Quote of the day

George Neumayr starts his essay Democrats' Declaration of Independence with this gem.

Democratic strategists keep holding post-election powwows aired on C-SPAN, but their introspection never adds up to very much. They usually end up saying in one form or another: we need to fool people better.

That pretty well nails it.

Comments

[Scott]

Saw DLC head Al From on CSpan today--what a clown: "we're going to wait until 2006 or 2008 to redefine our principles." This guy represents the Democratic party? Comical. I'm an independent and finding both parties at this point miles away from where I stand politically, the Dems farther at this point.

[Tom Bowler]

Wow. Talk about clueless. It's a scary thought, but heartening at the same time, that with media pulling out all the stops to help, they were almost (but not quite) able to elect a team who stand for absolutely nothing.

[Scott]

Well Tom I'm going to be honest, I think George Bush is an awful President. Unfortunately, the Dems weren't offering anything much better this time around.

Also, I think you give the media far too much credit for positively influencing elections--people make up their own minds. The media may be slanted left but it doesn't mean their "pulling out all the stops" has any impact, at all in fact.

[Tom Bowler]

Gee, if you think I'm giving the media any credit at all for positively influencing the election I guess I'm not making my points very clearly. For example, I don't view Dan Rather's use of forged documents in a smear attempt as a positive influence. The fact that he is still employed by CBS ought to tell you all you need to know about direction of media influence. The fact is, I rejoice that they were unsuccessful.

I don't share your view that Bush is an awful President. In fact I'd be willing to bet that he'll go down as one of the great ones. He's willing to take bold steps and he makes no excuses. Out of all the other candidates, he is the only one that believed the war on terror could and should be won - not fought to a draw. Kerry spent his time quibling over whether or not the war was being fought in the right way - and he was dishonest about it, as he was about most things. Believe me - we dodged a bullet when Kerry lost.

[Scott]

What I'm saying is I don't think Rather's finding and producing news about Bush's Guard service, for example, would have had any impact at all against Bush on the election, people are smarter than that. It's the politcal junkie types and beltway insiders who think ordinary Americans care about that stuff, but they really don't. Just one man's opinion. Media influence is slanted left but I don't think that matters much, that's my point I suppose. I'm glad Rather shot himself in the foot.

Bush does take bold steps but I think many of them have been terribly wrong. Reagan took bold steps that were all correct. Bush is no Reagan in my book. I didn't vote for Kerry, he was awful and would've made an awful President as well. Again I'm just one man.

[Scott]

btw I'm not implying you're one of the political junkies who overrates the media's influence on voting.

[Tom Bowler]

Actually I think I underrated the media. I could see no way for Kerry to even make this election close, but he did. If he won Ohio he would be working with his transition team right now, and for my money it would have been the media that did it for him. I'm convinced the media elected Bill Clinton in '92 by showing nothing but bad economic news or no economic news until after the election. The economy was recovering throughout '92, but the media held off until the election was over before discovering that fact.

And I suppose I'd have to plead guilty to being a political junky - of sorts.

[Scott]

I can't speak to the '92 election but the only reason I believe this election was close was the constant bad news out of Iraq since Abu Ghraib broke in April. In this case, I do believe the media fairly reported what were quite negative and very real events going on there. This is where you can make an argument for media bias but frankly in this case I believe it mostly accurate. Many supporters of the war last year regrettably felt buyer's remorse of sorts. I'm of the opinion that you should know exactly what a war should entail before you support but hey, maybe I'm old-fashioned for my age.

For Kerry's part, John Kerry himself ran an awful campaign, made stupid ads, said some very dumb things ("I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it"...I'll never forget that Karl Rove called that line "the gift that kept on giving" lol), was incoherent at best on Iraq, and generally showed he stood for nothing. Had events in Iraq gone better this year I think we would've witnessed a 45-state landslide for Bush.