Did Kerry "lose" because he was a "liberal" ?

[kentuck]

Or was it because he was unable or unwilling or that he miscalculated the damage that was being done by the the Swift Boat Liars painting him as an anti-war radical that threw his medals over the fence at the White House and once that perception was planted, it took root, and it was all downhill from there? But was that not predictable?

Kerry was painted as an "anti-war radical" because he was an anti-war radical at the time of the Vietnam War and he had no response to that charge or the charge that he voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it. He never came up with an adequate explanation for either charge that countered the attacks against him. Why?

[stepnw1f]

1. The Election Was FIXED (nt)

[Midlodemocrat]

2. No. and he didn't lose, they cheated.

And remember, no matter what the right says, 1/2 the voters in this country voted for the liberal in MA with a very liberal voting record.

[kentuck]

7. No. 1/2 of the voters that voted....

Which was closer to 28% of the country, rather than 50% of the country. The same percentages would apply to Bush. We only count the people that vote - not the non-voters - which are usually close to 50% themselves.

[Midlodemocrat]

11. I meant the ones who voted. Not just the registered voters.

[sasquatch]

3. Kerry lost because he refused to attack Bush and defend himself

[SouthernDem2004]

14. Not to mention he would not take a firm stand on key issues.

Even I thought he looked like he flip-flopped and I supported him even in the primaries. It was just a bad campaign all around. He should have attacked the Swift Boat adds from the start and stayed on message. He should have let Clinton's people run his campagin. Bring them into consult late in the campaign was just that, late.

[Corey_Baker08]

16. LOL -"He Refused to attack Bush and defend himself"

This is a joke right?

[SouthernDem2004]

19. No, he is correct.

His response to the Swift Boat adds came to late. He tried to ignore them in the beginning but they took on a life of their own. Media played a big role in that....

[sasquatch]

20. Thank you

I'm tired of these revisionist history Kerry supporters.
BTW I still have two John Kerry stickers on my truck.

[Corey_Baker08]

21. Kerry did not fail to attack Bush................

His response to the swift boat ads did come late because he did not feel he should have to answer to their ridiculous charges because in turn that would only get them more media publicity. Was this a mistake by Kerry, probably, did it lose the election for him, probably not.

Saying that Kerry failed to attack Bush is just a flat out misconception. How many times did we here Kerry tell the world Bush was the worst President this country had ever seen, then back it up with facts and figures, many. One slogan that sticks in my mind the most is when Kerry continually said, "He's the first president in 75 years to go a single term without creating a single job" I also remember countless other times his attacking of Bush on his plan to win the peace in Iraq and on his foreign policy, and on social security privitization and so much more....

[AntiCoup2K4]

4. No, he lost because he WASN'T a liberal.

A lot of the ex Naderites, Greens, socialists, etc. did cross over to vote on the "Anybody But Bush" ticket. But many others did not. And they might well have done so with a candidate who did not vote in favor of so much of the Bush/PNAC agenda over the previous 3 years.

Kerry's past as an "anti-war radical" didn't scare away anybody who wasn't going to vote for the Chimp anyway.

But the DLC would have you believe he wasn't "right wing" enough

[Wapsie B]

5. I just can't believe that * got more votes than in '00.

That alone makes me very suspicious of the election results.

[Tux]

6. Codeword

Liberal is a code word for evangelicals to mean non-evangelical, godless, might be gay, could be secular humanistic atheist, pro-America, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, tax increasing Democrat.

[Trajan]

9. Ich bin ein Liberal !

Color me thusly ...

Liberal, and proud to be so ...

[Midlodemocrat]

10. You know what I find amazing?

Whenever I debate a conservative, and believe me, based on where I live, it is all the friggin' time, they resort immediately to the argument that the 'Iraqis are better off now than they were before'. When I point out the staggering numbers of civilian deaths, along with the deaths of American service people, who most assuredly are NOT better off than when Saddam was in power, they just want to end the argument.

I said to someone yesterday 'don't you see what is going on here?', this is a man who never, ever got Poppy's approval and he is going to get it, dammit, if he has to kill every last Muslim in the Arab World.

They just don't get it. One of them said to me that the Big Dog was 'immoral'. I said, funny, I guess to me killing is worse than sex, but hey, that's just me. No response.

[Joey Liberal]

18. I'm proud to be Liberal n/t

[benburch]

8. Kerry lost because Bush is a cheating traitor. nt

[sandnsea]

12. They SMEAR PEOPLE

Does a woman really get beaten because she didn't have dinner on the table? NO.

When are people going to get it. THEY RUN SMEAR CAMPAIGNS. Buying into all this picyune bullshit is the same as believing a wife can change her behavior and get her husband to stop beating her.

Some wives kill their slimey beating husbands.

Healthy ones just get up, get strong and win by being the better person.

[Botany]

13. Kerry did not run the best campaign but he won.

Bush cheated .... end of story.

Look @ the thread I just posted under politics.
The Maryland Miracle.

Tens of thousands of glitches nation wide all went to bush.
"Random Chance?"

[Joey Liberal]

15. President Kerry won the election

Kerry is an honest man, and he was up against an evil, corrupt, vote rigging republican party.

[Kurovski]

17. It appears he did win, and I believe he did, BUT

If he had stood up to the Swift Boat traitors, he MIGHT have garnered enough extra votes to override the circus of fraud that juggled the votes in Bush's favor.

But the likelihood is that the more votes there were for Kerry; the more juggling by clowns.

No, I think the press dumping on liberals lost him some votes. It's my experience that most Americans are in many ways liberal, once they get past the spin and lies about liberals. Once they know what liberals stand for.

[slor]

22. He lost because the rethugs stole the election...

now I will admit, Kerry did lack some clarity, though this was media induced, to a large degree. The facts point, overwhelmingly to fraud.

[G2099]

23. Repubs were afraid to Change President in midst of War . . .

And * hammered the idea that the war had to continue.

Kerry, tried to beat * at how he would "win" the war and tried to "out b*, b*"

To counter the argument of "not changing horses in midstream or presidents" in the midst of a war (and b* kept repeating that line over, and over again) - Kerry just should have said he would "end" the war the first day he is in office and bring the troops home.

Kerry should have argued to defeat the Powell statement that if we break it we own it and that if we leave there will be civil war and chaos. But Kerry should have found and made up all kinds of arguments for ending the war on the first day of office and bring the troops home - or something to that effect.

That way there is no worry about changing horses in midstream because there would be "no war."

Kerry should have taken a bold "opposite" stance to b* instead of trying to out b*, b*. And given the people a real choice. Maybe some mothers and fathers would have voted for Kerry so their sons could come home.

[nickshepDEM]

24. Yes and No. eom

[Radical Activist]

25. He lost because he voted for the war in Iraq.

It meant that he couldn't criticize the premise of the war without looking like a flip-flopper and a hypocrite. That's why Kerry attacked the way Bush carried out the war instead of challenging the justifications for us being there to begin with. He was forced to make a very different, and much weaker argument regarding Iraq. And it still opened him up to being portrayed as an indecisive waffler who wouldn't be able to lead.

[Corey_Baker08]

26. The Main Reason Why Kerry Lost

I Believe was because of September 11 and Bin Ladens October suprise that reminded everyone of 9/11 and how the whole country stood behind him that day, even the most liberal of democrats.

Even with this reason Kerry did not lose the campaign though, it definately effected the last minute swing voters, but long before mid October most peole already had their mind made up. Some major reasons Kerry lost was because of his heritage, "northern liberal" that no southern person would support, his failure to defend himself from the swifties, his failure to travel abroad, not just in the major states like OH,FL. And the fraudulent election that under no circumstances could Kerry have proved.

Overall Kerry ran a damn good campaign and I would support him again anyday because most importantly he gave me a vision of hope that he still fights to see succeed even today.

[Corey_Baker08]

27. Dupe

[Lexingtonian]

28. it wasn't exactly that

Was I the only person on DU who ever actually read the exit polling and exit interviewing summaries and didn't go into denial?

I'm getting really, really, tired of repeating what I believe the key points were.
1. The talking points True Believer Republicans give you are beside the point. The election was decided by ~15 million voters who don't identify with either Party and aren't True Believers. I'll call them swing voters.
2. Swing voters who voted for Bush were ashamed to do so, and they gave exit pollsters and interviewers all kinds of rationales that sounded ridiculous on their face for doing so, and on further interviewing would change them or admit they knew well these weren't factually warranted. Most of these reasons were spurious Republican talking points and innuendos, and they were just overtly exuses embraced to give their shameful vote for Bush a cover in their own minds (and some patina of a rationale to offer if their friends and relatives asked why).
3. What swing voters had trouble articulating was that they liked Kerry but didn't consider Democrats a party competent to rule at this point. They considered the 2003 Dean phenomenon a blatant symptom of the Party's problems. They considered Bush suspect but became convinced that the Republican Party was solid and had made its case for continuing its agenda with Bush as President and with full control of Congress in two areas: Values and Terrorism.
4. This does not mean that swing voters wanted the Republican agenda in these two areas to prevail- they simply considered these two areas as very strong itches that had not been scratched sufficiently over the last years, and Republicans were telling them that they would make these two things priorities- getting the power to do so, they would scratch hard. To whatever result. A Kerry Presidency would mean stalemate on these things, with a muddled Democratic pseudoalternative being propped against the Republican hard line effort.
5. You can argue that these things were an artifact of the turnout machinery, of Republicans focussing on turning out additional ignorant racist-y kinds of people and the relatives of Religious Right church adherents. That does not change the fact that their majority in the crucial states they won turned on simply those two policy matters.

And that is why the Bush 'mandate' is such a problem. Dubya tried to convert this very deliberate, semipassive, limited rationale into an excuse to push a hardline economic policy- the Social Security "reform"- and hit the rocks almost immediately. His Party went straight at the Values bit and, not realizing how soft it was, did a crude and thoughtless hardline manouver via the Schiavo matter that backfired spectacularly. Polling shows the GOP lost Values swing voters over it.

So, 3 months into the second Bush term, only one rationale, and a soft one at that, props up the Bush Presidency. Nonpartisan voters still have positive expectations that Bush will prevail in his simplistic approach to the conflict with Al Qaeda. But if what we now hear out of Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay is true, Team Bush is on the brink of failure at that too.

The critiques you cite of Kerry are the things that Democrats perceived most painfully about themselves and about Kerry. The fact that more Americans of that generation prefer the Lost Cause mythology about Vietnam to the reality of it is painful. The fact that Senators must account for and behave according to complexity in politics makes people feel naive or falsely righteous. The fact that the Cold War and its residues- e.g. the vaguely Stalinist, quite Russian-propped, regime of Hussein in Iraq- demands of Americans to behave according to the worse side of their natures long after the Cold War seems on the surface to be finished, that too is unhappy.

But the hard evidence says that these things did not actually decide the campaign. And Kerry's focus groups seem to have told his campaign that the mass of swing voters considered these things ambivalently, would give him benefit of the doubt in the absence of concrete knowledge.

[BillZBubb]

29. Not because he was a liberal, but because he was Kerry.

Kerry re-ran the Dukakis campaign. Even before the Swift Boat Liars, he was in deep trouble. He let the Repugs define him from day one (flip-flopper, indecisive, not a leader, exaggerator, etc.) and never effectively responded, in fact he reinforced their lies with some untimely misstatements. The Democratic convention was a flop and timed very poorly.

That election should never have been close enough to be "stolen", but due to the Kerry campaign's total ineptness it probably was.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. I saw Kerry in person twice during the campaign

In both cases, he said the right things, but it seemed formulaic, and I didn't get that sense of excitement in the crowd that I got at all three Kucinich speeches I attended.

Kerry's first rally in Minneapolis was supposed to be directed especially at veterans, and I was surprised to find that there was more genuine and heartfelt cheering for Max Cleland than for Kerry. Half the time, he didn't seem to be into what he was saying.

Here in Minnesota, we had an unprecedented GOTV campaign, but most of the people I talked to were not so much for Kerry as against Bush. Their first choice had been Kucinich or Dean or Edwards or whoever, but they agreed on the need to get rid of Bush.

Bush definitely had his enthusiastic groupies who would go around like missionaries talking him up at every turn. You could tell that they were really devoted to their candidate, even if you doubted their sanity or intelligence. If you're an uninformed swing voter who gets all your "news" from headline news and never reads anything except the sports pages, you might be susceptible to an eager, heartfelt plea from an enthusiastic Bush supporter who is telling you about how his/her guy is going to bring back "values" to America and to protect American suburbs and small towns from "terrorism."

When I went door to door, it was easy to get Bush-haters to vote for Kerry. They could hardly wait till November 2. Fence sitters were much harder to convince. They couldn't see how electing Kerry would help them. Even if you looked at Kerry's website, it was full of Al Gore-like vague platitudes and policy positions that had to be explained in paragraphs instead of sound bites.

The 2008 candidate, whoever it is, cannot just sit back and whimper about voting machines, although I hope that the problem is fixed by then. Chances are that it won't be, unless the Dems can retake Congress. So we'll have to play with the hand we're dealt and build a cheat-proof majority.

The 2008 candidate must:

1. Have an easy manner and mix well with all kinds of people without condescension

2. Not be afraid of the Republicans--be a proud Democrat who sets the agenda and refuses to follow the Republicans' agenda or to be sidetracked into trivialities or to accept Republican criticism.

The proper response to the Swift Boat campaign would have been, "It's pathetic to see the Republicans this desperate. They're lying about something that happened thirty years ago. I'd rather talk about the real problems that the Bush administration has caused today."

3. Have a few bold initiatives that can be described in vivid sound bites. Yes, the details should be available, but the average voter will remember the sound bites.

4. Anticipate the criticisms that the Republicans will mount and be ready to strike back.

5. Don't have your candidate take part in any publicity stunts that are at odds with his personality. (Cases in point: Dukakis in the tank, Kerry looking not like a genuine hunter but like someone posing for an LL Bean ad.)

6. Insist on true one-on-one debates in front of a live, non-filtered audience, and taunt your opponent for being afraid of the American people if he refuses.

All in all, I think the Dems played it too safe in 2004. By 2008, we will literally have nothing to lose. We might as well go all out.