how many agree that the sexual assault charges actually helped Arnold?

[CMT]

I hate to say it but I think the revelations of sexual misconduct by Arnold in the last days of the campaign actually took him from leading to a landslide victory on the second ballot. I think it really galvanized his supporters to get out and vote. I thought it would cause Independent voters to switch from Arnold to McClintock, but the opposite happened and Independents and some Democrats moved towards Arnold.

This is not to say that the charges as reported by the LA Times shouldn't have been revealed. It was the right thing to do and they may yet haunt Arnold as governor. I just think that politically people thought it was just last minute "dirty tricks" and it only firmed up support for Arnold.

[Cha]

1. I think it will "haunt him" as gov and anything else...I don't think

this is over by a long shot..just the beginning.

Long Live the LA Times! :yourock:

[blondeatlast]

3. My thoughts exactly. We lost the battle, but may have won the war.

Time will tell, and we have to keep the pressure on.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

4. I'm on board with this sentiment too

It's all downhill for gropinator after this....and I love the LATimes now too! :thumbsup:

[charlie]

6. Well, we know he has a hard time stifling his compulsions

He's about to begin one of the most time-consuming, boring, and frustrating jobs he's ever had. I wonder if the occasional bedtime brandy will be enough to relieve his tensions for the next couple of years.

[KoKo]

24. I agree Zidzi. I think more is going to come out about this. It looks

good to the "Media" who pumped the guy showing pictures of flag waving and throngs of cheering adoring fans. But, there may be some folks with big hangovers there in CA this morning. When they realize what has happened.

Now is the time for Dem action out there. First a civil suit against "MSNBC" in particular for promoting Aunold while his wife was an employee of NBC! Favoratism/Nepotism.

I think the "Fairness Doctrine" still applys to Political Campaigns and AUNOLD got enormous free political coverage.

I hope someone will start to explore that. They over-reached.

I might even do a post about this, now that I think about it. :think:

[realFedUp]

2. He always had the misogynist vote

this was more about getting Davis out than
putting The Groper in.

[Cha]

5. "misogynist" is right!

And no freakin' R-E-S-PECT!

[TravisBickle]

7. Aren't Most Politicians Gropers?

I can name many politicains on both sides who have had trouble keeping their hands to themselves. I think that in the end, the average voter doesn't pay much attention to it, since they have almost come to expect it.

[Love Bug]

I hate to say this, but...

The groping accusations didn't hurt Arnold because this is a non-issue with most voters. Remember Clinton's high approval marks during his impeachment (and yes, I DO understand the difference between consensual sex and sexual assault)? We all knew in '92 that Clinton had a history of adultery, but he was elected anyway. I think it's in our genes to expect our leaders to be sexually potent (unless they're women, of course, but that's another post).

If anything brings Arnold down it will be this. He's riding on a wave of megalomania right now, and it will be "business as usual" in regards to the women around him. I just hope when it happens, the "gropee" is able to take him on in the courts.

[Cha]

30. Oh Please..

[newyawker99]

38. Hi TravisBickle!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[JI7]

one poll showed

one poll done right after showed arnold gained about a couple of percentage points which is almost no change. but remember the republicans did repeat the line often "dirty campaign tricks" and people fell for it. but the only thing is that they weren't campaign tricks and will most likely not go away. remember arnold warned them early on jay leno about this. how they will bring up women. he did that to protect himself later and say "i told you so" when these things do come out. and the fools fell for it.

[CMT]

9. exit polls done show that among people who

made up there mind in the last five days they voted 59/41 for the recall--much higher than current 56/44. Late undecideds broke for recalling Davis and for Arnold.

[DealsGapRider]

8. I think it helped him.

Well, women seem to have gone for the Gropenator by a pretty wide margin, so it either didn't hurt him or it actively helped him. I think it probably helped him...I'm sure a lot of jaded people saw it as a last minute political trick.

I agree that the Time should have reported the accusations, but they shouldn't have done so on the Thursday before the election. It was a transparent political attempt to stop the Gropenator's election, and newspapers should be above the fray. This information was well-known for years. There's just no other explanation for why the Times ran the story so close to the election.

[leftynyc]

10. I agree. The timing of the

accusations hurt the Dems. The LA Times looked very partisan. The bright side I see is the Pubbies have lowered the bar quite a ways on defining liberals. Arnie is pro-choice, pro gun control, pro civil unions, pro education and he got enormous support from the republican party. How are they going to define someone who has the same position on those issues as a bleeding heart communist? Not to mention all the accusations about harassment. In the long run, the pubbies hurt themselves by chucking all their concerns about social issues out the window in order to have a CA governor with an R behind his name. This will come back and hurt them. Bush still stands no chance at all of taking that state.

[DealsGapRider]

13. Agree with everything you said.

[Cha]

31. And! they can't trot out their "morals" anymore!

Those days are over.

[BQueen]

11. Okay, here's my tinfoil moment, or maybe not

I posted this on another thread in response to a comment about the story not being a "campaign strategy" It struck me that it might not have been the DEM campaign strategy, but it may have been "a campaign strategy"

<It just struck me that the Premiere article was out in 2001, I saw the Linda Hamilton interview on So Graham Norton quite some time ago (which certainly gave credence to all the T2 claims, even as Hamilton was giving him the benefit of the doubt), and his "exploits" are legend in the industry. And I can't imagine at least some of these women didn't come forward as soon as Ahnold announced (if not when he started publicly hinting).

What, was the LATimes waiting to get 15 women confirming before running with the story? That seems to be excessive confirmation to me.

So, why the delay? Struck me that Geraldo said on Leno, he "knows the owners of the LATimes, and they are conservative." Hmmm. Who does it make look bad when that dratted "liberal media" sits on a scandalous story (which would have come out sooner or later) until the "eve of election." Why, the opposition, of course. When, in this case, the opposite is true. The Dems got blamed for playing dirty AND didn't get the benefit of what should have been a real issue. Plus, the furor over it completely eclipsed the Enron connection. Pretty neat trick - how many birds is that with one stone?

If the Dems had had time to flesh out (no pun intended) the allegations and get the word out that this was NOT about "sexual pranks" but about public humiliation and degradation of women (Soleft, I completely agree with you on relevance.) This was to "flirting" (or whatever the hell he called it) as rape is to sex. No fucking relation!

I've seen a lot about how hypocritical Dems/liberals are to differentiate between Ahnold and Clinton. I didn't agree with how Clinton conducted himself with his female staff, and I think he had/has a problem. But since when is it *hypocritical* to distinguish among degrees of offense/guilt/responsibilty/outright evil?!

Ahnold, however, sexually assaults women in public and takes pleasure in their humiliation. This is a completely different animal from Clinton's *wolf* behavior. Ahnold is too "bestial" to compare to non-humans; the only term I can think of is "neanderthal." This is just as capable of distinction as the lying. We need a version of "When Clinton Lied, No one Died.">

[shimmergal]

16. The difference, is Clinton _likes_ women.

He likes and can deal with them individually as people as well as having an active (perhaps overactive) libido.

Arnold seems to joust regard them as prey, not quite human.

[WoodrowFan]

22. Not 15

It was six when they reported the story first, the other 9 came out once the story hit the press.

[Catherine Vincent]

12. If the charges helped Arnold, then some Californians

are definitely fucked up.

[AP]

14. Also, if the issues instead came up later while he was governing, they

could not have been dismissed as dirty politics which have already been addressed, rather than have them be confronted as serious issues detracting from his character as governor, which is what they'll do with them now.

[leftofthedial]

15. It was not the charges per se that helped Schwartzeneggar

but rather the incessant right-wing media spin of the charges that did.

Once again, the money wins and the people lose.

[Snellius]

17. It will hurt him more with many conservatives than with Dems

Note that Arnold still has a very high disapproval rating. Among women it is higher than the approval. The way I see it Californians did not really have a valid choice.

[Kitsune]

18. I am sick of people calling it a 'dirty trick'

It is NOT a dirty trick to point out that your opponent is, in fact, a complete fucking scumbag.

[DealsGapRider]

27. It's not that the Times ran the story.

It's that they ran it so close to the election when that information had been out there for years. If they had run it right after he announced, it would have been fine. But you can't deny that the Times did this explicitly to hurt the Gropenator.

[Cha]

32. Well, there ya go!

[jiacinto]

19. I don't think they helped but they didn't hurt either

As 70% of the voters had made up their mind a month ago--per the initial exit polls I saw--it never helped nor hurt. Davis was done from the get go.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

20. You are incorrect. I just analysed the numbers in the times

Of the people polled, The PRO RECALL movement was MUCH stronger for people who voted early than late. (only 51% of LATE voters were PRO RECALL versus 56% of those that voted early with absentees not favoring Republicans terribly)

With 76% of the vote counted, Arnold had 20,000 more votes than those AGAINST the recall. He still is taking office with fewer votes than Davis got last November.

IF anything, the info released sooner would have had a devastating effect on his campaign.

Davis also wrote off Southern California and that was a mistake.

[Cha]

34. Thanks for this!

[UTUSN]

21. Regardless, the Groping Thing Ain't Going Away

In fact, what are the odds that Governor Grab-ass will either NOT take office OR that his days are numbered there? (Where there's smoke...) From the oldest person in the world named "Cindy".

******QUOTE*****

http://www.nypost.com/gossip/cindy.htm

October 8, 2003 -- SCHWARZENEGGER. First I want to know, would it ever be that he would ever be governor, might he give Ben Affleck amnesty?

Second. It's being rumored The Gropinator also harassed females on the "Collateral Damage" set. This is not years ago, back in his years ago youth, which is when he allows he might've been rowdy as a kid on a movie set because years ago, in one's youth, one did stuff one later regrets. This was during filming in 2001. Its producer, Howard Koch, is not campaigning for A.S. for gov.

Third. Folks who speak to Arnold should know there's now the first portable handheld lie detector. Analyzes any voice on a phone or in person. Call Gadget Alert [phone]. Cost: $59.95, plus shipping and handling.

*****UNQUOTE****

[UTUSN]

28. Kick for Wingnut Gossip Queen (Cindy, NY Post) n/t

[stevedeshazer]

23. When these allegations surfaced

A while back, I argued passionately that Dems should not do a "tit-for-tat" attack, and instead go with an issue-oriented campaign, because other than rolling back the car tax, Schwarzenegger had no positions. For my passion, I was vilified as a woman-hater, indirectly accused of being a freeper, and was called president of Schwarzenegger's fan club.

This whole tactic just played right into the Republican's hands.

[theboss]

25. The way the LA Times did it hurt

They obviously sat on the story up to the point they thought it would do the most damage. This story was out there for years and could have been run when he was flirting with running the first time. It could have been run when a big movie premiered. It could have been run weeks ago. But it came out late and looked like the classic "hit piece."

Americans hate the media. The LA Times is particularly hated. The way the Times handled this story guaranteed that it became an "Arnold vs. The LA Times issue." And they weren't going to win that.

[SammyWinstonJack]

26. It's only "dirty tricks" if Dems use it

We all know the lengths too which repukes go, in slinging mud/trashing our candidates, even if the facts prove otherwise. It's not perceived as "dirty tricks" when they do it. Maddening still, is that the "Lib'rul" media parrots the lies 24/7, while in sharp contrast, downplay anything negative about a repuke candidate even when the facts bear up. So I guess what I am saying is, we can't win for losing, in what is obviously not a level playing field with the repukes/media. They don't like it when we tell the truth about them, but we are suppose too just shut up when they tell lie after lie about us? I don't think so. Why were revelation of sexual misconduct (admitted by arnie himself, certainly he didn't deny them and in around about way, half-assed apologized for them), viewed ad "dirty tricks" to begin with? After-all, we impeached a Pres for consensual sexual behavior. Further, some even refused to cast their votes for Gore in '00 because of his association with Clinton. Yet we are to believe that support was given to arnie for conduct worse than Clinton's, because of last minute "dirty tricks?" We impeached a Pres(D) for bad behavior and elected a Gov(R) for it. Can we say Double Standards, anyone?

[MrPrax]

29. My theory is that it did help him

for the reason it detracted coverage from say the much more interesting aspect of his Enron involvement and who CA interests he might be really representing...not to mention the fact, he like many right-wing campaigns, don't really say a whole lot--just attack the incumbent.

I mean the media will only donate a small proportion to the CA campaign even on local news and if it is dominated by 'sex' talk--that will lead and gob up all of the coverage time allotted.
Remember when the campaign first started a few Net sources were out of the gate immediately with the 'character stuff' (Bartcop esp., the OUI interview)
But the mainstream media spent the first part of the campaign talking about the three ring circus, how amusing the other 'arnold' was and arianna's environmental record...then the campaign lost a few days of media coverage with the court ruling...
Then, well the rest is history..
I mean when ET, Oprah and the like do nightly campaign ads for Arny with NO compunction to show a modicum of respect for democracy by balance candidate coverage.
Moreover since these are not journalists, they are not even required to frame the stuff objectively...
It's like Rush says, 'he's an entertainer'
With such demogogry, 15 women coming forward with 'criminal accusations' can be easily made to look like PC witches and gold diggers, just as easily as ACLU objections to constitutional rights being removed can be reduced to 'treason' or the French being blamed for making America weak...
There isn't any logic or standards these days to what the Media is doing--it merely underwrites the constant problem that the media has an obvious conflict of interest being a private interest regarding public debate; the medium itself is a slogan for a free market and private conquest.
The sad part is that the media, because of it's presumed objectivism, can simply erase it's own roll in the emergence of a corporate totalitarianism.

[nostamj]

33. it certainly kept the ENRON CONNECTION

buried.....

[Cha]

37. Was anyone in the mainstream media even trying to get out

the "enron connection"?

We will keep bringing up enron and sooner or later people will go..:think: }(

[slackmaster]

35. They hurt Arnold but not enough to stop him

Perception in the streets is that the Davis camp orchestrated the charges as an organized smear campaign, which diminished their credibility.

[ibegurpard]

36. I don't

The campaign was too short for them to sink in and/or make a difference one way or another.