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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (89171)	11/23/2004 9:54:13 AM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 108807

I didn't say you, specifically, believe that Bush "stole" the election. It's a notion I've seen lots of the loonier Dems state explicitly. I brought it up, along with the idea that "fear" resulted in Bush's election, because it shows that few Democrats have sufficiently gotten over the shock of losing the election to take a clear-eyed look at their own party's inadequacies for an explanation. Kerry was a fear-monger, too, and anyone who denies it was simply not looking. Terrorism was a huge and appropriate issue. It could not be ignored. Discussing it inevitably raised the voters' apprehension, and the opportunities for both sides to exploit it politically. Both parties did so, and anyone who disbelieves this is simply not paying attention or is blinded by rabid partisanship. This, again, is fine with me because it indicates that the Dems will continue to wear blinders and therefore are likely to continue to lose voters. In the competition for voters, Bush simply did a better job of presenting himself as someone who could deal with terrorism better than the confused and confusing Kerry. But don't kid yourself, both sides appealed to fear, and in a sense it was inevitable given the nature of the issues. I thought that the data cited in the The Economist's article I linked was telling. I am convinced that the article set forth some trenchant insights, which you apparently are set on ignoring as being "extreme." I certainly hope the Dem strategists have the same view. The Economist's views were, incidentally, corroborated in a certain sense by an article I read in last Sunday's NYT Magazine on a Dem political organizer in Ohio. He did a lot of good work in the cities, where Kerry's strength lay, but ignored the suburbs and the exurbs, where he saw little reason to work as there seemed to be little GOP activity. He [Bouchard was his name] came upon the scene of a rude awakening later that evening. Anyway, I am thrilled that you represent the more intelligent Dem voter. If you don't understand what happened, if The Economist's article doesn't ring a bell, there is little hope for your side. You will be relegated to low-growth, demographically stagnant cities, where Dem vote counts will become continually smaller and smaller. Your party will flirt with nut cases like Dean, continue to nominate angry pseudo-intellectuals like Kerry, and utterly forget the optimistic [and therefore winning] lessons provided by Clinton's brilliant strategies. This is all OK by me.