this year Kerry was probably the most liberal candidate the Democrats have run since Mondale, and look how much better than Mondale he did.
That, I think, has a lot to do with the quality of the opposition. Mondale was running against Reagan. Reagan was one of the two best communicators we've seen in the Oval Office in the last 40 years, was not bogged down in an ugly war, had a recovered/booming economy, and was perceived as being the One In Charge. Bush II can't reliably get an unscripted sentence out of his mouth, has the ugly war, an economy that may or may not be recovering, and the perception that he's a puppet for rather selfish interests.
I've been a Republican as long as I've been anything. I remember celebrating Reagan's win over Carter as a 10-year-old. I despise Kerry as a person and on a policy level. I think his war record doesn't stand up very well (Bush's non-record doesn't impress me eithere, but that isn't the issue here, so don't go there), I can't get much of a sense of what he actually believes, his concept of how an economy works is significantly at variance with mine...and yesterday afternoon, I went down to my local polling place and voted for the miserable bastard.
This was not a vote for Kerry. It was a vote against Bush and against what he and his sort have done to my party. It was a vote for government deadlock and for changing which parts of the Constitution and society are under assault. It was a vote for hoping this was 1976 all over again and that we might get another Reagan in '08.
In short, it was not a vote for a new hardcore liberalism. I'm just one person, just one data point, and I don't know how widely shared my feelings are...but I'd be careful about making too many assumptions about the palatability of hardcore liberalism to moderate voters.
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Date: 2004-11-03 10:37 pm (UTC)That, I think, has a lot to do with the quality of the opposition. Mondale was running against Reagan. Reagan was one of the two best communicators we've seen in the Oval Office in the last 40 years, was not bogged down in an ugly war, had a recovered/booming economy, and was perceived as being the One In Charge.
Bush II can't reliably get an unscripted sentence out of his mouth, has the ugly war, an economy that may or may not be recovering, and the perception that he's a puppet for rather selfish interests.
I've been a Republican as long as I've been anything. I remember celebrating Reagan's win over Carter as a 10-year-old. I despise Kerry as a person and on a policy level. I think his war record doesn't stand up very well (Bush's non-record doesn't impress me eithere, but that isn't the issue here, so don't go there), I can't get much of a sense of what he actually believes, his concept of how an economy works is significantly at variance with mine...and yesterday afternoon, I went down to my local polling place and voted for the miserable bastard.
This was not a vote for Kerry. It was a vote against Bush and against what he and his sort have done to my party. It was a vote for government deadlock and for changing which parts of the Constitution and society are under assault. It was a vote for hoping this was 1976 all over again and that we might get another Reagan in '08.
In short, it was not a vote for a new hardcore liberalism. I'm just one person, just one data point, and I don't know how widely shared my feelings are...but I'd be careful about making too many assumptions about the palatability of hardcore liberalism to moderate voters.
Dav2.718