What do you REALLY think happened in the 2004 presidential election?

[MoonRiver]

Poll question: What do you REALLY think happened in the 2004 presidential election?

There seem to be many mixed messages on DU about what went down last November. I'd like to get some clarity on this issue. No matter how much this is debated, I believe there really are only 3 choices. But feel free to post any additional possibilities you come up with.

[JAbuchan08]

1. He conceeded because he felt he couldn't prove it.

and he probably couldn't prove it because the whole thing would be tried in the court of pulbic opinion which the media would of course shape.

[FreedomAngel82]

39. Exactly

And remember: Kerry is a prosecutor and he knows if he can't have any hardproof evidance for the public and in court so he had to concede sadly.

[gristy]

2. "REALLY happened"?

You fear that I will otherwise apply insufficient thought to my vote?
Oh, and it's "fewer votes", not "less votes".

edit: for clarity

[Imagevision]

35. Election Fraud "Really Happened"

'51% IS NOT A MANDATE: Especially When All the Votes Were Not Counted'

The mainstream media seems to be waking up to the idea that all of the post-election talk about a mandate was just that: talk.

Under the understated headline, "Doubts About Mandate for Bush, GOP," the Washington Post reports that the President's poll numbers are plummeting, his social security privatization plan and cuts are unpopular, and Congressional Republicans are abusing their power and are, likewise, very unpopular.
http://bradblog.com/

[Goldmund]

3. Who the fuck knows what goes on behind the curtains.

What we're served is a dog and pony show.

So what I'm saying is that I don't have enough information I trust to be able to determine the answer to this question.

[jedr]

18. In my more cynical moments;

I always wonder if it wasn't a "skull and crossbones" thing?

[Goldmund]

19. Even that may be a part of the dog and pony show.

Who knows.

Let's put it this way: if tomorrow I found out that Bush and Kerry were mortal enemies, I wouldn't be surprised.

If I found out that Bush, Kerry and Gannon liked to meet for romps, I wouldn't be surprised either.

I don't know anything anymore.

All I know is that I trust myself. And I trust y'all out there.

[orleans]

31. OMG! I was thinking the same thing when i read your post!

(are you psychic?)

first--i think the election was fixed.

second--i don't think kerry knew the fix was in.

third--i suspect it was some sort of sordid skull & bones blackmail if he tried to pursue the issue.

at least that's what i think for this moment.

one thing i am consistent on: i have always thought the election was fixed. (thank you black boxes---NOT)

[jedr]

36. late post , hope you get to read it;

two things don't make sense to me . First , why didn't he pursue the swift boat slanderers to the fullest extent....what did he have to lose? He doesn't need to be a senator again ( comes with a lifetime supply of ketchup) ....it was slander.....and next: why didn't he contest the election? ... wouldn't we all be better off if he did, I mean do you really trust any election from here on in?...Not for we poor mortals to know!

[Totally Committed]

4. It was all done with a thousand mirrors...

and one limp whatsis.

TC

[charlyvi]

5. I think he didn't get as many votes as shrub

because of massive voter suppresion in Ohio, which is a kind of election fraud. Too few voting machines in heavily democratic voting district causing very, very long waits to vote, misdirection to polls, etc.

[borg5575]

26. You might be right, but,

I know that a long line at the voting booth wouldn't have stopped me from voting. And I would have made damned sure I knew where the real location of my polling station was.

I just wonder what kind of a commentary on Democratic voters this would be that they are so unmotivated and misinformed that the Republicans could really pull this off.

[charlyvi]

45. I'm talking 7 hours or more.

Some people have children to pick up, jobs to go to, health problems. Don't be so quick to condemn Democratic voters. Not being able to stand in a line for over 7 hours does not mean you are unmotivated or misinformed.

[ArkDem]

6. There wasn't really an election. Everything was shot at the

same studios that the moon landing was filmed.

[AndyTiedye]

7. Kerry Knew That the USSC Would Hand it to Boosh** No Matter What

just like they did the last time.

[sportndandy]

8. Falujah was the getaway car for the stolen election.

Kerry knew he would have been painted as unpatriotic by giving support to the enemy by contesting the election while our boys (and girls) were in harms way in Falujah. His career would have been ruined. Better to live to fight another day.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Without the ability to 'lock down' the machines and analyze the

main tabulator software, there was not then nor will there ever be a way to prove massive election fraud. I truly believe that we have not had an honest national election in the USA since 1998.

Edited to add word.

[FrenchieCat]

10. I don't really know who really won this election.....

Which is a real F*cking problem in my view.

There should be transparency in our election system, but there isn't. We're not given the answers to the questions we ask, and the election reforms that Republicans put through were a joke. Heck, we don't even know how the Armed Forces voted. It was never reported that I know of. If someone has those numbers, please post them. If they are around, they were not highly heralded.

Unless we can count the actual votes, we don't know diddly squat. Certainly there was much voter suppression against Democratic voters...which means, Kerry, if he didn't outright win, could have won.

We need to change all of the voting apparatus and methods, if we are to call ourselves a democracy.

I will add, that John Kerry would have made an excellent President....of that, I am certain.

[katsy]

11. I voted

the answer closely mirroring a guess on my part. My opinion is different than my answer... I think that dirty political games, money and power has forever obscured the possibility of ever counting votes.

[bemildred]

12. Other: Gore fought a lot more than Kerry. nt

[Jai4WKC08]

13. Second and third options combined

I think Kerry felt he couldn't prove it, or rather couldn't prove it in time to matter.

But I think it's also true that he didn't want to fight. Kerry's the cautious, deliberative type. There was a risk of committing political suidcide if in fact he couldn't prove the fraud, or if the media refused to publicize whatever he could prove. So he made a conscious decision to back off and wait for 2008 instead.

[MoonRiver]

14. That's my take also. I thought about combining the two choices,

but felt it would be good to get a more discrete breakdown of opinions. Given the combo, most would have probably voted for that option.

[zanne]

15. Because he couldn't prove it. Besides...

I just can't make myself believe that the American people are that stupid!

[BornaDem]

17. 7 out of 10 people don't know who the V.P. is...

but you don't believe the American people are that stupid? It's probably 9 out of 10 who can't identify the V.P. in the first term.

[barackmyworld]

29. keep in mind how that "study" was conducted

The DUer asked 10 people...not exactly scientific. It's probably somewhat true, but it might not be a good idea to throw around that stat

[Generator]

16. So complicado

And kudos to the moon landing reference poster 'cause none of it seemed very real to me.

I don't know. And nobody really knows except those in the know.

I don't know what Kerry knows or doesn't know.

But from all I've read..observed..and I spent all of Nov3rd to Jan 6th in the damn election results forum until I bagged it in- I think:

First Kerry really thought he lost early on November 3rd.

By a few days later- I think he realized that was not so clear, and I think he regretted it deep down that he bagged it when he did. But I don't think he had enough to go on to do anything except ruin his chance to do anything in government. He is one of the few(if you notice almost all of his votes this year) that is actually behaving like a Dem. We need him and I think he wanted to do good-not just the cynics that say it's only for 2008. I think he cares about doing something NOW because dammit nobody else is doing anything like say for the health care of kids.

I think he felt the loss deeply-not for himself but for our country.

Nothing was able to be proved.

Now, from what Teresa's said (c'mon they sleep in the same bed every night so if she says it you know he really thinks it too)-he knows it was a big riggola job. Put nothing past the bastards.

But-you can't get anything to touch these assholes.

Where's the smoking gun?

Damn I want to smart smoking again.

[Withywindle]

27. Wow.

I think I agree with you just about completely.


(Except I never quit smoking - probably a good thing considering.)


:thumbsup:

[Lexingtonian]

20. so many f'ing rationalizations

I think the outcome was that Kerry got 59 million votes, and Bush 62 million. So I voted your first option.

But the deal is, and Kerry and the Kerry people have said as much, that Kerry could have gotten more votes out of the stronger Blue States if that had been a priority, which it wasn't. So I think was meaningfully a tie, the 3 million vote Bush margin being essentially an artifact (but an emotionally very important one to their side) of the Bush get-out-the-vote machine having more time and stronger organization and- probably- more money going into by the coincidence and alliance with the Senate campaigns in the South. Kerry said he had six months to put together a machinery that Rove and Reed had two years and a lot of Party-internal money to do.

In a technical sense, victory then came down to the way the Electoral College breaks up the country into states. Kerry ended up needing majorities in one of three states- Florida, Ohio, or Nevada (with Nevada also requiring that he win Iowa and New Mexico). Well, Florida had a lot of conservative whites that didn't vote in 2000 that Rove/Reed found and mobilized, and I don't think Kerry ever led there- plus, there's that hugh disenfranchisement of black voters via the ex-felon disenfranchisement for life in the state that gives Republicans a 100,000-300,000+ vote structural advantage. In Nevada, it was a similar story with Republicans getting more Mormons and other nonvoting conservative whites mobilized and ex-felon disenfranchisement widening the margin. (Iowa and New Mexico also tipped due to Religious Right voter mobilization, and Wisconsin almost did because of the same.)

So it all came down to Ohio. And the Ohio swing electorate is famously slow to get good information, to accept candidates it doesn't already know, or concern itself with things that occur east of the Appalachians, south of the Ohio River, north of Lake Erie, and west of the Maumee River. To be somewhat harsh, it is an electorate that conforms to what it percieves the regional situation to be.

Bush ended up with the Presidency on the basis of votes of millions of otherwise skeptical conservative-leaning nonreligious whites essentially going along with him on a need to 'finish' the War On Terror (with its indirect racist and colonialist overtones), and millions of votes of otherwise not very partisan Religious Right people (friends and relatives of True Believers) representing a push to stress/finish a moderate 'Christian' agenda, aka Values, and put off social changes of the Modern world for a while longer.

Of course Rove & Co know the very limited rationale- essentially, a delay tactic by the People to give finishing up the last residues of the Cold War and conservative adjustment to the Sexual Revolution/Civil Rights some more time- on which Bush was made President a second time.

The Right just isn't that moderate, though. So Rove and rest keep on trying to get somewhere with a Right agenda, and on every issue the electorate pushes back to achieve the Moderate. The coalition between Right and moderates in the Republican Party is being broken in the process. The Democrats are unified and on the same page with nonpartisan people/Independents. The key political arena at the moment is the moderate Republicans, wavering back and forth.

Bush won the Presidency by running to the Right and using up its residual pull on conservative-leaning moderates. Now there's the snap-back, and it's ruining the prize.

Kerry had a major role in Democrats regaining credibility with the center/nonpartisans/Indies and starting to wedge moderate Republicans off from the Right- snared 2 million voters who went for Bush in 2000. He lost the contest for the trophy in some way, but may have represented the decisive winning move in the larger game.

[LittleClarkie]

28. That has to be one of the better postmortems I've seen

Thank you for your thoughts. I mostly agree.

[blm]

40. Wow. Your thoughts on this deserve their own thread.

.

[XemaSab]

53. It's not just a lack of GOTV

in blue states that allowed the 3 million vote margin, it's GOTV in red states, many of which have a large African-American and Hispanic population.

Running a campaign in whatever states are considered "swing" states that election cycle is totally shortsighted. Even here in California, which nationally is a "safe" blue state, the republicans run an aggressive campaign that allows people like Ahnold, Wally Herger, George Radanovich, and some of the other most right-wing representatives in the House to get elected.

The vote margin would have been much tighter with a 50-state effort.

[melnjones]

21. Other. Haven't a clue. nt

[Hippo_Tron]

22. EXACTLY

Have I seen proof that there were shady voting practices in Ohio? Abosolutely. Have I seen proof that Kerry won the election? Nope.

I also know that if it hadn't been too close to call, it likely wouldn't have been close enough to steal either.

[BootinUp]

23. thats a DU classic. heh. n/t

[Chemical Bill]

24. other

Kerry got more votes but kept his mouth shut because he was told to, and he didn't want to end up like JFK, RFK, Paul Wellstone, Vince Foster, or even the anthrax recipients.

Bill

[libodem]

25. Couldn't prove it...

not without a tinfoil hat and some chemtrails. A person sounds like a nut when confronting, Gop, tactics. They are so ruthless and mean nobody wants to believe it. You almost can't say anything without ruining your credibility. Thank, Karl'Fat-Fucker'Rove, for that one.

[LuPeRcALiO]

30. Stolen, and we're the world's laughingstock, at least when it's laughing.

U.S. hypocrisy with respect to "democracy" measured by "free and fair elections" has gotten to be as universally recognized as Ronald McDonald.

Here's an article from this week's Nation, "Failing the Electoral Standards" by Andrew Gumbel, on the subject:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=gumbel

[Orangepeel]

32. I think it was analogous to the O.J. Simpson case

I think that O.J. committed the murders, but that the police still planted evidence in an attempt to make sure he got convicted.

Analogously, I think that bush probably really did get more legitimate votes, but that he still cheated in an attempt to make sure that he won.

Of course I could be wrong, but I base that on the national vote and my own personal feelings.

[MissWaverly]

33. The machines are still padding the votes see below

The machines are still not accurate, see below, now because there
were 2 republicans competing, then it was straightened out, but what if it had been a democrat vs a republican, the tally was originally
3,208 votes cast instead of the actual tally of 768, that's a margin of padded votes by 3 to 1 margin, but it was human error, (He, He).
Nothing to see here, move along.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/
South Carolina’s Home Page
Posted on Fri, Apr. 29, 2005
Counting error overstates votes

GOP candidate for Kershaw County Council finds out he lost to competitor

By KRISTY EPPLEY RUPON

Staff Writer

Human error is being blamed for a mistake that overturned results from Tuesday’s Republican primary in a special election for Kershaw County Council. Unofficial vote totals that night showed 3,208 of District 2’s 5,128 registered voters had cast ballots in the Republican and Democratic primaries. A manual recount Thursday proved only 768 votes were cast.

[Imagevision]

34. Blackwell-"repaired tabulators"- disenfranchisement and irregularities

Man you prople have a short attention span.

Kenneth Blackwell should get the "Katherine Harris Award of 2004"—referring to Jeb Bush's Secretary of State in the 2000 elections in Florida. He said that what Blackwell was doing was "not the spirit of democracy," but "the spirit of suppression," and he asserted that "prosecution should be considered with respect to what happened in Ohio."
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3149conyers_vote_suppr.html

34 questions for SOC Blackwell from Rep. Conyers

1. Have you, in fact, conducted an investigation of the lockdown? What procedures have you or would you recommend be put into place to avoid a recurrence of this situation?

2. Have you ascertained whether County officials were advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent and, if so, the identity of that agent?

3. If County officials were not advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent, have you inquired as to why they misrepresented this fact? If the lockdown was not as a response to a terrorist threat, why did it take place? Did any manipulation of vote tallies occur?
http://www.thefreespeechzone.net/html/34questions.html

So much had happened and so much unfortunately just faded away simply because Coprorate media refused to report on what exactly was going on in Ohio.

Election fraud, thats the reason Kerry was not elected - end of story.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. Kerry got more votes, but not the cheat-proof margin he

should have had, given the worst opponent in recorded history.

If he had come out attacking and offering REAL alternatives instead of mouthing platitudes and coasting on the hatred that left-of-center people have for Bush, his margin would have been like Johnson versus Goldwater, absolutely cheat-proof.

(In other words, if Bush was announced as the winner, most voters would be thinking "Huh?" because neither they nor anyone they knew had voted for him.)

The narrow margin meant that an average of 60,000 votes switched in each state were enough to give the election to Bush.

Also, I wonder how many people didn't vote because even though they didn't like Bush, Kerry didn't differentiate himself enough for the average uninformed voter.

[DanCa]

38. My two theories - Tin Foil Hat Time

1) Kerry won and the church came down on him hard for being against it's social positions. Far fletched but it's possible.
and
2) Inbreeding works.

[cestpaspossible]

41. Not sure. 1 or 3, so I voted other

[Spectral]

42. Kerry won, but he didn't want a fight like Gore

Woulda been useless anyway.

[EVDebs]

43. 40% didn't vote (or didn't have their votes 'counted')

30% supposedly voted for Bush
29%+ voted for Kerry

This is what the M$M tallys tell us

"Voter turnout hit record highs nationally, with about 120 million people casting ballots, nearly 60% of those eligible, according to Curtis Gans of the non-partisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/president.htm

Bush Rep 59,834,866 51 %
Kerry Dem 56,373,514 48 %

these percentages are 'out of those that voted'. The M$M never mentions the 40% of all voters who didn't even bother...

In Australia I hear that voting is mandatory. Here, 40% of the electorate SAT OUT THE ELECTION. It's either that or so many votes weren't counted that you can say from now on out 'why bother ?' they'll just pull another FL or OH on us.

[leftofthedial]

44. choices 2 and 3 are basically the same

Kerry quit without a fight.

[undeterred]

46. I don't think we'll ever know what really happened

in some of the swing states. It was a close election, no doubt, but I'm not confident that it was a fair election.

[MoonRiver]

47. Welcome to DU undeterred!

:hi:

[undeterred]

48. Thanks!

:hi: :kick:

[paparush]

49. He couldn't prove it and...

He realized that he could let B*sh and the Repubs eat the shit sandwich that Iraq and the Economy had become, and that the Dems would make positive inroads in '06 and take back the White house in '08.

None of this will happen if we don't kick the living hell out of electronic voting. If we do not establish a National Election Standard of voting with a verifiable paper trail, then nothing will matter. We will have entered the 1000 year Reich of Rove.

[CTyankee]

50. Every time I read one of these posts about the election

I go along with the arguments that say Bush really did win, kerry just screwed up and THEN I REMEMBER the discrepancy in the exit polls, the ones that were absolutely on target in paper ballot areas and on congressional races but WRONG in electronic ballots and ONLY on the presidential race.

Comments, anyone?

[MoonRiver]

51. Well, most on this poll think he won but thought he couldn't prove it

Personally, I think he won, but didn't want to be politically marginalized like Gore was, and conceded way too early. He began running for 2008 the day he conceded last November.

[RAF]

52. who the f_ck are these people?

"Kerry actually got fewer votes than bush (meaning he lost fair & square), and his concession was a reasonable reaction to this fact. 64 votes, 23%)"

what more do you people need to see before you comprehend e-voting to be the all in out fraud it is? For the love of Pete, pull your head out of your ass! *shakes head in total disbelief*

[MissMarple]

54. I don't know. We don't know. And that is not a good thing.

[JNelson6563]

55. I think it was a mixture

fraud and a crappy campaign on our part. I don't believe they are into enough precincts to have been able to turn a landslide for Kerry their way. The fact that it wasn't a landslide speaks to my view of our crappy campaign. And before the bots get snippy, let's throw out just one example, THREE weeks before we fired back at the swift boat liars. One of many fuck-ups.

Julie