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=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: Barcelona on October 29, 2004, 10:24:00 am
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So, who would you like towin the election and who you think is actually going to win the election.
As 80% or more of citizens of other countries, I'd like Kerry to win.
As for who I think is going to win, don't know, don't have time to follow the polls in FL, WI, MI, PA, ME, NM, IA...
You have given your thoughts about these polls in other threads, but what are the latest news, state polls... I was reading the thing about the Redskins and the election, apparently if they lose on Sunday, looking at past statistics we might see a Kerry victory, funny statistic.
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Well I want Kerry to win, and I have been pretty pessimistic about him winning for a long time. The last few days I have had a glimmer of hope that Kerry might win, but I really think it is too close to say right now and it may just be wishful thinking. The state polls are swinging wildy it seems and I think it is because they are just not very reliable. They really just show that the race is close in a lot of states.
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an example of how unreliable state polls are, WWW.electoral-vote.com (http://WWW.electoral-vote.com) had Kerry up yesterday, but today shows Bush up 281-236
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I want Kerry to win, and I think he will win.
For what it's worth, before the baseball playoffs even began, I picked the Cardinals to beat the Red Sox in 6.
So much for my ability to predict. But I did predict who would be in the Series.
Has anybody else heard stories that Bush may have had a stroke a number of years ago, and that's why he is so loopy?
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I can't say that I'd like to see Kerry win. Let's just say that I'd like to see Bush lose.
I think the Dems are fielding an incredibly weak candidate. I don't like Kerry at all - it would have been nice to see a Dean/Clark ticket.
Besides, it's not 4 days left. I don't think we'll know who the president is and who control the senate for a few months.
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Dean/Clark?
Stop dreaming.
If Bush wins, the stupidity of the American people will be more to blame than the weaknesses of Kerry. Yes, Kerry may have his weaknesses, but if the American people can't see that they pale in comparison to Bush and his cronies, they're just plain stupid.
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Want Kerry to win...
Think Bush will win because for some reason everybody thinks that he makes the country safer...
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The stupidity of the American people is that the people who view terrorism as the main issue are the one that live in places that aren't going to be attacked anyway. And the people who are most vulnerable to terrorism live in Kerryland.
Originally posted by hitman:
Want Kerry to win...
Think Bush will win because for some reason everybody thinks that he makes the country safer...
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The whole election will turn out to be terribly anticlimactic.
With the exception of Florida and possibly New Mexico, Kerry will win all the remaining "swing" states and possibly a couple of unforeseen states like Arkansas. He will take the election by a score of 284-254 in the electoral vote (+/- 5 electoral vote margin of error) and will also win the popular vote.
The Republicans will raise a stink in Ohio over MoveOn's aggressive tactics but it will quckly dissipate.
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Originally posted by xcanuck:
I can't say that I'd like to see Kerry win. Let's just say that I'd like to see Bush lose.
You're not alone -- from The American Conservative (http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover1.html) magazine below. The magazine has seven separate editorials because even that conservative magazine's management/editorial board is deeply divided.
"Unfortunately, this election does not offer traditional conservatives an easy or natural choice and has left our editors as split as our readership. In an effort to deepen our readers?? and our own understanding of the options before us, we??ve asked several of our editors and contributors to make ??the conservative case? for their favored candidate. Their pieces, plus Taki??s column closing out this issue, constitute TAC??s endorsement. ??The Editors"
Kerry??s the One
By Scott McConnell
There is little in John Kerry??s persona or platform that appeals to conservatives. The flip-flopper charge??the centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry??seems overdone, as Kerry??s contrasting votes are the sort of baggage any senator of long service is likely to pick up. (Bob Dole could tell you all about it.) But Kerry is plainly a conventional liberal and no candidate for a future edition of Profiles in Courage. In my view, he will always deserve censure for his vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002.
But this election is not about John Kerry. If he were to win, his dearth of charisma would likely ensure him a single term. He would face challenges from within his own party and a thwarting of his most expensive initiatives by a Republican Congress. Much of his presidency would be absorbed by trying to clean up the mess left to him in Iraq. He would be constrained by the swollen deficits and a ripe target for the next Republican nominee.
It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into an important president, and in many ways the most radical America has had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America??s conservative party, he has become the Left??s perfect foil??its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia??s last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries?? budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.
Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation??s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal??Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can??t be found to do it??and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.
During the campaign, few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been ??anti-Americanism.? After the Second World War many European intellectuals argued for a ??Third Way? between American-style capitalism and Soviet communism, and a generation later Europe??s radicals embraced every ragged ??anti-imperialist? cause that came along. In South America, defiance of ??the Yanqui? always draws a crowd. But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. In Europe and indeed all over the world, he has made the United States despised by people who used to be its friends, by businessmen and the middle classes, by moderate and sensible liberals. Never before have democratic foreign governments needed to demonstrate disdain for Washington to their own electorates in order to survive in office. The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It??s the same throughout the Middle East.
Bush has accomplished this by giving the U.S. a novel foreign-policy doctrine under which it arrogates to itself the right to invade any country it wants if it feels threatened. It is an American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but the latter was at least confined to Eastern Europe. If the analogy seems extreme, what is an appropriate comparison when a country manufactures falsehoods about a foreign government, disseminates them widely, and invades the country on the basis of those falsehoods? It is not an action that any American president has ever taken before. It is not something that ??good? countries do. It is the main reason that people all over the world who used to consider the United States a reliable and necessary bulwark of world stability now see us as a menace to their own peace and security.
These sentiments mean that as long as Bush is president, we have no real allies in the world, no friends to help us dig out from the Iraq quagmire. More tragically, they mean that if terrorists succeed in striking at the United States in another 9/11-type attack, many in the world will not only think of the American victims but also of the thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American armed forces. The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terrorists??indeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. Only the seriously deluded could fail to see that a policy so central to America??s survival as a free country as getting hold of loose nuclear materials and controlling nuclear proliferation requires the willingness of foreign countries to provide full, 100 percent co-operation. Making yourself into the world??s most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help.
I??ve heard people who have known George W. Bush for decades and served prominently in his father??s administration say that he could not possibly have conceived of the doctrine of pre-emptive war by himself, that he was essentially taken for a ride by people with a pre-existing agenda to overturn Saddam Hussein. Bush??s public performances plainly show him to be a man who has never read or thought much about foreign policy. So the inevitable questions are: who makes the key foreign-policy decisions in the Bush presidency, who controls the information flow to the president, how are various options are presented?
The record, from published administration memoirs and in-depth reporting, is one of an administration with a very small group of six or eight real decision-makers, who were set on war from the beginning and who took great pains to shut out arguments from professionals in the CIA and State Department and the U.S. armed forces that contradicted their rosy scenarios about easy victory. Much has been written about the neoconservative hand guiding the Bush presidency??and it is peculiar that one who was fired from the National Security Council in the Reagan administration for suspicion of passing classified material to the Israeli embassy and another who has written position papers for an Israeli Likud Party leader have become key players in the making of American foreign policy.
But neoconservatism now encompasses much more than Israel-obsessed intellectuals and policy insiders. The Bush foreign policy also surfs on deep currents within the Christian Right, some of which see unqualified support of Israel as part of a godly plan to bring about Armageddon and the future kingdom of Christ. These two strands of Jewish and Christian extremism build on one another in the Bush presidency??and President Bush has given not the slightest indication he would restrain either in a second term. With Colin Powell??s departure from the State Department looming, Bush is more than ever the ??neoconian candidate.? The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.
If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past??and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.
George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies??a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky??s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies??temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election??are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans ??won??t do.? This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support.
November 8, 2004 issue
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Originally posted by ggw?:
The Republicans will raise a stink in Ohio over MoveOn's aggressive tactics but it will quckly dissipate.
Probably the most ominous issue I've heard discussed lately, in several venues, is that nearly 50% of likely voters will view a win by the "other guy" as illegitimate (regardless of whom they view as the other guy). We're looking at a gnarly, angry transition no matter who wins.
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Are these your own thoughts, or did you get them elsewhere?
Originally posted by ggw?:
The whole election will turn out to be terribly anticlimactic.
With the exception of Florida and possibly New Mexico, Kerry will win all the remaining "swing" states and possibly a couple of unforeseen states like Arkansas. He will take the election by a score of 284-254 in the electoral vote (+/- 5 electoral vote margin of error) and will also win the popular vote.
The Republicans will raise a stink in Ohio over MoveOn's aggressive tactics but it will quckly dissipate.
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Those are my own thoughts.
Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
Are these your own thoughts, or did you get them elsewhere?
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Just wondering, as I haven't heard of anybody else making such a bold prediction.
Originally posted by ggw?:
Those are my own thoughts.
Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
Are these your own thoughts, or did you get them elsewhere?
[/b]
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I am nothing if not bold.
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Zogby is predicting a Kerry win (Daily Show last night), and has been saying since about April that this election is Kerry's to lose, based on the fact that undecideds tend to lean toward the challenger, as well as the recent surge in new voter registrations, where democrats outnumber republicans by a 4:1 ratio in some areas. I wouldn't be surprised if we have a new President in January.
Good thing too. Rehnquist looks like he may need to retire earlier than he'd like.
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Bags: That was an incredible article in The American Conservative. I'm predicting Kerry, and here's why:
When I was at Voodoo Music Fest in New Orleans a few weeks ago, I shared space with about 80,000 people - mostly college kids. I asked everyone I was in line with or standing next to if they were going to vote. To a person, they were all fired up - and registered - and voting for KERRY. Now maybe Republican college kids don't "do" rock festivals, but certainly out of forty or fifty people, I would have found ONE??!!
I couldn't get to all the stages, but of the bands I heard, (including a Board favorite, The Pixies) each played at least one anti-war, anti-Bush song, and the crowds went NUTS. Because college kids don't have landline telephones, and cannot be easily polled, their "voices" are missing from most state/party polls. I think the 18- to 24 year olds of America WILL vote, and I think they will take the White House away from the Bush family - at least until Jeb tries to "one up" his brother. I predict Kerry - with a significant popular vote margin...You go, kids. Save America!
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well being from Zogby land (he was my older sister's high-school history teacher) lets just say he can sometime miss. I know he is famous for making predictions before anyone else but lets just say sometime his methods make me wonder. Plus I know a ton of the guys who actually make the phone calls for Zogby and we would be lucky if they were not totally stoned at work.
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Guess what? Most people don't go to music festivals, regardless of party affiliation.
And most people aren't 18-24.
By the same token, you could also argue that it's the gays that are going to win it for Kerry.
A better argument might be that female voters will win it for Kerry.
Originally posted by Suki:
Bags: That was an incredible article in The American Conservative. I'm predicting Kerry, and here's why:
When I was at Voodoo Music Fest in New Orleans a few weeks ago, I shared space with about 80,000 people - mostly college kids. I asked everyone I was in line with or standing next to if they were going to vote. To a person, they were all fired up - and registered - and voting for KERRY. Now maybe Republican college kids don't "do" rock festivals, but certainly out of forty or fifty people, I would have found ONE??!!
I couldn't get to all the stages, but of the bands I heard, (including a Board favorite, The Pixies) each played at least one anti-war, anti-Bush song, and the crowds went NUTS. Because college kids don't have landline telephones, and cannot be easily polled, their "voices" are missing from most state/party polls. I think the 18- to 24 year olds of America WILL vote, and I think they will take the White House away from the Bush family - at least until Jeb tries to "one up" his brother. I predict Kerry - with a significant popular vote margin...You go, kids. Save America!
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Originally posted by tbmtt:
well being from Zogby land (he was my older sister's high-school history teacher) lets just say he can sometime miss. I know he is famous for making predictions before anyone else but lets just say sometime his methods make me wonder. Plus I know a ton of the guys who actually make the phone calls for Zogby and we would be lucky if they were not totally stoned at work.
yeah, zogby's recent state polls have been all over the place. he's doing an online chat at 4 today on washingtonpost.com, so maybe he's got some answers.
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According to something a little less anecdotal -- college kids break about 50% to 40% in favor of Kerry:
http://www.iop.harvard.edu/ (http://www.iop.harvard.edu/)
Originally posted by Suki:
When I was at Voodoo Music Fest in New Orleans a few weeks ago, I shared space with about 80,000 people - mostly college kids. I asked everyone I was in line with or standing next to if they were going to vote. To a person, they were all fired up - and registered - and voting for KERRY. Now maybe Republican college kids don't "do" rock festivals, but certainly out of forty or fifty people, I would have found ONE??!!
I couldn't get to all the stages, but of the bands I heard, (including a Board favorite, The Pixies) each played at least one anti-war, anti-Bush song, and the crowds went NUTS. Because college kids don't have landline telephones, and cannot be easily polled, their "voices" are missing from most state/party polls. I think the 18- to 24 year olds of America WILL vote, and I think they will take the White House away from the Bush family - at least until Jeb tries to "one up" his brother. I predict Kerry - with a significant popular vote margin...You go, kids. Save America!
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and kids prefer bush 52% to 48%
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election_countdown/activities/poll_pres/index_backup2.asp (http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election_countdown/activities/poll_pres/index_backup2.asp)
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Originally posted by Rhett Miller:
Has anybody else heard stories that Bush may have had a stroke a number of years ago, and that's why he is so loopy?
Maybe it was that pretzel he choked on a few years back...cut off the oxygen to his brain for a few seconds too many and killed the remaining brain cells that hadn't already been decimated by cocaine and liquor.
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Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
and kids prefer bush 52% to 48%
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election_countdown/activities/poll_pres/index_backup2.asp (http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election_countdown/activities/poll_pres/index_backup2.asp)
i read this article a few days ago and had to laugh...i mean, the guy rarely uses a word containing more than 3 syllables and speaks in short, simple sentences. no wonder 5th graders relate to him better. plus he looks like a chimpanzee...what kids don't like people who make funny faces all the time?
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Is there a final day in the US for conducting polls and campaigning? In Spain you can do both up to 48 hours before the election.
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Originally posted by Barcelona:
Is there a final day in the US for conducting polls and campaigning? In Spain you can do both up to 48 hours before the election.
nope. . you campaign until the polls close. and pollster's move to exit-polling to get people as they leave.
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Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
Originally posted by Barcelona:
Is there a final day in the US for conducting polls and campaigning? In Spain you can do both up to 48 hours before the election.
nope. . you campaign until the polls close. and pollster's move to exit-polling to get people as they leave. [/b]
It's the same in Spain and I guess everywhere, you can conduct a poll the same day of the election and make it public once the schools are closed. However, are we still going to see Bush and Kerry campaign on Monday?
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Originally posted by Barcelona:
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
nope. . you campaign until the polls close. and pollster's move to exit-polling to get people as they leave.
It's the same in Spain and I guess everywhere, you can conduct a poll the same day of the election and make it public once the schools are closed. However, are we still going to see Bush and Kerry campaign on Monday? [/b]
they'll go back to their home towns to vote, and since texas and massachusetts aren't in play this year, in the battleground states, there will be volunteers 90 feet from the entrance handing out vote bush or vote kerry fliers to everyone passing by. . .course, there will be a ton of other volunteers there as well passing out fliers for other candidates in other races (like house, senate, state races or propositions).
the exit-polling results have been causing problems ever since network started using them. for example, the polls in alaska close at 1 am eastern time. . .so, by the time the polls close in alaska, the election could be decided. also consider, polls in the east close around 7 or so at night, which is 4 out west, and networks start announcing winners. . .tends to decrease voting totals, especially in cases of landslides in the east. plus, the 2000 election had its own share of issues, namely, the exit-pollsters got bad data on florida. . so, networks called florida for gore early in the night, then had to change it, then gave it to bush, then changed it again.
i thought that in england, there's only like a month of campaigning allowed and it's over before they vote. i could be wrong, but i know some countries do put a moratorium on campaigning before a vote.
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I think two things are going to happen...
1. For the first time so far in this election, I actually think Kerry will win it (would have put money on Bush up until this week). I think the facts that a) voter registration has been so high b) Kerry looks solid in Pennsylvania and good for Ohio, and most importantly c) that every poll is basically garbage because they don't count cellphone-only users, (who are mostly young and urban and will on the whole lean about 60% towards Kerry).... mean that if the polls stay as tight as they are until next Tuesday, Kerry will take the election with Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and might even swing a couple of others his way.
2) I also think there's going to be chaos because of all the ballot issues, and the huge number of lawyers and lawyer wanna-bes who are out in the swing states ready to litigate whenever they see a chad on the floor.
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Originally posted by My Cat Can DJ:
c) that every poll is basically garbage because they don't count cellphone-only users, (who are mostly young and urban and will on the whole lean about 60% towards Kerry)....
from yesterday's post:
At the same time, pollsters argue that the proportion of people who use only a cell phone is tiny. There may be 169 million cell phones in purses or strapped to the belts of Americans, but the overwhelming majority are owned by people who still have a traditional telephone in their home and are reachable by pollsters.
Early this year, a face-to-face survey of 2,000 randomly selected adults found that only 2.5 percent had cell phone service and no traditional home phone. The figures were slightly higher among 18- to-24-year-olds and renters, reported Peter Tuckel of Hunter College in New York, which conducted the study with veteran pollster Harry O'Neill.
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One could always cast a protest (http://groups.myspace.com/nsawp) vote.
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ok, from battleground land:
i really think Kerry's going to get Wisconsin. It's amazing. I wish I could share with y'all our numbers, but I can't, but let me tell you... I have never seen such a big ground operation. And I worked Miami-Dade last election cycle. This thing is amazing.
BTW-- 4 days left to me means 4 days of living on take out coffee-in-a-box, day old bagels, and bottled water, while shouting at paid canvassers. It couldn't come too soon at this point!
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Originally posted by joz:
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
and kids prefer bush 52% to 48%
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election_countdown/activities/poll_pres/index_backup2.asp (http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election_countdown/activities/poll_pres/index_backup2.asp)
i read this article a few days ago and had to laugh...i mean, the guy rarely uses a word containing more than 3 syllables and speaks in short, simple sentences. no wonder 5th graders relate to him better. plus he looks like a chimpanzee...what kids don't like people who make funny faces all the time? [/b]
In my experience as a teacher, kids just spout off whatever their parents say at home. If Mommy and Daddy are Bush supporters, so are the wee little ones, and vice versa.
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Originally posted by hitman:
In my experience as a teacher, kids just spout off whatever their parents say at home. If Mommy and Daddy are Bush supporters, so are the wee little ones, and vice versa.
Exactly!
Especially for the younger students, meaning below Middle School.
However, this does give you an idea of how their parents are voting, assuming that they are. Possibly up to Xs 2 the above results but that's not likely the real total due to separations and divided preferences.
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<img src="http://mushroom.nosox.org/b3ta/bbcnewshappy.png" alt=" - " />
el hombre bush (http://www.newdem.org/memorable/bush.php)
kerry es un pendeho (http://www.georgewbush.com/News/MultiMedia/VideoPlayer.aspx?ID=1117&T=5)
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Your vote doesn't count!!!!
does it really matter we are fucked anyway...
i like bush more because he is entertaining but i think Kerry could probably help our country more. i just don't want to get drafted.
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Originally posted by Barcelona:
I was reading the thing about the Redskins and the election, apparently if they lose on Sunday, looking at past statistics we might see a Kerry victory, funny statistic.
Come on Green Bay! 0-10 in the second quarter.
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Originally posted by Barcelona:
I was reading the thing about the Redskins and the election, apparently if they lose on Sunday, looking at past statistics we might see a Kerry victory, funny statistic.
Final:
Green Bay 28
Washington 14
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Originally posted by Random Citizen:
Originally posted by Barcelona:
I was reading the thing about the Redskins and the election, apparently if they lose on Sunday, looking at past statistics we might see a Kerry victory, funny statistic.
Final:
Green Bay 28
Washington 14 [/b]
Good! now there is the other (and apparently more difficult) statistic. I read that according to past elections' statistics, the candidate that wins there, wins the election.
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Originally posted by Jaguär:
Originally posted by hitman:
In my experience as a teacher, kids just spout off whatever their parents say at home. If Mommy and Daddy are Bush supporters, so are the wee little ones, and vice versa.
Exactly!
Especially for the younger students, meaning below Middle School.
However, this does give you an idea of how their parents are voting, assuming that they are. Possibly up to Xs 2 the above results but that's not likely the real total due to separations and divided preferences. [/b]
you have to take into consideration that many registered democrats are probably childless (college students and under-30 voters just married)...this is just a guess on my part but i would bet there are larger numbers of childless democrats than republicans. furthermore, consider families with multiple children in school; the votes of 2 parents in doesn't quite add up to the votes of 3 or more school-aged kids. i remember that my sixth grade class had a mock-election during the dukakis vs. bush I campaign (ironically, i lived in florida at the time)...my teacher was overtly conservative and the kids in class voted to please, with all but one vote being cast for the sr. bush...i was the only dissenting vote. scary how impressionable kids are.
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Originally posted by joz:
i remember that my sixth grade class had a mock-election during the dukakis vs. bush I campaign (ironically, i lived in florida at the time)...my teacher was overtly conservative and the kids in class voted to please, with all but one vote being cast for the sr. bush...i was the only dissenting vote. scary how impressionable kids are.
question then: are/were your parents democrats?
i'm still the only republican in my family. . .
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By the way, I was watching a special report on Bush yesterday on a German channel here in Bolivia. They had interviews with R. Perle (one of the most representative neconsorvatives), journalists from the US... and there was a mention to Bush' grandfather being Hitler's banker in the US. Is this right? I hope it is not, otherwise this country is losing all its credibility.
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I'm voting with these republicans:
<img src="http://www.ilovebacon.com/102604/rock.jpg" alt=" - " />
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I'm marquee smith and I approve this post.
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Are they going to let black folk vote in Florida this time round?
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The Economist endorses Kerry.
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?Story_ID=3329802 (http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?Story_ID=3329802)
The incompetent or the incoherent?
Oct 28th 2004
From The Economist print edition
With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John Kerry on November 2nd
YOU might have thought that, three years after a devastating terrorist attack on American soil, a period which has featured two wars, radical political and economic legislation, and an adjustment to one of the biggest stockmarket crashes in history, the campaign for the presidency would be an especially elevated and notable affair. If so, you would be wrong. This year's battle has been between two deeply flawed men: George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it; and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively about something only once, and that was 30 years ago. But on November 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must The Economist. It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush.
Whenever we express a view of that sort, some readers are bound to protest that we, as a publication based in London, should not be poking our noses in other people's politics. Translated, this invariably means that protesters disagree with our choice. It may also, however, reflect a lack of awareness about our readership. The Economist's weekly sales in the United States are about 450,000 copies, which is three times our British sale and roughly 45% of our worldwide total. All those American readers will now be pondering how to vote, or indeed whether to. Thus, as at every presidential election since 1980, we hope it may be useful for us to say how we would think about our vote—if we had one.
The case against George Bush
That decision cannot be separated from the terrible memory of September 11th, nor can it fail to begin as an evaluation of the way in which Mr Bush and his administration responded to that day. For Mr Bush's record during the past three years has been both inspiring and disturbing.
Mr Bush was inspiring in the way he reacted to the new world in which he, and America, found itself. He grasped the magnitude of the challenge well. His military response in Afghanistan was not the sort of poorly directed lashing out that Bill Clinton had used in 1998 after al-Qaeda destroyed two American embassies in east Africa: it was a resolute, measured effort, which was reassuringly sober about the likely length of the campaign against Osama bin Laden and the elusiveness of anything worth the name of victory. Mistakes were made, notably when at Tora Bora Mr bin Laden and other leaders probably escaped, and when following the war both America and its allies devoted insufficient military and financial resources to helping Afghanistan rebuild itself. But overall, the mission has achieved a lot: the Taliban were removed, al-Qaeda lost its training camps and its base, and Afghanistan has just held elections that bring cautious hope for the central government's future ability to bring stability and prosperity.
The biggest mistake, though, was one that will haunt America for years to come. It lay in dealing with prisoners-of-war by sending hundreds of them to the American base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, putting them in a legal limbo, outside the Geneva conventions and outside America's own legal system. That act reflected a genuinely difficult problem: that of having captured people of unknown status but many of whom probably did want to kill Americans, at a time when to set them free would have been politically controversial, to say the least. That difficulty cannot neutralise the damage caused by this decision, however. Today, Guantánamo Bay offers constant evidence of America's hypocrisy, evidence that is disturbing for those who sympathise with it, cause-affirming for those who hate it. This administration, which claims to be fighting for justice, the rule of law and liberty, is incarcerating hundreds of people, whether innocent or guilty, without trial or access to legal representation. The White House's proposed remedy, namely military tribunals, merely compounds the problem.
When Mr Bush decided to frame his foreign policy in the sort of language and objectives previously associated with Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, he was bound to be greeted with cynicism. Yet he was right to do so. To paraphrase a formula invented by his ally, Tony Blair, Mr Bush was promising to be “tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism”, and the latter he attributed to the lack of democracy, human rights and opportunity in much of the world, especially the Arab countries. To call for an effort to change that lamentable state of affairs was inspiring and surely correct. The credibility of the call was enhanced by this month's Afghan election, and may in future be enhanced by successful and free elections in Iraq. But that remains ahead, and meanwhile Mr Bush's credibility has been considerably undermined not just by Guantánamo but also by two big things: by the sheer incompetence and hubristic thinking evident in the way in which his team set about the rebuilding of Iraq, once Saddam Hussein's regime had been toppled; and by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which strengthened the suspicion that the mistreatment or even torture of prisoners was being condoned.
Invading Iraq was not a mistake. Although the intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction has been shown to have been flimsy and, with hindsight, wrong, Saddam's record of deception in the 12 years since the first Gulf war meant that it was right not to give him the benefit of the doubt. The containment scheme deployed around him was unsustainable and politically damaging: military bases in holy Saudi Arabia, sanctions that impoverished and even killed Iraqis and would have collapsed. But changing the regime so incompetently was a huge mistake. By having far too few soldiers to provide security and by failing to pay Saddam's remnant army, a task that was always going to be long and hard has been made much, much harder. Such incompetence is no mere detail: thousands of Iraqis have died as a result and hundreds of American soldiers. The eventual success of the mission, while still possible, has been put in unnecessary jeopardy. So has America's reputation in the Islamic world, both for effectiveness and for moral probity.
If Mr Bush had meanwhile been making progress elsewhere in the Middle East, such mistakes might have been neutralised. But he hasn't. Israel and Palestine remain in their bitter conflict, with America readily accusable of bias. In Iran the conservatives have become stronger and the country has moved closer to making nuclear weapons. Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia have not turned hostile, but neither have they been terribly supportive nor reform-minded. Libya's renunciation of WMD is the sole clear piece of progress.
This only makes the longer-term project more important, not less. To succeed, however, America needs a president capable of admitting to mistakes and of learning from them. Mr Bush has steadfastly refused to admit to anything: even after Abu Ghraib, when he had a perfect opportunity to dismiss Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and declare a new start, he chose not to. Instead, he treated the abuses as if they were a low-level, disciplinary issue. Can he learn from mistakes? The current approach in Iraq, of training Iraqi security forces and preparing for elections to establish an Iraqi government with popular support, certainly represents an improvement, although America still has too few troops. And no one knows, for example, whether Mr Rumsfeld will stay in his job, or go. In the end, one can do no more than guess about whether in a second term Mr Bush would prove more competent.
Making sense of John Kerry
That does at least place him on equal terms with his rival, Mr Kerry. With any challenger, voters have to make a leap of faith about what the new man might be like in office. What he says during the campaign is a poor guide: Mr Bush said in 2000 that America should be “a humble nation, but strong” and should eschew nation-building; Mr Clinton claimed in 1992 to want to confront “the butchers of Beijing” and to reflate the economy through public spending.
Like those two previous challengers, Mr Kerry has shaped many of his positions to contrast himself with the incumbent. That is par for the course. What is more disconcerting, however, is the way those positions have oscillated, even as the facts behind them have stayed the same. In the American system, given Congress's substantial role, presidents should primarily be chosen for their character, their qualities of leadership, for how they might be expected to deal with the crises that may confront them, abroad or at home. Oscillation, even during an election campaign, is a worrying sign.
If the test is a domestic one, especially an economic crisis, Mr Kerry looks acceptable, however. His record and instincts are as a fiscal conservative, suggesting that he would rightly see future federal budget deficits as a threat. His circle of advisers includes the admirable Robert Rubin, formerly Mr Clinton's treasury secretary. His only big spending plan, on health care, would probably be killed by a Republican Congress. On trade, his position is more debatable: while an avowed free trader with a voting record in the Senate to confirm it, he has flirted with attacks on outsourcing this year and chosen a rank protectionist as his running-mate. He has not yet shown Mr Clinton's talent for advocacy on this issue, or any willingness to confront his rather protectionist party. Still, on social policy, Mr Kerry has a clear advantage: unlike Mr Bush he is not in hock to the Christian right. That will make him a more tolerant, less divisive figure on issues such as abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research.
The biggest questions, though, must be about foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. That is where his oscillations are most unsettling. A war that he voted to authorise, and earlier this year claimed to support, he now describes as “a mistake”. On some occasions he claims to have been profoundly changed by September 11th and to be determined to seek out and destroy terrorists wherever they are hiding, and on others he has seemed to hark back to the old Clintonian view of terrorism as chiefly a question of law and order. He has failed to offer any set of overall objectives for American foreign policy, though perhaps he could hardly oppose Mr Bush's targets of democracy, human rights and liberty. But instead he has merely offered a different process: deeper thought, more consultation with allies.
So what is Mr Kerry's character? His voting record implies he is a vacillator, but that may be unfair, given the technical nature of many Senate votes. His oscillations this year imply that he is more of a ruthless opportunist. His military record suggests he can certainly be decisive when he has to be and his post-Vietnam campaign showed determination. His reputation for political comebacks and as a strong finisher in elections also indicates a degree of willpower that his flip-flopping otherwise belies.
The task ahead, and the man to fit it
In the end, the choice relies on a judgment about who will be better suited to meet the challenges America is likely to face during the next four years. Those challenges must include the probability of another big terrorist attack, in America or western Europe. They must include the need for a period of discipline in economic policy and for compromise on social policy, lest the nation become weak or divided in the face of danger. Above all, though, they include the need to make a success of the rebuilding of Iraq, as the key part of a broader effort to stabilise, modernise and, yes, democratise the Middle East.
Many readers, feeling that Mr Bush has the right vision in foreign policy even if he has made many mistakes, will conclude that the safest option is to leave him in office to finish the job he has started. If Mr Bush is re-elected, and uses a new team and a new approach to achieve that goal, and shakes off his fealty to an extreme minority, the religious right, then The Economist will wish him well. But our confidence in him has been shattered. We agree that his broad vision is the right one but we doubt whether Mr Bush is able to change or has sufficient credibility to succeed, especially in the Islamic world. Iraq's fledgling democracy, if it gets the chance to be born at all, will need support from its neighbours—or at least non-interference—if it is to survive. So will other efforts in the Middle East, particularly concerning Israel and Iran.
John Kerry says the war was a mistake, which is unfortunate if he is to be commander-in-chief of the soldiers charged with fighting it. But his plan for the next phase in Iraq is identical to Mr Bush's, which speaks well of his judgment. He has been forthright about the need to win in Iraq, rather than simply to get out, and will stand a chance of making a fresh start in the Israel-Palestine conflict and (though with even greater difficulty) with Iran. After three necessarily tumultuous and transformative years, this is a time for consolidation, for discipline and for repairing America's moral and practical authority. Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America's great tasks.
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From the W. Post (bold/italics my own)
October 31, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Apparent Heir
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Columnists for this newspaper are not allowed to endorse presidential candidates. But I think this election is so important, I am going to break the rules. I hope I don't get fired. But here goes: I am endorsing George Bush for president. No, no - not George W. Bush. I am endorsing his father - George Herbert Walker Bush.
The more I look back on the elder Bush - Bush 41 - the more I find things to admire and the more I see attributes we need in our next president.
Let's start with domestic policy. The elder George Bush was the real uniter, not divider, the real believer in a kinder, gentler political dialogue. Yes, he had a Democratic Congress to deal with, so he had to be more conciliatory, but it came naturally to him. In 1990, the elder Bush sided with Congressional Democrats to raise taxes, because he knew it was the right thing for the economy, despite his famous "Read my lips" pledge not to raise new taxes. While that 1990 tax increase contributed to his re-election defeat, it laid the foundation for the Clinton tax increases, which, together with Mr. Bush's, helped to hold down interest rates and spur our tremendous growth in the 1990's and the buildup of a huge surplus.
On foreign policy, the elder Bush maintained a healthy balance between realism and idealism, unilateralism and multilateralism, American strength and American diplomacy. He believed that international institutions like the U.N. could be force multipliers of U.S. power. Rather than rubbing Mikhail Gorbachev's nose in the dirt, the elder Bush treated him with respect, and in doing so helped to orchestrate the collapse of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany without the firing of a single shot. The nonviolent unraveling of the Soviet Empire ushered in a decade of prosperity and an era of unprecedented American power and popularity.
The alliance that Mr. Bush, Brent Scowcroft and James A. Baker III built to drive Saddam out of Kuwait had so many allies it virtually turned a profit for America. Mr. Bush chose not to invade Baghdad in 1991. Right or wrong, he felt that had he tried, he would have lost the coalition he had built up to evict Saddam from Kuwait. He obviously believed that the U.S. should never invade an Arab capital without a coalition that contained countries whose support mattered in that part of the world, such as France, Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia.
The elder Bush rightly understood that it was not in Israel's interest, or that of the U.S., for Israel to be expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Madrid peace conference convened by the elder Bush paved the way for both the Oslo peace process and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, which ended Israel's diplomatic isolation with countries like India and China. It was also the elder Bush who laid the groundwork for the Nafta free-trade accord, completed by President Bill Clinton.
In short, the elder Bush understood the importance of acting in the world - but acting wisely, with competence and preparation. His great weakness was his public diplomacy. He wrongly antagonized American Jews by challenging their right to lobby on behalf of Israel. He could have given more voice to the amazing liberation of humanity that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented and to the American anger over the Tiananmen Square massacre. Although, in his muted response to Tiananmen, the elder Bush kept China-U.S. relations from going totally off the rails, which kept China on a track to economic reform. Although he raised taxes, he never really explained himself. So his instincts were good, his mechanics were often flawless, but his words and music left you frustrated. Still, the legacy is a substantial one. Over time, historians will treat the elder Bush with respect.
So as we approach this critical election of 2004, my advice, dear readers, is this: Vote for the candidate who embodies the ethos of George H. W. Bush - the old guy. Vote for the man who you think would have the same gut feel for nurturing allies and restoring bipartisanship to foreign policy as him. Vote for the man you think understands the importance of facing up to our fiscal responsibilities for the sake of our children. And vote for the man who has the best instincts for balancing realism and idealism and the man who understands the necessity of using energetic U.S. diplomacy to make Israel more secure - by helping to bring it peace with its Arab neighbors, not just more tours from American Christian fundamentalists.
Yes, next Tuesday, vote for the real political heir to George H. W. Bush. I'm sure you know who that is.
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Originally posted by Bags:
From the W. Post (bold/italics my own)
Isn't this from yesterday's NY Times?