WP: Howard Kurtz: Let the Explaining Begin!

[truthpusher]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32818-2004Nov7.html?nav=rss_topnews

Let the Explaining Begin!

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page C01


From every corner of the media empire, the explanations come fast and furious:

The Democrats were clueless on moral values. John Kerry was a lousy candidate. A northerner can't win anymore. The Bush team was better at manipulating the press. No one trusts the Democrats on national security. The gay marriage issue badly hurt the party. The Democrats need to move right, or left, or south, or undergo a personality transplant, or change the Constitution so Bill Clinton can run again.

But if 70,000 votes had shifted in Ohio, wouldn't journalists be floating similar theories about President Bush and the Republicans?

"We love doing the death of the parties and the death of great movements," says Roger Simon of U.S. News & World Report. "It's just a good, sexy story to say, 'Are the Democrats through?' If we didn't write about process, my God, we'd have to start writing about policy."

Jonah Goldberg of National Review says, "There are three or four days after every election where the clay is still malleable and everyone wants to pound it before it hardens into conventional wisdom. There's this furious battle for everyone to impose their own meaning on the election returns." The less glamorous reality, he says, is that "Bush got more people to the polls and no one thought he could."

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32818-2004Nov7.html?nav=rss_topnews

[CindyDale]

1. Bargaining

It's bargaining, one of the stages of grief. If I do this or that, it won't happen again.

No, it doesn't mean that much otherwise.

Cindy

[Catfight]

2. I personally knew more people voting for Bush than Kerry, so I'd say

it was pretty damn even, right down the US lines. We are a divided nation regarding what is important to our future.