Did you think Tuesday’s election was so decisive that even the most rabid Democratic partisans would be unable to concoct a theory whereby it was “stolen”? Think again. Let the conspiratorial whining begin.
I don’t believe it was stolen. I do however believe Osama Bin Laden’s videotape — and it appearing when it did — tipped the balance in Bush’s favor. YES, the evangelicals would have supported him either way since he hasn’t had a DUI for awhile, YES, he proclaimed that it wouldn’t and shouldn’t affect peoples’ votes, and YES, Kerry did that also.
But what I see in surveys now, and in exit polls every election, is that people SAY one thing and DO another. I am convinced that there was a swing group — people who WANTED change and WOULD have voted for Kerry, and (let’s face it, it’s a polarized country and there is no middle of the road) were SCARED of four more years of Bush’s scorched earth policies, but when the idea of Osama Bin Laden hit them in the face just days before the election, they ultimately didn’t have the BALLS to do anything but run under the skirts of the current administration.
I had been waiting for just such an event all summer and fall, and I was expecting it to occur precisely when the Bin Laden tape appeared. I’m not saying it was a conspiracy between Bush and Osama — there is such a conspiracy between Bush and the House of Saud that it’s hard to think there COULD be one between him and Bin Laden — but I have to say it was extraordinarily good LUCK for Bush that it appeared when it did, and I believe Osama has just bombed us again by casting his vote for Bush when he did. Next to him, Karl Rove is the village idiot. How could Bin Laden wage his holy war against the Great Satan if the bully boys weren’t in charge?
And don’t give me any more BOLD, Andrew. The Taliban was BOLD. Pol Pot was BOLD. Stalin was BOLD.
That’s possible… though I don’t think such a conclusion is necessary to explain the result. But yeah, it’s possible that Bin Laden’s untimely appearance might have “flipped” 70,000+ voters from Kerry to Bush in Ohio. I’m not sure sure about whether it flipped 1.8 million+ voters nationwide, but maybe. (If the former is true but not the latter, what Osama did was prevent an electoral/popular inversion. Who knew he was so concerned about the integrity of our constitutional process? :)
Sorry, Leanna, but I have to disagree with you. There is indeed a middle of the road. Despite the fact that it’s not terribly vocal, and that there are few politicians there, it exists nonetheless. Those of us who are neither Democrats nor Republicans, and who are neither thrilled nor depressed by the election results, are still part of the country.
If I might add to Mike’s comment, with which I totally agree, there are some of us who are part of a party yet find our views/policy positions are more middle of the road than our party’s. There is a wide political spectrum represented in both the Democrat and the Republican parties, and to deny or dismiss this reality is foolish, as it fuels further polarization of the country and magnifies all it’s negative effects.
I’m another Middle Roader meself. / My dear & beloved Wife is rather more of a Free-Radical Road-Tripper but I shall say no More, probably because I don’t “have the BALLS to do anything but run” for fear of ending up like the Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road in th’ mornin’. :) Then again as me Grampa Dan McNamara used to cheerily tell the neighborlady whilst on his way to Mass, “Balls to you, Mrs. Murphy.” :)
Bea, you should really comment more often. Your comments are very intelligent and on a higher plane than some of the back-and-forth that tends to happen around here (my comments included). I hereby appoint you the Other Voice of Reason. :)
But that Said :) — I am more depressed over the linked Crappola than over Kerry’s defeat, & That’s Saying something.
Andrew’s linked piece (first Comment here) is naught but the old “MILLIONS OF VOTES! THROWN OUT!!!” thesis with regard to The Undervote. As I said in my seminal & celebrated opus :) Kerry Popped the quiff:
“Throughout the day on Tuesday, millions of Ballots were Thrown Out!!! as people, most of them deliberately & consciously, Voted, but not for President. In punchcard-heavy Ohio alone, on Tuesday, the number so doing was almost certainly greater than President Bush’s EC-winning plurality there…
“[But when Kerry conceded]…the 2004 ‘Undervote’ — better described as the “Targeted Presidential Abstention Rate”, in Ohio & in all 50 other jurisdictions — quantumly Disappears due to Non-observation: it never Happened. :)”
It did happen of course, notwithstanding my Wry & Witty Way of Reminding everybody of precisely that fact via my signature style, copyrighted as the Joe Loy Inversion. :) But of course it ISN’T, for the most part, ANY “Votes thrown Out”. It’s Non-votes Not cast for Nobody & Not counted for Noway NoHow. :) (The writer actually declares, in penUmbrage & high Dudgeon, that the Networks “subtracted” these very merry Un-votes — and from Kerry’s total! LOL!! Thanks for Nothing! :)
Now BRENDAN’s link in the main Post — whew! Wooo-WEEEEEEEEE-oooo! Yes, the Truth is Out There all right. :) But the infuriating thing is not the Theory, that’s just Hilarious — it’s this:
… consumer investigator and activist Bev Harris (founder of Black Box Voting) [a crackpot outfit / - the Commenter] “is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. On election night, Black Box Voting blanketed the US with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships.“
If the Bush people are so confident in their victory let them “put up or shut up.”
So now all these Millions of Bush People, placed on the staffs in the election offices of Thousands of Counties & Townships by Karl Rove & Halliburton 10 & 20 & 30 years ago which is how long the moles have been working Undercover there — have to deal with THIS Shit while they’re trying to Finish up the goddamn election in time to meet their states’ end-of-November deadlines! And AT substantial additional Unbudgeted taxpers’ expense for OT & associated costs, I MIGHT add! / All Evangelicals here present PLEASE forgive me, I Know I’m a Sinner and a Blasphemer but JESUS H. CHRIST ON A FOOKIN’ CRUTCH!! / It’s Brilliant of course: when these Assymptotes don’t get all the crap they Want & When they want it, then it’s “SEE? SEE?? They STOLE it & now they COVER IT UP!!! This PROVES it!”
I herewith Reach Out to the Conservatives. Restore the Death Penalty. Everywhere.
I will make no comments about what she might see in you Andrew… But I’m sure I could come up with somethings that are both raunchy and mildly amusing; however, I think the general readership can write their own jokes.
I think Mike and Bea have a point. And no matter how much I might think Kerry was the lesser of two weasels, there is nothing that has come to light, including this article, that has led me to believe the results of the election are seriously corrupt (there is always a bit of fraud on both sides, but I doubt highly it is sufficient to impact the end result.)
I think the more serious issue that we need to deal with is the polarization that the two party system is causing, while at the same time leaving a good number of people without a candidate that represents them.
To that end, I had a bit of an odd idea the other day. What if instead of having congressional districts states assigned their representatives in a parliamentary style. You vote for a party that has a slate of candidates, and they are assigned seats based on the percentages that their party won. Now, clearly there are a lot of kinks in something like that, but it could be interesting to see what would happen with something like that too. Of course it would never happen because it would break the two party system… why? because it would not be a wasted vote to vote for one, instead you could vote for what you really believe in.
Dane, I’m all for experimenting with proportional representation on the state level. However, on the federal level, I fear its drawbacks are too great, and having worked for a Congressman, I can say for a fact that you don’t get that kind of personal representation or service anywhere else in the world, especially from elected representatives who are chosen from a list and not directly elected. Furthermore, multiple parties means you have to barter and bribe to put together a functional coalition. I’ve seen the Israeli system first-hand, and it’s not a model I’d recommend to America.
I just got the answer to a question I had asked here just after the election. To wit: SINCE BUSH GOT THE MOST VOTES EVER CAST IN A U.S. ELECTION, WHO GOT THE SECOND MOST VOTES EVER CAST?
Thanks for speaking up, Mike and Bea. Maybe what you describe is the REAL silent majority. I don’t think the two-party system created the polarization. There have ALWAYS been two parties in America, they have just had different names at different times. I think what has pushed people to further and further extremes has a lot to do with the loss of civility in our society (NO, I’m serious) going back to rude reporters and political strategies that smear and lie, and an electorate that comes to expect all of that and votes accordingly. I am gratefully old enough to remember a time when — in public, at least — American political debate was held to a higher standard. Listening to someone like former President Carter reminisce about campaigning even in the 1970s is like reading a fairy tale, in light of today’s reality. I won’t say today is as bad as can be, because I know it it will get worse. I am guilty of it myself… I can’t talk about Bush without insulting him… but when the mud is being slung everywhere (and I must aver his campaign was the worst offender this time) it becomes well nigh impossible to be polite in response. You see the problem.
“While you think about how to do better next time, please stay true to your core values and feelings. Don’t restrain your anger; part of your problem in this election was that you didn’t put it out there enough. If other Americans understood how truly mad you are it would make more of an impression.
“You need to try harder to make them see that you’re smarter and better than your opponents. Unleash your indignation and express your outrage and they will start to get your superiority to the religious fanatics, racists and homophobes who oppose you. You’ve got to make the point over and over that these people are intolerant stupid hicks while you are smart, good and wise.
“Face it, you’re just not getting your message across. You run mild, polite candidates who can’t or won’t let it all hang out. If everyone understood, really understood, your anger, intelligence and moral superiority, well, things would have turned out differently.”
I miss what Bush said or did that was so dirty. Was it the flip-flop charge that was below the belt? Maybe the Massachusetts liberal thing was just a little over the top? Surely you meant the dismissal of Kerry’s criticisms as Monday Morning Quarterbacking. What did I miss?
The voice of reason? btw your Spanish was excellent!! Now I have something to live up to when I post, ooh the pressure :) I am out drinking beers and you are all complimenting me, aaaww how cute!
I don’t post often because, like I have said before, the level of political discourse is sometimes very discouraging. But also, I really have little time to dive into coherent arguments even when I feel an itch to comment–unlike Brendan, I cannot multitask THAT much! This past two weeks I have been in my in my super political legislative bootcamp, and I have been arguing/discussing lots of hot political topics with other fellows and even with the high profile people who come speak to us, so I think that’s why I’ve been commenting a little more :)
That’s what I mean — anything goes nowadays, so politics necessarily turns into WWF, or a party can’t expect to win. That letter to Democrats actually proves my point. I guess it’s hard to really describe how things were, when there hasn’t been anything BUT up-yours politics for the past 20 years at least, and you’re (almost) all twenty-somethings.
A difference between then and now is that when LBJ’s campaign created the little girl with the daisy ad in 1964, it ran exactly ONCE and then was pulled off the air. Such an extreme message was unacceptable then. For the last couple weeks of the 2004 campaign, we got a campaign ad with narrator and soundtrack a la Nightmare on ELm Street, and roving wolves. This in regard to a Yale graduate/Vietnam Vet/United States Senator.
I could be wrong about Bush’s campaign being nasty, Andrew. And if so, the name Karl Rove should conjure up nothing in particular.
P.S. Bush’s mandate is based on the SMALLEST winning margin by an incumbent president, going back as long as popular vote recorts have been kept. Since he insists on talking about BIGGEST, it’s worth mentioning.
Andrew, that post with the letter was hilarious! I’ve been talking about the election with a lot of people and let me tell you, my ASU history grads listserv has been full of commentary exactly like that. It’s the, “how could anyone possibly disagree with our platform without being ignorant racist inbred gaybashers? those people will make europe hate us. if only they weren’t so stupid they would understand how right we are.”
Leanna, I have to disagree about the tenor of politics in past years as well. Slime campaigns have always been terribly common. In the 1800s, several of the campaigns were marred by opposing candidates casting aspersions on the fidelity of each others’ wives. Even the FDR-Hoover election was ugly.
Becky - you are missing an important facet of how The Elite and revisionists view history … they have a tendency to go back just far enough to be convenient for their own perspective, and then try to convince people that anything further back is irrelevant …
Fortunately, The Elite seems to be bent on continuing to misunderestimate the ‘low native cunning’ of us rubes and hicks and readers of and learners from history …
“If only people had listened to what John Kerry was saying …” - all the while ignoring the *fact* that, whenever we got the chance to listen to or see the *real* John Kerry, his support evaporated further … to the point where even the MainStreamMedia’s much-vaunted 15%-support *still* only managed to leave Senator Kerry a couple of points behind …
I don’t mean to say that there was NO nastiness in politics, Becky. Andrew Jackson’s mother was called a whore and Aaron Burr murdered Alexander Hamilton, after all. I mean it wasn’t the whole substance of the campaign messages. But the whole presentation in virtually all formats is so aggressive and rude nowadays that I don’t see how the decibel and jugular levels could be ratcheted down. Once that stood out as the most extreme in a wide range of messages; now it is the lingua franca. I don’t know what comes next, but I don’t see leveling off as a likelihood.
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November 5th, 2004 at 8:37:00 pm
But wait! There’s more!!!
November 5th, 2004 at 9:16:41 pm
I don’t believe it was stolen. I do however believe Osama Bin Laden’s videotape — and it appearing when it did — tipped the balance in Bush’s favor. YES, the evangelicals would have supported him either way since he hasn’t had a DUI for awhile, YES, he proclaimed that it wouldn’t and shouldn’t affect peoples’ votes, and YES, Kerry did that also.
But what I see in surveys now, and in exit polls every election, is that people SAY one thing and DO another. I am convinced that there was a swing group — people who WANTED change and WOULD have voted for Kerry, and (let’s face it, it’s a polarized country and there is no middle of the road) were SCARED of four more years of Bush’s scorched earth policies, but when the idea of Osama Bin Laden hit them in the face just days before the election, they ultimately didn’t have the BALLS to do anything but run under the skirts of the current administration.
I had been waiting for just such an event all summer and fall, and I was expecting it to occur precisely when the Bin Laden tape appeared. I’m not saying it was a conspiracy between Bush and Osama — there is such a conspiracy between Bush and the House of Saud that it’s hard to think there COULD be one between him and Bin Laden — but I have to say it was extraordinarily good LUCK for Bush that it appeared when it did, and I believe Osama has just bombed us again by casting his vote for Bush when he did. Next to him, Karl Rove is the village idiot. How could Bin Laden wage his holy war against the Great Satan if the bully boys weren’t in charge?
And don’t give me any more BOLD, Andrew. The Taliban was BOLD. Pol Pot was BOLD. Stalin was BOLD.
Gut Shabbes, everyone.
November 5th, 2004 at 9:28:28 pm
That’s possible… though I don’t think such a conclusion is necessary to explain the result. But yeah, it’s possible that Bin Laden’s untimely appearance might have “flipped” 70,000+ voters from Kerry to Bush in Ohio. I’m not sure sure about whether it flipped 1.8 million+ voters nationwide, but maybe. (If the former is true but not the latter, what Osama did was prevent an electoral/popular inversion. Who knew he was so concerned about the integrity of our constitutional process? :)
November 5th, 2004 at 9:45:46 pm
Sorry, Leanna, but I have to disagree with you. There is indeed a middle of the road. Despite the fact that it’s not terribly vocal, and that there are few politicians there, it exists nonetheless. Those of us who are neither Democrats nor Republicans, and who are neither thrilled nor depressed by the election results, are still part of the country.
November 5th, 2004 at 9:53:12 pm
If I might add to Mike’s comment, with which I totally agree, there are some of us who are part of a party yet find our views/policy positions are more middle of the road than our party’s. There is a wide political spectrum represented in both the Democrat and the Republican parties, and to deny or dismiss this reality is foolish, as it fuels further polarization of the country and magnifies all it’s negative effects.
November 5th, 2004 at 10:12:07 pm
I’m another Middle Roader meself. / My dear & beloved Wife is rather more of a Free-Radical Road-Tripper but I shall say no More, probably because I don’t “have the BALLS to do anything but run” for fear of ending up like the Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road in th’ mornin’. :) Then again as me Grampa Dan McNamara used to cheerily tell the neighborlady whilst on his way to Mass, “Balls to you, Mrs. Murphy.” :)
November 5th, 2004 at 10:49:47 pm
Bea, you should really comment more often. Your comments are very intelligent and on a higher plane than some of the back-and-forth that tends to happen around here (my comments included). I hereby appoint you the Other Voice of Reason. :)
November 5th, 2004 at 10:52:01 pm
Or perhaps I should say La Voz de la Razón? :)
November 5th, 2004 at 11:04:06 pm
Seriously. Makes me wonder what the hell she sees in me. ;-)
November 5th, 2004 at 11:24:38 pm
But that Said :) — I am more depressed over the linked Crappola than over Kerry’s defeat, & That’s Saying something.
Andrew’s linked piece (first Comment here) is naught but the old “MILLIONS OF VOTES! THROWN OUT!!!” thesis with regard to The Undervote. As I said in my seminal & celebrated opus :) Kerry Popped the quiff:
“Throughout the day on Tuesday, millions of Ballots were Thrown Out!!! as people, most of them deliberately & consciously, Voted, but not for President. In punchcard-heavy Ohio alone, on Tuesday, the number so doing was almost certainly greater than President Bush’s EC-winning plurality there…
“[But when Kerry conceded]…the 2004 ‘Undervote’ — better described as the “Targeted Presidential Abstention Rate”, in Ohio & in all 50 other jurisdictions — quantumly Disappears due to Non-observation: it never Happened. :)”
It did happen of course, notwithstanding my Wry & Witty Way of Reminding everybody of precisely that fact via my signature style, copyrighted as the Joe Loy Inversion. :) But of course it ISN’T, for the most part, ANY “Votes thrown Out”. It’s Non-votes Not cast for Nobody & Not counted for Noway NoHow. :) (The writer actually declares, in penUmbrage & high Dudgeon, that the Networks “subtracted” these very merry Un-votes — and from Kerry’s total! LOL!! Thanks for Nothing! :)
Now BRENDAN’s link in the main Post — whew! Wooo-WEEEEEEEEE-oooo! Yes, the Truth is Out There all right. :) But the infuriating thing is not the Theory, that’s just Hilarious — it’s this:
… consumer investigator and activist Bev Harris (founder of Black Box Voting) [a crackpot outfit / - the Commenter] “is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. On election night, Black Box Voting blanketed the US with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships.“
If the Bush people are so confident in their victory let them “put up or shut up.”
So now all these Millions of Bush People, placed on the staffs in the election offices of Thousands of Counties & Townships by Karl Rove & Halliburton 10 & 20 & 30 years ago which is how long the moles have been working Undercover there — have to deal with THIS Shit while they’re trying to Finish up the goddamn election in time to meet their states’ end-of-November deadlines! And AT substantial additional Unbudgeted taxpers’ expense for OT & associated costs, I MIGHT add! / All Evangelicals here present PLEASE forgive me, I Know I’m a Sinner and a Blasphemer but JESUS H. CHRIST ON A FOOKIN’ CRUTCH!! / It’s Brilliant of course: when these Assymptotes don’t get all the crap they Want & When they want it, then it’s “SEE? SEE?? They STOLE it & now they COVER IT UP!!! This PROVES it!”
I herewith Reach Out to the Conservatives. Restore the Death Penalty. Everywhere.
:> :0
November 5th, 2004 at 11:26:52 pm
I will make no comments about what she might see in you Andrew… But I’m sure I could come up with somethings that are both raunchy and mildly amusing; however, I think the general readership can write their own jokes.
I think Mike and Bea have a point. And no matter how much I might think Kerry was the lesser of two weasels, there is nothing that has come to light, including this article, that has led me to believe the results of the election are seriously corrupt (there is always a bit of fraud on both sides, but I doubt highly it is sufficient to impact the end result.)
I think the more serious issue that we need to deal with is the polarization that the two party system is causing, while at the same time leaving a good number of people without a candidate that represents them.
To that end, I had a bit of an odd idea the other day. What if instead of having congressional districts states assigned their representatives in a parliamentary style. You vote for a party that has a slate of candidates, and they are assigned seats based on the percentages that their party won. Now, clearly there are a lot of kinks in something like that, but it could be interesting to see what would happen with something like that too. Of course it would never happen because it would break the two party system… why? because it would not be a wasted vote to vote for one, instead you could vote for what you really believe in.
November 5th, 2004 at 11:33:34 pm
Dane, I’m all for experimenting with proportional representation on the state level. However, on the federal level, I fear its drawbacks are too great, and having worked for a Congressman, I can say for a fact that you don’t get that kind of personal representation or service anywhere else in the world, especially from elected representatives who are chosen from a list and not directly elected. Furthermore, multiple parties means you have to barter and bribe to put together a functional coalition. I’ve seen the Israeli system first-hand, and it’s not a model I’d recommend to America.
November 6th, 2004 at 12:33:46 am
I just got the answer to a question I had asked here just after the election. To wit: SINCE BUSH GOT THE MOST VOTES EVER CAST IN A U.S. ELECTION, WHO GOT THE SECOND MOST VOTES EVER CAST?
Answer was as I thought: JOHN KERRY
I suspect George Washington came in last.
November 6th, 2004 at 12:49:41 am
Thanks for speaking up, Mike and Bea. Maybe what you describe is the REAL silent majority. I don’t think the two-party system created the polarization. There have ALWAYS been two parties in America, they have just had different names at different times. I think what has pushed people to further and further extremes has a lot to do with the loss of civility in our society (NO, I’m serious) going back to rude reporters and political strategies that smear and lie, and an electorate that comes to expect all of that and votes accordingly. I am gratefully old enough to remember a time when — in public, at least — American political debate was held to a higher standard. Listening to someone like former President Carter reminisce about campaigning even in the 1970s is like reading a fairy tale, in light of today’s reality. I won’t say today is as bad as can be, because I know it it will get worse. I am guilty of it myself… I can’t talk about Bush without insulting him… but when the mud is being slung everywhere (and I must aver his campaign was the worst offender this time) it becomes well nigh impossible to be polite in response. You see the problem.
November 6th, 2004 at 1:09:14 am
Wait, Bush ran the dirty campaign? Heh, okay.
Sorry, I think I agree with this guy:
“Dear Democrats,
“While you think about how to do better next time, please stay true to your core values and feelings. Don’t restrain your anger; part of your problem in this election was that you didn’t put it out there enough. If other Americans understood how truly mad you are it would make more of an impression.
“You need to try harder to make them see that you’re smarter and better than your opponents. Unleash your indignation and express your outrage and they will start to get your superiority to the religious fanatics, racists and homophobes who oppose you. You’ve got to make the point over and over that these people are intolerant stupid hicks while you are smart, good and wise.
“Face it, you’re just not getting your message across. You run mild, polite candidates who can’t or won’t let it all hang out. If everyone understood, really understood, your anger, intelligence and moral superiority, well, things would have turned out differently.”
I miss what Bush said or did that was so dirty. Was it the flip-flop charge that was below the belt? Maybe the Massachusetts liberal thing was just a little over the top? Surely you meant the dismissal of Kerry’s criticisms as Monday Morning Quarterbacking. What did I miss?
November 6th, 2004 at 3:37:48 am
The voice of reason? btw your Spanish was excellent!! Now I have something to live up to when I post, ooh the pressure :) I am out drinking beers and you are all complimenting me, aaaww how cute!
I don’t post often because, like I have said before, the level of political discourse is sometimes very discouraging. But also, I really have little time to dive into coherent arguments even when I feel an itch to comment–unlike Brendan, I cannot multitask THAT much! This past two weeks I have been in my in my super political legislative bootcamp, and I have been arguing/discussing lots of hot political topics with other fellows and even with the high profile people who come speak to us, so I think that’s why I’ve been commenting a little more :)
November 6th, 2004 at 9:31:19 am
That’s what I mean — anything goes nowadays, so politics necessarily turns into WWF, or a party can’t expect to win. That letter to Democrats actually proves my point. I guess it’s hard to really describe how things were, when there hasn’t been anything BUT up-yours politics for the past 20 years at least, and you’re (almost) all twenty-somethings.
A difference between then and now is that when LBJ’s campaign created the little girl with the daisy ad in 1964, it ran exactly ONCE and then was pulled off the air. Such an extreme message was unacceptable then. For the last couple weeks of the 2004 campaign, we got a campaign ad with narrator and soundtrack a la Nightmare on ELm Street, and roving wolves. This in regard to a Yale graduate/Vietnam Vet/United States Senator.
I could be wrong about Bush’s campaign being nasty, Andrew. And if so, the name Karl Rove should conjure up nothing in particular.
P.S. Bush’s mandate is based on the SMALLEST winning margin by an incumbent president, going back as long as popular vote recorts have been kept. Since he insists on talking about BIGGEST, it’s worth mentioning.
November 6th, 2004 at 10:28:43 am
Andrew, that post with the letter was hilarious! I’ve been talking about the election with a lot of people and let me tell you, my ASU history grads listserv has been full of commentary exactly like that. It’s the, “how could anyone possibly disagree with our platform without being ignorant racist inbred gaybashers? those people will make europe hate us. if only they weren’t so stupid they would understand how right we are.”
Leanna, I have to disagree about the tenor of politics in past years as well. Slime campaigns have always been terribly common. In the 1800s, several of the campaigns were marred by opposing candidates casting aspersions on the fidelity of each others’ wives. Even the FDR-Hoover election was ugly.
Deference in politics died a long time ago.
November 6th, 2004 at 2:35:59 pm
“btw your Spanish was excellent!!”
Thank you, Altavista! :)
November 6th, 2004 at 5:33:02 pm
Becky - you are missing an important facet of how The Elite and revisionists view history … they have a tendency to go back just far enough to be convenient for their own perspective, and then try to convince people that anything further back is irrelevant …
Fortunately, The Elite seems to be bent on continuing to misunderestimate the ‘low native cunning’ of us rubes and hicks and readers of and learners from history …
“If only people had listened to what John Kerry was saying …” - all the while ignoring the *fact* that, whenever we got the chance to listen to or see the *real* John Kerry, his support evaporated further … to the point where even the MainStreamMedia’s much-vaunted 15%-support *still* only managed to leave Senator Kerry a couple of points behind …
November 7th, 2004 at 1:46:58 am
I don’t mean to say that there was NO nastiness in politics, Becky. Andrew Jackson’s mother was called a whore and Aaron Burr murdered Alexander Hamilton, after all. I mean it wasn’t the whole substance of the campaign messages. But the whole presentation in virtually all formats is so aggressive and rude nowadays that I don’t see how the decibel and jugular levels could be ratcheted down. Once that stood out as the most extreme in a wide range of messages; now it is the lingua franca. I don’t know what comes next, but I don’t see leveling off as a likelihood.