fact, no president should ever try to impose religion on our society. ... The great thing that unites is the fact you can worship freely if you choose, and if you _ you don't have to worship."

[barkernews]

Jason... that IQ chart is absolutely fascinating.

Are you implying that Mississippi and Utah are the dumbest states? How could it be?

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

I've gotta show this to my friends.

Great post.

[scott_harpell]

I hope you all notice that the IQ's are from college students. I would think that it would be better to do an average IQ of the general population. Also given that the average IQ is 100, I would think that calling someone 'dumb' for having a 98 is pretty senseless.

 

Maybe the fact that larger cities have better Universities and pool better resources?

[tomtom]

I honestly believe that had Kerry been elected, there would have been a general feeling that we were actually beginning to mend the divide from which this country is so severely suffering. I don’t think the people on the fence who voted for Bush would be as upset about Kerry winning as the people close to the fence who voted for Kerry are about this result.

 

This election was about fear.

 

Now *this* is ironic.

 

You are saying that people who voted for Kerry voted out of fear and that the people who voted for Bush are less emotionally involved.

[Peter_Puget]

Here is an interesting chart:

 

1960 census (1964, 68 elections) -- Kerry 270, Bush 268

1970 census (1972, 76, 80 elections) -- Kerry 270, Bush 268

1980 census (1984, 88 elections) -- Bush 276, Kerry 262

1990 census (1992, 96, 2000 elections) -- Bush 279, Kerry 259

2000 census (2004, 08 elections) -- Bush 286, Kerry 252

 

link

[selkirk]

I'll take odds right now, that if Hillary is Elected, regardless of who the Republicans nominate that we'll have another Republican president after Bush. She's too polished, too political, too prone to complex views (granted the problems are complex), and too unapproachable. Even if I do agree with her politics and her political stances

 

If she's up against McCain it'll be a slaughter.

[Jason_Martin]

McCain will probably be too old.

[Dru]

CRYOGENICS!

[ChrisT]

I agree with what you had to say, you made some good points, but it was Franklin Roosevelt who said "we have nothing to fear but fear itself".

[David_Parker]

Chris, yeah I wasn't sure if it was Churchill or Roosevelt. I just knew it came out of WWII. Thanks for the correction. I'm surprised my Dad didn't call that on me immediately!

 

Tomtom, I never said that Kerry voters did not vote out of fear too. Many just seemed to be more fearful of Bush than terrorism.

[Bill_Simpkins]

Does anyone have the time to chart out state IQ vs percentage of people that attend church or have religious beliefs? It would be most intersting to see % of people for each religion by state vs IQ.

Just curious.

I don't nessecarily believe people vote for Bush because they are dumb, but maybe because of their religion.

I know many churches urged members to vote for bush this election.

 

There is also a simular correlation between obesity rates and election results. I work in health insurnace, and the cickest people in the US live in the states that voted for Bush. That is a fact. As far as attending college, it has turned this year. More college grads voted for Bush. More people that make over $50,000 a year voted for Bush. Most non-caucasion's voted for Kerry.

 

[Dave_Schuldt]

Dave, while I agree with what you say, your attitude on education will get us nowhere. Every vote must be respected no mater how dumb it is. Since we don't want to pay for better education we will just have to live with stupidity. Our most basic instinct is fear, we need to find a way to use it just like the republicans. I know that sounds lame but we have to deal with the way human nature is, mot what it should be.

[Jim]

Speaking of which:

 

http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/docs/Mirror/0007ACB8-ADCE-118B-9E4F80C328EC0000.pdf

[tomtom]

I still find it amazing the arrogance and intolerance on this forum that equates a differing opinion with stupidity. How many of you believe that the IQ test accurately measures intelligence?

[ashw_justin]

The smart kids are never as popular as the big dumb jock. However now since the big dumb jocks (so to speak) have elected their quarterback, we (as a country, mind you) will all be married, have 10 kids, and low-wage jobs in about 5 years.

[selkirk]

All depends on how you define "intelligence", but if your defining it as a measure of how successfull you can be in business, or life, or how well you function in society? it's piss poor. It also has no bearing on how valuable a person or their opinion is.

 

However.... knowing things like that, knowing how the vote broke down by religion, by urban vs rural, etc speak to the very general type of people who voted which way. And that can be usefull in trying to figure out at it's most basic level why they voted the way they did, what traits they look for in a leader, etc.