Post-Election Analysis

[Rían]

Wouldn't you say Bush's cabinet in 2000-2004 was the most ethnically and gender-ly diverse cabinet in history?

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Wouldn't you say Bush's cabinet in 2000-2004 was the most ethnically and gender-ly diverse cabinet in history?

Don't confuse the issue. Cover your ears democrats - this is something you don't want to acknowledge. *sweeps it under the rug*

[Rían]

The election ended when Sen. Kerry conceded. And if Sen. Kerry conceded because he was afraid to stand up to the "Republican Religious Party", then I think he is unfit to be president.

I think I'm done with this thread. I don't like the tone very much

[Starr Polish]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

oooooh.... so its meaningless when bush loses it but when you get whopping 51% you shout it from the mountain tops. love the hypcorisy.

Yet, is it not hypocrisy for people to whine, yell, complain, and generally raise hell about the fact that W did not win the popular vote in 2000, yet completely ignore the fact that Clinton did not win the popular vote either time he was elected? I heard several things along the line of "Well, the country didn't really vote for him. He's not really our president. He's not MY president. He didn't really win." But not once did I or have I heard these comments about Clinton.

I'm not saying you did this, it's just something I've noticed in the last year or so. (And your comment reminded me of it, that's all). The moment I bring up this fact to some of the more extreme liberals I know, they have no response. In fact, they often walk away from me or stop replying to what I have said, depending on the situation.

::shrug::

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Starr Polish

Yet, is it not hypocrisy for people to whine, yell, complain, and generally raise hell about the fact that W did not win the popular vote in 2000, yet completely ignore the fact that Clinton did not win the popular vote either time he was elected? I heard several things along the line of "Well, the country didn't really vote for him. He's not really our president. He's not MY president. He didn't really win." But not once did I or have I heard these comments about Clinton.

Actually - Clinton won the popular vote - but he didn't get over 50% of it.

In response to your "our president" I agree - if Kerry won I would consider him my president - even if I didn't vote for him or agree with him.

[Ñólendil]

Since nobody asked me, I'd like to say that I think we should put a ban on all sarcastic remarks which end with the roll-your-eyes-face ( ). It's one thing to read a stabbing remark directed at you, it's another thing entirely when that stabbing remark becomes extra sharp with the rolling eyes of terror. I mean, how belittling is an insult accompanied by a cartoon face designed to belittle you further? That's double belittleage. Then everybody starts to use the roll-your-eyes-face-of-terror, and then at that point you're only using it because the other guy who doesn't like what you said about his favorite tee-shirt and the soup he cooked for you from scratch is using it too.

Can't we all just get along? *ducks the flying pizza and assorted remarks aimed to illustrate my hypocrisy*

[Rían]

[EDIT: reply to deleted post removed- Eärniel]

This morning, I drove 5 kids from my daughter's class (in a Christian school) on a field trip to Manna, a food pantry organization that aids the poor. Three boys in the back seat making fart noises , two girls in the middle seat giggling at them. We all brought canned food, which we donated (we've been collecting for a week), and then we toured the facility and listened to the lady share on how to help others. Later on in the afternoon, after shopping at Trader Joe's (for non-Americans - Trader Joe's is a great little grocery store that has healthier-type foods), we saw a lady holding up a sign saying she needed some help. I pulled over, repacked a bag with foodstuffs that I thought would be most helpful to her, and my daughter and I walked over and gave it to her, treating her with respect and dignity.

Oh, yes - I also fasted today - I intentionally gave up eating my lunch - in order to pray for the poor and that I would be more compassionate towards them.

And on Saturday, my husband gave up most of his free day to attend a board meeting of Children's Hunger Fund - he's on the board there. I joined him in the evening, where we had a simple meal and went over the ministry goals, achievements, and ideas for the upcoming year. You guys should really check out ChildrensHungerFund.org - it's a fanatastic charity - 99% of money goes to the poor and hungry. It works off of donations from lots of organizations, big and small, and I personally know the founders - a man and woman of great integrity and passion.

I'm a Christian, and I typically vote Republican. But please don't make those blanket statements - you're very, VERY wrong, for me, and for many people I know.

(and I totally agree with Ñólendil about the rolling-eyes-of-terror. )

[HOBBIT]

2000 and 2004 elections just show how flawed the electoral college system is.

The people of the United States should elect the president - not some shadowy electors. 1 person should = 1 person. If the electoral college was needed back when the founded fathers implemented it, it certainly is not now.

no state should have more say in the election than any others. candidates should campaign in all states, not just ones needed to win crucial electoral votes.

In 2000, the guy with the most votes did not win, with about what, 500 thousand more votes than Bush?

And now in 2004 if Kerry had gotten about 100 thousand or so more votes in Ohio, he would have become President even though Bush would have gotten about 3 million+ more votes than Kerry.

[Wayfarer]

That's ridiculous, Hobbit!

The Founding Fathers clearly stated in article -242.697aII of the US constitution that public offices should go to the candidate who has built the best gerrymander in order to ensure his victory!

If you're suggesting that the mechanics used in electoral votes shouldn't be manipulated by all parties for their own gain, I don't know what America you're from! :eyeroll:

[Earniel]

A brief reminder, I just had to edit a couple of posts and I want you all to stay civil. You can disagree with someone but you can say so in a polite way too.

Furthermore, this thread is about the analysis of the recent election, not the one of 2000.

[Nurvingiel]

I hope this is on topic, but I can't think of where to ask this without making a brand new thread (which seems pointless) so...

A lot of people put a lot of weight on the popular vote. Now, we all know that it's Electoral College votes, not popular votes, that determines a president. I was just wondering...

Do you want more proportional representatioin, or is the Electoral College system better and people who don't like it should figure it out first?

One thing that hinges on this question is how Senators are elected, which JD explained to me but I have now forgotten.

Jonathan provided this handy link in the other election thread: Presidential Elections

[Elfhelm]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

A brief reminder, I just had to edit a couple of posts and I want you all to stay civil. You can disagree with someone but you can say so in a polite way too.

Furthermore, this thread is about the analysis of the recent election, not the one of 2000.

Sorry to everyone. I guess the sarcasm isn't appreciated. You left in the actual analysis. Thanks.

My point behind the sarcasm is, if you disenfranchise half the people of the country, and it would have happened no matter who won, they are not going to be happy. I am not happy, obviously, and many people like me feel we will not be represented as long as the Christian Coalition is in power.

I don't understand why one comment was deleted, though:

I said that the Office of Faith-based Initiatives exists only to repay the churches that are members of the Christian Coalition for working on the President's campaign, and I mentioned that it is a violation of their agreements they signed when they received their not-for-profit status. One result of this Christian Coalition's activities will be challenges to the status of these churches. For instance, Catholic bishops were actually saying from their pulpits that it was a mortal sin to vote for Kerry. Imagine how much money the City of New York will get if the Catholics have to suddenly pay their property tax!

Hopefully it was the manner in which I said it before that was unacceptable, and maybe stated this way it can stay. (hoping...)

((... and thanks for not banning me. I'll consider this a warning.))

[Wayfarer]

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

if you disenfranchise half the people of the country, and it would have happened no matter who won, they are not going to be happy. I am not happy, obviously, and many people like me feel we will not be represented as long as the Christian Coalition is in power.

And on the flip side, there's all the Christians who feel disenfranchised with the democratic party for the repeated attempts to legislate their faith into nonexistance.

I guess the democratic system is supposed to minimize the amount of disenfranchisement.

[inked]

Across the pond, they do not all think alike!

God bless America for dropping the dead donkey

by Gerald Warner
THE SCOTSMAN

IT’S the morality, stupid! The American presidential election turned out to be a bonfire of the vanities for the acolytes of political correctness (even Tom Wolfe was supporting Dubya). So much for Bill Clinton’s suddenly outdated axiom that elections are about the economy - not that the notorious Oval Office onanist could credibly have opted for moral confrontation. As forecast in this column last week, America’s Christian and cultural conservatives came out fighting and reclaimed their country.

The whole notion, of course, was risible in the eyes of the liberal media on both sides of the Atlantic. That people in the 21st century ("in this day and age", as liberalism’s most brain-dead cliché phrases it) would come out and vote on abortion, stem-cell research and homosexual ‘marriage’, instead of addressing such important issues as medical welfare, gender equality and closer engagement with Europe had the liberal élite rolling in the aisles. They are not laughing now. They stopped laughing at around 7.30pm, Eastern Time, on Tuesday evening, as the first disturbing reports came in from the Florida count.


Until then, the Democratic camp and its media fellow travellers had revelled in the reports of a record turnout. As their television screens relayed pictures of unprecedented queues snaking for several blocks around polling stations, the élite leaped to the egotistic, patronising conclusion that the common people had come swarming out, like extras in an Eisenstein film, to implement the revolution that their betters had devised for them.

That crass delusion epitomised the fissiparous detachment of the liberal subculture from the real America: those lines of voters were not The People - just people, the mainstream Americans with whom the Democrats are now hopelessly out of touch. They were mostly Christians; but they were not, for the most part, bible-thumping disciples of white-suited tele-evangelists - at least not in the states that crucially mattered. They were ordinary, church-going husbands and wives, mild in their manner but firm in their convictions. In 2000, when it was "the economy, stupid", no fewer than four million of them abstained. This time, they came out.

And no wonder they did. The East Coast and Californian liberals had made a science of provocation. The nightly spectacle on television of thousands of same-sex ‘marriages’ in California and Massachusetts was promoted by the homosexual lobby on the principle that familiarity breeds content. The reaction of Middle America to this in-your-face aggression was quite the reverse.

Liberals’ inexplicable fixation with the militant homosexual cause (representative of less than 3% of the population) proved self-destructive. In the past month, that lobby has destabilised such widely disparate institutions as the Anglican Church, the European Commission and, now, the Democratic Party. With all 11 states where referenda were held on same-sex marriage rejecting the proposition by majorities that had to be weighed rather than counted, the constitutional amendment that will finally resolve this issue is in the bag.

How quaint, thought European and New York liberals, that voters should be concerned that one in four Americans is aborted in the womb, when they could be supporting measures that would put an extra $500 in their pockets. How ignorant to oppose stem-cell research that will save so many lives. Who got their priorities right? Are the Americans not more thoughtful, more moral and more intelligent to worry about mass extermination of babies?

As for the exploitation of human embryos, it is not hill-billy stupidity to query the destruction of human life, especially when the inflated claims being made for embryo stem-cell research are as far-fetched, in truly scientific terms, as those made for the Philosopher’s Stone and a cruel deception of the critically ill. And is it not strange that this nation of Luddites and scientific illiterates can send probes to the farthest reaches of the solar system, while enlightened Britain can barely run a train up the West Coast line from London to Glasgow?

Make no mistake, this election was a Christian-led counter-revolution. The national exit poll conducted for Associated Press and the major US television networks found that the highest electoral motivation, at 22%, was "moral values". Among weekly churchgoers, Bush scored 61%, Kerry 39%. This broke down into 70% of Protestants, 56% of Catholics. The latter have had their moral and doctrinal sensitivities blunted by Vatican II, yet there are signs that even Catholics indoctrinated by Justice ’n’ Peace guff are on the turn. When the chips were down, in the swing state of Ohio, 65% of Catholics came out for Bush.

As this column predicted last week, the state of Iowa, with its large Catholic electorate, defected to Bush; the other state forecast to do the same - Wisconsin - was just held by John Kerry. Nationally, he got the support of 60% of those who said they "never" attended church; but since they amount to 14% of voters, that was scant consolation.

Across the Union, this election was as historic as it was dramatic. George W Bush led by 3.5 million in the popular vote and won four million more votes than Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide. The turnout was the equivalent of 70% in a British election, with 120 million Americans casting their votes. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are now in solid Republican control: that makes a conservative Supreme Court, with both power and a strong popular mandate to reverse Roe v Wade and other liberal obscenities, a shoo-in.

"Dude, here’s our country!" That is what real Americans told Michael Moore, the hygienically challenged human hamburger whose Pravda-style propaganda has earned him more fans in Cannes than in all 50 states of the Union. Now he wants Hillary Clinton to challenge for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Great idea: an East Coast, liberal, feminist überbitch that might have been computer-realised by Karl Rove, to leave the Democrats with just California, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Bring her on!

Hillary would be an appropriate sequel to Theresa Heinz Kerry, the worst First Lady that America never had. Yet the one memorable phrase of her non-campaign might have summed up the motivation of those millions of middle Americans queuing for seven hours outside polling stations: "Shove it!"

The whole vile, patronising agenda of the bespectacled drabby wimmin, the Florida conspiracy bores, the wine-bar Europhiles and the Hollywood freak show has been trashed. Infanticide is out of fashion; embryos may not be cannibalised much longer; Butch and Sundance will not be taking a trip down the aisle in their lifetimes. Consider it shoved, lady.

END

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

A lot of people put a lot of weight on the popular vote. Now, we all know that it's Electoral College votes, not popular votes, that determines a president. I was just wondering...

Do you want more proportional representatioin, or is the Electoral College system better and people who don't like it should figure it out first?

The electoral college should stay. It's to give all states a voice in the presidential elections and it is to force the politicians to appeal to more minorities. As Cokie Roberts pointed out - to win florida - a candidate has to appeal to a large hispanic population, jewish population, rural population and urban population - along with many other minorities. Candidates would be able to ignore most of the hispanic and jewish populations with a popular vote.

People should stop being ignorant and learn about the many reasons why the founding fathers put the electoral college into place - before demanding it to change. 2000 was not the first time the president won the electoral college and not the popular vote - there were 3 other times. The electoral college is alive and well and states such as Hawaii is not going to vote against it (they would not have had anyone come to campaign there if it wasn't for the electoral college)

Also - contrary to Hobbit's statement - they are not shadowy figures. He just seems to have very little understanding of it.

One thing that hinges on this question is how Senators are elected, which JD explained to me but I have now forgotten.

Initially - Senators weren't elected directrly by the people (every state has two) - they were elected by the Representatives for the state in the House of Representatives. This was to make sure that the most knowledgeable people were elected into the Senate. We now elect Senators directly and the House and Senate are made up of pretty much the same type of people - although their roles are different.

[Elfhelm]

Originally Posted by inked

Across the pond, they do not all think alike!

God bless America for dropping the dead donkey

by Gerald Warner
THE SCOTSMAN

*vicious attacks deleted*

We got 48% of the vote this time, as of the current tally. We are not dead.

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by inked

Across the pond, they do not all think alike!

Well, will you look at that?

"Dude, here’s our country!" That is what real Americans told Michael Moore, the hygienically challenged human hamburger whose Pravda-style propaganda has earned him more fans in Cannes than in all 50 states of the Union.

I'm just quoting this again so that Janny doesn't miss it. He'll like it so much...

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by sun-star

I'm just quoting this again so that Janny doesn't miss it. He'll like it so much...

Well - Michael Moore is one of the main reasons why so many people got out to vote for Bush. He did a great recruiting drive for Bush supporters - including me. I told several people who may not have voted - but supported bush and mentioned how life would be if Michael Moore felt he had suceeded with Farenheit 9/11. The french can have him - I know they love and worship him.

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

We got 48% of the vote this time, as of the current tally. We are not dead.

The democratic party will be dead if they don't wake up and calm their radical views on the extreme left - like the propaganda piece that Michael Moore film which was full of lies and twisted truth.

You better stop running to the courts when you don't like something - instead of getting things done through the democratic process such as the legislature.

[Nurvingiel]

I don't think you can say 60 million French people think Michael Moore is the best thing since sliced bread. A lot, fine, but for someone who doesn't like people pigeon-holing Americans...