Editorial Commentary: What Kerry Bounce?

You may, err.. will flame when ready.

August 03, 2004

What Kerry Bounce?

link to the very opinionated editorial

Doug Hagin

Oh how about those Democrats at their convention last week? What a show they put on. The had speeches, and raucous applause. Those attending certainly seemed to be having tons of fun didn’t they? Yes indeed it was a huge love fest in old Bean Town. But surely the Democratic Convention left some very interesting unanswered questions about the so-called party of the working class.

First and foremost who do the Democratic Party think they fooled last week? Do they really expect the American people who follow the political scene to buy their acting job? Is anyone who is not drinking the Democrats Kool-Aid really going to think the convention was a true representation of the values of the Democratic Party?

Let us be realistic here. The leaders of this party from Howard Dean to Al Gore to Ted Kennedy to Hillary Clinton herself, has been lambasting the Bush Administration for months now. Yet magically the hateful rhetoric from Ted Kennedy about the Iraq war being plotted in Texas and about Iraq being “Bush‘s Vietnam”, was not heard in Boston. Al Gore Spoke but managed not to start screaming like a maniac that Bush “ betrayed this country” and “played on our fears”. Howard Dean did not make any of his famed inferences about Bush possibly knowing about 9-11 before it happened either.

Are these folks expecting anyone to buy into this fallacious behavior? Surely the Democratic Party has not changed it’s feelings or ideology. Nor have they changed the hatred many of their supporters hold for President Bush. What they did do in Boston, though, was to pretend like they were a mainstream party. And trust me here my friends the Democrats are many things, but mainstream is not among them.

The whole masquerade party in Boston was a clever attempt to fool the undecided voters into believing the Democrats are a party which are strong on issues like national security and national defense.

The Democrats avoided gun issues and any real mention of their support for Gay marriage. My word they even had prayers to God during their convention. And abortion? They side-stepped that as well. And did you lose count of the number of times they threw the word values around? Why did they do these things? Simply put they are bright enough to realize that they can not get elected when they present their true ideology for the American people to see.

So the next question might be will this party ever turn from their increasingly left-wing ideals and again come to embrace the Constitution and traditional American values? Don’t bet on it my friends. They would rather lie to us about who they are and what they believe in than turn from their leftist values. Be very, very wary of a political party which has to pretend it is something other than it really is to get elected.

Next question for the Democrats is this. Why are you still pretending to be a party which unites America? The Democratic Party plays the race card, the wealth card, the gender card, this card, that card with alarming regularity. Then they expect us to believe they are a party that unites rather than divides?

Do they not realize credibility means not only talking the talk but walking the walk? It is an awfully tough sell for the Democrats to talk about uniting America when their Vice-Presidential nominee talks about two Americas. It is also hard to buy their talk of uniting us when they are the lap dogs of the N.A.A.C.P. and the National Organization for Women, two of the most divisive groups in America today.

How about this query for the Democrats When are you people going to get over losing in 2000? How many times must we hear the tired mantra of “ count all the votes” ? Bush won the election, yes it was close but Al Gore lost, get over it!

Now here is a really tough question for our Liberal friends to face up to. What happened to the Kerry post-convention bounce? It never materialized. For the first time since 1972 a presidential nominee did not get a noticeable increase in his poll number after his party’s convention. In fact George W. Bush gained five points on Kerry and now leads according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll.

Talk about bad news for Kerry. And couple his negative post convention bounce with the fact that his naming of John Edwards as his running mate also had no positive effect on his numbers and you see a very ugly picture developing for Democrats. And remember the President still has his party’s convention in a few weeks. Want to bet his numbers do not jump after that? Didn’t think so.

So will any Democratic leader step forward and take on these questions? Again don’t bet your paycheck on it. The truth is the majority of the Democratic leadership is likely waiting on a Hillary run in 2008. Even they know Kerry is about as exciting to mainstream America as a case of indigestion.

Face this fact Democrats... Kerry has one thing going for him among most who support him, he is not Bush. They are not voting for him but against Bush. And that is not a winning recipe in November.

link to the very opinionated editorial

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Don't agree with it all, but he offers some sure-fire discussion material. Doesn't he? (let the "he's a neo-con whacko" bashing begin... like we don't sit through the Bush hating. )

 

I do too.



Whoa.... we see something... similarly??? Too bad its basically just that we are both observing how split the country is... and is "agreeing to disagree."

 

If you can't beat 'em... beat 'em to it. Just know my role that's all.

 

Boi-oing?

Before Kerry accepted the Democratic Party's presidential nomination Thursday, Gallup Poll Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport said that history suggested Kerry would get a post-convention bounce of between 5 to 7 percentage points.

Kerry's lead stretched to 7 percentage points from 3 points in a Newsweek poll Thursday and Friday. A weekend survey by CBS News showed Kerry ahead by six points, a 1-point increase from before the convention. The Gallup poll showed a 1-point lead for Kerry turning into a 4-point deficit.

Tomato, tomato, tomAHHHto.

 

First no bounce... then yes, some bounce... now what?

Muffing the Bounce

link to story

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, August 6, 2004; Page A19

No bounce for Kerry. The Democrats and their pollsters will tell you this is because the electorate has already made up its mind. But if that is the case, why are they campaigning? Why have a convention in the first place? In reality, at least 10 percent of the population is undecided, and John Kerry's convention appears to have gotten none of them.

The other explanation is stylistic. Kerry rushed his speech, stepping on his applause lines. Then there was the sweat on his brow and chin, not quite Nixonian lip sweat, but enough to distract.

Hardly. The explanation that respects the intelligence of the American people is that Kerry had nothing to say. Well, one thing: Vietnam. His entire speech, the entire convention, was a celebration of his military service. The salute. The band of brothers. The Swift boat metaphors. The attribution of everything -- from religious values to foreign policy wisdom -- to Kerry's five-month stint in Vietnam 35 years ago.

The problem is that the association of fitness for the presidency with military experience does not withstand five minutes of reflection. If that were the case, Abraham Lincoln would have failed as commander in chief in the Civil War, and Franklin Roosevelt would have failed in World War II. By that logic, Ulysses S. Grant should have been -- as Douglas MacArthur would have been -- a great president.

And, for that matter, Bob Dole. The most cynical moment of the four days was provided, naturally, by Bill Clinton when he implicitly reproached himself for having sat out the Vietnam War, a smug self-congratulatory way of attacking President Bush and Vice President Cheney for doing the same. It was sheer Clintonian shamelessness. After all, in the 1992 campaign, he adamantly denied that he dodged the draft. And according to what Clinton says now about the centrality of military service, the 1996 election should have logically and honorably gone to Dole, the Max Cleland of his time.

The whole claim is, of course, ex post facto disingenuousness. For all his fawning imitation of John F. Kennedy, Kerry missed the central irony: Who was it that sent Kerry and the others into the disastrous Vietnam War if not Kennedy (Navy and Marine Corps Medal), Lyndon Johnson (Silver Star) and an entire political establishment that had served in World War II and Korea?

Yes, Vietnam service gives Kerry a credential for high office. But beyond that, what is there? His biography, as presented to the world, was this: He was born, went to Vietnam and is now running for president. Just about his entire adult life is a 30-year void. The hagiographic film at the convention omitted his first entry into politics (his failed run for Congress in 1972, an attempt to cash in immediately on his Vietnam/antiwar service). There was no mention of the fact that his first elected office was as Michael Dukakis's lieutenant governor. And practically nothing was said about his 20 years of deeply unmemorable service in the Senate.

The convention gave no bounce because it consisted of but two elements: Vietnam, plus attacks on the president. The press swallowed the claim that the convention, following a directive from on high, was not negative. In fact, that meant simply that Al Gore was not to repeat his charges that the Bush administration is allied with "digital brownshirts" and running a "gulag." And that Bush was not to be attacked by name.

But the themes were transparently negative: We are not the party that misleads you into war. We are not the party that trashes the Constitution. We are not the party that acts unilaterally. And my favorite, because of its Escher-like yogiism: We are not the party that divides the country -- as opposed to those lying, Constitution-trashing, unilateralist Republican cowboys.

None of this is out of bounds, mind you. It is simply politically stupid. It does not work. Why? Because the political market has, as they say on Wall Street, already discounted these negatives. The people have already registered all the bad news of the past six months that has sent Bush's approval ratings plummeting.

Four days wasted -- spent on redundant attacks on a president who has already paid politically for his sins, real and imagined. And the rest of the time spent on an excruciating, selective biography, which, although centered on one truly honorable episode, tells us absolutely nothing about how President Kerry would deal with al Qaeda casing buildings in Manhattan and Washington or with the bad guys now congregated in Fallujah.

In other words, nothing about the future. Which is what elections are about.

Hence, no bounce.

link to story