Four More Yearses

Rambler

Awanturnik
Looks like it. Much as I shudder at the prospect of a second Bush term, I'm glad Kerry's conceded and saved weeks of bloody wrangling. And hopefully this will save four years of Democrat complaints about stolen elections and the like, and more concentration on actually doing something special in 2008.
 
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be.jazz

Guest
Discussing it with my girlfriend, she was like "How can anyone vote for Bush?" I replied, "Look at the states he won, Europeans [+/- 70% of whom would have voted for Kerry] know nothing about them." I'm pretty baffled how anyone could vote for Bush, but I have no idea how southerners and Midwesters think.
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
Lots of reasons why people voted for Bush, not least of which that Kerry wasn't a good enough candidate - and on this score Rove did an exemplary job. This analogy probably won't make much sense in Brussels, Mwanji, for which I apologise in advance, but for Brits, imagine Blair - as hated as he is by so many - standing in a Presidential (not party) election against William Hague. Hague at least isn't Blair, and he was a decent debater, but he had no real policies anyone could identify with - very similar to Kerry in fact. No one in Britain could seriously envisage (even when he was Tory leader) Hague as PM. He was a last hope choice for his party, and he always looked like one. Blair would undoubtedly win every time: that was the choice faced by undecided Americans, and their response was entirely as expected.
 
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be.jazz

Guest
Rambler said:
Lots of reasons why people voted for Bush, not least of which that Kerry wasn't a good enough candidate
Yeah, but I thought enough people would be dissatisfied with Bush to vote for just about anyone else. Instead, it seems that they are massively satisfied with his first 4 years. Which is hard to understand, from my viewpoint. And I get the Blair-Hague comparaison, I spent 4 years in England and was there for that election.
 

Greg

Member
be.jazz said:
Yeah, but I thought enough people would be dissatisfied with Bush to vote for just about anyone else. Instead, it seems that they are massively satisfied with his first 4 years. Which is hard to understand, from my viewpoint. And I get the Blair-Hague comparaison, I spent 4 years in England and was there for that election.


It seems like that most of the Western world including the East/West coasts of the U.S.A. are struggling to understand the collective&individual thought process of middle-America. I'm sure as hell confused by it.

1m more jobless under Bush
economic surplus into deficit within 4 years
raising oil prices despite of (or due to) the seizure of Iraq.
over 1100 American soldiers dead in said country (probably very few from white-liberal families)

and it appears that the most prevalent reason for voting for Bush was moral - 20%

oh... hi. I’m new here btw.
spleen venting entrance, sorry.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The only reason I regret Kerry not being elected (and I don't care, or know enough about, domestic US affairs, though Bush's Republican heartlands anti-abortian, anti-gay marriage, anti-stem cell research platform strikes me as plain <em>weird</em>, but then US/UK politics <em>are</em> very different, of course, obviously) is that his wife would have made a <em>fantastic</em> first lady. Damn straight, she was great.

But I kind of like Bush's daughters, too.

Plus, I could be the only person in my country hoping <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041101fa_fact">Paul Wolfowitz</a> <em>doesn't</em> lose his job. (And hoping Rumsfeld does.)
 
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sufi

lala
new_map_US__1_[1].jpg


fresh from lala
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
be.jazz said:
I thought enough people would be dissatisfied with Bush to vote for just about anyone else.

It's still really difficult to vote for a negative. Plus, Kerry let Bush fight the campaign on Bush's terms; it was always going to be an uphill struggle.
 

gff

Active member
ilx's ned raggett posted a much more illuminating map here:

http://ilx.p3r.net/thread.php?msgid=5213838

which doesn't get around the fact that the south and mountain west are firmly in gop hands, but all of this 'oh the impenetrable violent pigfucking american middle' from europeans is just about as dippy and effete as fox news says you all are. so enough.

full disclosure: i was born in wisconsin, raised between london and a little town in southern iowa. now live in minneapolis, very midwestern and very blue. except for the suburbs (haha and the statehouse...)

n e waaay, the numbers i've seen imply that this election didn't change anybody's mind abt anything. Kerry took self-described liberals 85-15, moderates 55-45, and conservatives 15-85. trouble is, those conservatives were something like 29% of voters in 2000; this time around they were like 34%. The mobilization of right-wing churces has been much discussed elsewhere.

Even this "morals" thing is a bit suspect. It read to me like some filler category tacked on by the pollsters after the "real" issues had been listed; lo and behold, it gets massive hits; really any and all of a voter's decisions are moral issues, if you're the kind of voter not discouraged from speaking about them that way. Many have explained this vote away by characterizing it as a kind of national fag-bash quite apart from the the figure of the president (the evidence does support this, to be sure), but even that is a rather masochistic comfort compared to staring into the abyss of love that so many americans feel for bush's stumblemouthed clarity.

and as long as i've brought up flagrantly partisan media... don't you ppl, brits especially, who cannot fathom bush's appeal, and who are utterly stunned by his second term, owe your own (chosen) discursive gatekeepers a strong slap across the face? surely it is their purpose to make these things plain?
 

Greg

Member
gff said:
and as long as i've brought up flagrantly partisan media... don't you ppl, brits especially, who cannot fathom bush's appeal, and who are utterly stunned by his second term, owe your own (chosen) discursive gatekeepers a strong slap across the face? surely it is their purpose to make these things plain?

I was almost as scared by media agenda over here (UK) prior to election. There was little attempt to actually get to the bottom of the love of G.W., and I think a lot of people were honestly stunned by the result. You were branded a cynic if you said things would pan out the way they did.

most people I know here (myself included) feel there is a clear gap between expectations and actualities. A whole lot of wishful thinking happening, abetted by the equally sorry state of media agenda in Britian.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I was sad to hear that John Edwards' wife has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Just after losing the election, man...that's dreadful. She's a fine woman, too. In fact, I think the country would be better off if Catherine Edwards, Teresa Heinz and the Bush twins took over office, collectively. If you need any more opinions, feel free to ask. Send Airwolf into Falluja.
 

&catherine

Well-known member
oliver craner said:
his wife would have made a <em>fantastic</em> first lady. Damn straight, she was great.

I know - I loved it how she was so tired and rumpled-looking in the photos of the last day of campaigning... Like a snoozy child in the back of the car. Except with a lion's mane of hair and wrapped in an imposing coat.
 
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be.jazz

Guest
gff said:
which doesn't get around the fact that the south and mountain west are firmly in gop hands, but all of this 'oh the impenetrable violent pigfucking american middle' from europeans is just about as dippy and effete as fox news says you all are. so enough.
Are you saying they DON'T fuck pigs???
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
I think the South has long since risen again, and much of the rest of the country has been Southern-ized . . . . Not to oversimplify things, but everything that was ever great about American culture came from the North, not only WASP spiritual discipline, but the pre-Civil War "republic of artisans," and the vibrant tempo of immigrant life in the urban centers. The only good that ever came from the South came from the descendants of its slaves
 

carlos

manos de piedra
dominic said:
Not to oversimplify things, but everything that was ever great about American culture came from the North

hm- not sure about this- does one really have to take sides? what about faulkner and twain? poe...? flannery o'connor? chicken fried steak...?

millions of people voted for Bush in the (civilized) north too- if you look at county voting results you'll see that the south and west isn't just pigfucking Bush country

carlos (in houston, texas)
 
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