Why record voter turnouts?

[john9001]

Originally posted by TweetyBird
I forget which war it was, but I remember camera crews on a beach filmimg marines as they landed. It was surreal. You had marines ducking there heads so as not to be exposed by the video lights and reporters going for interviews in a frigging beach landing!!

that was somilia, the news crews were there before the marines.

news briefing:::
reporter:: "general , can you tell us how many troops are landing where and when?"

general:: (what a idiot)" i can not talk about future operations."

[Wotan]

Its pretty simple 35% of folks asked during the exit polls said 'moral issues' were the most important to them.

That scored higher then anything including the economy, Iraq etc...

Bush won this bloc by a huge margin, 80% IIRC.

This was the only group that really 'turned out' in much greater numbers based on percentage then the last election.

Kerry tried to paint himself as a 'moderate' and it did not sell. No one believed him.

If it wasn't for the Hatred of Bush he wouldn't have even had done as well as he did.

This is the first time in 16 years that a President got more the 50% cast votes. The last guys that did this was his Father.  The first President in who knows how many years to win a second term following another 2 term President. Typical after a 2 term President the guy following  gets 1 term and is out.

Bush got more votes then another President in the History of the US.

Then there's the Senate and House races.

Daschle defeated. The Repubs hold the House and gain in the Senate.

This election was a complete defeat for the Democratic party.

It will be interesting to see if they shift back toward Bill Clinton's 'new Democrat' or continue putting up lefties like Gore and Kerry.

Still suprising that only half the country bothers to vote.

Its not half the country, its half of eligible voters. I believe 60% of eligible voters is a record for the US. Not everyone citizien is an eligible vote. Less then 1/3 rd of the US population actaully voted in the last election.

[TweetyBird]

Equaled in 1960.

[Nash]

Originally posted by Wotan
Its pretty simple 35% of folks asked during the exit polls said 'moral issues' were the most important to them.

That scored higher then anything including the economy, Iraq etc...

No disagreement.

But one bright and shiney Thursday morning back in October, folks yawned, crawled out of their beds and retrieved the contents of their mailbox. Others clicked on their email.

Shocker....

Kerry set to ban The Bible.

[type_char]

[size=20]OMGZ NADER LOST!!![/size]

[Eagler]

so who actually push the gay marriage thing onto the ballots in so many states?

we did not have that here but we did have the amendment trying to allow a minor to get an abortion without parent consent .... that got a few ppl to the polls

then again, how many whould have stated it was actually a security issue, fear of terrorism, that they were/are scared?

[crowMAW]

Originally posted by Eagler
we did not have that here but we did have the amendment trying to allow a minor to get an abortion without parent consent .... that got a few ppl to the polls

That was Florida Amendment 1.  But you have the circumstances turned around.  There was no law requiring parental consent, so the amendment was not to allow abortions without it, rather it was an amendment to force parental consent.  The amendment was sponsored by the Republican Florida Legislature, who did not have quite enough votes to pass it on their own.

[Ripsnort]

I have my theories why there was a record turn out and Bush won.  

First, the gay marriage thing could have been brought to light during the Clinton era, after all Clinton's first bill he signed in 1993 was the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays in the Navy. That would have been a good time to railroad through new gay marriage legislation. But the Gays, predominently democrat, held off until Bush got elected.  Bad choice. Middle America could see the agenda, it wasn't so much about marriage as it was putting the question in front of a Pres that would no doubt so no to it. Bad move.

Secondly, Bush got the sympathy vote. I know he did from me.  After continuous bashing of Bush over the past 18 months, I've heard the echos of many of those conservatives that disliked Bush for his "democratic spending" and failure to establish a Gov't in Iraq in a reasonable time, begin to feel sympathy for this man.  You keep telling someone that this guy or that guy is "dumb" and next thing you know the "dumb" guy is a victim, with sympathy on his side. Good job Dems. You buried yourself on this one.

Michael Moore.  He helped Bush out more than any celebrity on the face of the earth with negativity. It literally blew up in his face.  A person with an IQ of 80 could tell his sliced and diced "documentary" was full of lies and deception.  The only people who actually took the film for a documentary were liberals, who usually fall below an IQ of 80.

Last, the Democratic party said in Summer of 2003 that they were trying to distance themselves from the extreme left. So what do they do? They pick a senator who is further left than Ted Kennedy! My GOD what were they thinking?  They outright lied about becoming more moderate and went the opposite direction.  The Democratic party has been become the party of "how much can we tolerate?".

The bottom line? It will take YEARS to regain those senate and congress seats (maybe 40 years like the Dems had the majority?)  The supreme court will be conservative.  The repubs have a good shot of taking the oval office in 2008.

That's my 2 cents.

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

Sympathy votes?

Sweet baby jebus, Republicans ARE liberals.
-SW

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Sympathy votes?

Sweet baby jebus, Republicans ARE liberals.
-SW

Everyone has a liberal side. I used liberal amounts of butter on my toast this morning.

Oh, two more things that were nails in Kerry coffin.

His wife. Need I say more? An elitist talking DOWN to America, and a foreigner at that.

Dan Rather. WTG Dan. You solidified what everyone knew all along, the media is bias.

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

I really think Kerry lost the election on his own, the rest of the crap that surrounded him was just icing on the cake.

I mean, just WHAT was his platform? Multiple positions on everything? Indecisive answers, to both sides of the question.
-SW

[Tinpot]

Tweety said

"You can NOT ever force cultural changes on people. People change at their own pace. Thats not rhetoric, I honestly believe that,"

So what the hell is Bush trying to do in Iraq then ?

Honestly you chaps amaze me!

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Tinpot
Tweety said

"You can NOT ever force cultural changes on people. People change at their own pace. Thats not rhetoric, I honestly believe that,"

So what the hell is Bush trying to do in Iraq then ?

Honestly you chaps amaze me!

Government(democracy) is not culture. Don't confuse the two.

Besides, we get 4 more years of looking at THESE babes!

[DREDIOCK]

I think the whole problem with the gay marriage thing this boils down to a single word, "marriage"

If Gays and the gay marriage supporters stopped using the word "marriage" and called it something else few people would have cared

Also I think the Kerry people depended too much on the new voters,independants and undecideds votes going their way.

Morally I think the Reps will always have the high ground.
Problem is Kerry simply is too far to the left.

Had he ran on a more moderate platform they probably would have cleaned house.

I dont agree when people say Bush is stupid.
 Though I do agree that in public he sometimes comes off that way.
 But I've seen him is several private interviews where the atmosphere is more relaxed and its easy to see the man is anything but stupid.
 I think that is part of the problem the Democrats had also.
They underestimated him.
I beleive the saying is he is "dumb like a fox"

[wklink]

I think what killed the election for Kerry were his actions and statements long before he was nominated.  His bouncing around on the Iraq war was noticed eight months ago.  He got his reputation as a flip flopper not from GWB but from Howard Dean and his own running mate John Edwards.  Before Bush even said a word about him there was doubt in the mind of the regular voter.  

I think there is a trending toward balkanization of the US electorate.  I think Bill Clinton was one of the last 'moderate' Democrats that you will see as a presidential candidate.  For all their adulation of Clinton many hard core lefties despised some of the policies that Clinton put into office.  If you compare the two, Clinton is not much left of Bush and many in the Democratic Party do not want to see such a person representing their party again.  

If the last batch of presidential wannabies is any indication the party will shift more to the left, not less.  John Kerry was considered the mainstream candidate, not the extreme one.  The only candidate out of the whole mess that I think red staters might have even considered was Joseph Lieberman and he didn't get more than 8 percent of the primary vote.  The fact that guys like Howard Dean are even considered viable candidates bodes poorly for the Democratic party.   The guys that could draw in the masses, the moderates in the party, are being drowned out.

The Democratic party is fracturing.  They have alienated their true base (blue collar union voters) but supporting policies that many absolutely dislike and trussing up a liberal senator as a moderate isn't fooling anyone.  There are moderate Democrats out there, ones that most Americans could vote for, but I am not sure that the new base of the Democratic party would allow such a person again.