Thursday, November 04, 2004
Liberal Feingold outpolls semi-liberal Kerry
Bush has no intention of doing anything to "unite" the country, because... why mess with success?
Mull over this seeming anomaly, brought to my attention by poet/perfesser Sam Abrams: John Kerry got 50% of the tally in Wisconsin, narrowly beating Bush by only 11,000 votes. Senator Russ Feingold, who voted against both the Patriot Act (the sole "nay") & the Authorization to attack Saddam Hussein, received 55% of the total & defeated his GOP opponent by over 300,000 votes! His opponent was Tim Michels, a millionaire construction company owner and a former US Army Ranger, who aggressively accused Feingold of being weak on terror. Kerry barely hung on to Feingold's coat tails. Feingold's 1998 election was much closer. Does this indicate that a lot of people must swing their votes to the candidate they view as having strong principles, whether these principles are conservative or liberal? So is it less a matter of a candidate being cautiously "centrist" in all things than of demonstrating that one does indeed have "moral values" that voters can relate to & even admire, putting them on-record & being committed to acting upon them in the future? Perhaps Feingold's success isn't an anomaly after all.
So forget about winning over conservative Christians whose distaste for human rights goes way beyond opposing gay marriage & who are for all intents theocrats. Never mind people who listen to right wing talk radio all day & believe what they hear. Even with a a guy who turned out to be a fairly weak candidate, Democrats still nearly accomplished what Bush pulled off four years ago; an electoral win over a popular vote loss! For heavensake, in 1984 - twenty years ago - the pundits & talking heads were saying the same things they're saying now. Then the Dems nominated a smiling youngish governor with a positive & direct "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" message & who despite a scandalous personal reputation beat an incumbent "war" President & so scared the right wingers that four years out of office they invoke his name with the same fear & loathing generations of similarly unreconstructed Americans reserved for William Tecumseh Sherman. I don't mean Dukakis. Democratic presidential candidates don't have to be as "moderate" as Clinton as long as they've got bright hopes for the middle class & the underclasses, good songs, fishing licenses, self-control, & were regularly attending a church or synagogue before anyone was checking to see if they did.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Mull over this seeming anomaly, brought to my attention by poet/perfesser Sam Abrams: John Kerry got 50% of the tally in Wisconsin, narrowly beating Bush by only 11,000 votes. Senator Russ Feingold, who voted against both the Patriot Act (the sole "nay") & the Authorization to attack Saddam Hussein, received 55% of the total & defeated his GOP opponent by over 300,000 votes! His opponent was Tim Michels, a millionaire construction company owner and a former US Army Ranger, who aggressively accused Feingold of being weak on terror. Kerry barely hung on to Feingold's coat tails. Feingold's 1998 election was much closer. Does this indicate that a lot of people must swing their votes to the candidate they view as having strong principles, whether these principles are conservative or liberal? So is it less a matter of a candidate being cautiously "centrist" in all things than of demonstrating that one does indeed have "moral values" that voters can relate to & even admire, putting them on-record & being committed to acting upon them in the future? Perhaps Feingold's success isn't an anomaly after all.
So forget about winning over conservative Christians whose distaste for human rights goes way beyond opposing gay marriage & who are for all intents theocrats. Never mind people who listen to right wing talk radio all day & believe what they hear. Even with a a guy who turned out to be a fairly weak candidate, Democrats still nearly accomplished what Bush pulled off four years ago; an electoral win over a popular vote loss! For heavensake, in 1984 - twenty years ago - the pundits & talking heads were saying the same things they're saying now. Then the Dems nominated a smiling youngish governor with a positive & direct "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" message & who despite a scandalous personal reputation beat an incumbent "war" President & so scared the right wingers that four years out of office they invoke his name with the same fear & loathing generations of similarly unreconstructed Americans reserved for William Tecumseh Sherman. I don't mean Dukakis. Democratic presidential candidates don't have to be as "moderate" as Clinton as long as they've got bright hopes for the middle class & the underclasses, good songs, fishing licenses, self-control, & were regularly attending a church or synagogue before anyone was checking to see if they did.
