The Bush Factor In the Victory By Democrats - November 10, 2006 - The New York Sun: "Most of the post-election editorial analysis lays the blame for the GOP losses on corruption and the war in Iraq. However, an examination of the results in the Northeast, the 'blue' states, discloses the flaw in that conclusion.
New Yorkers re-elected Alan Hevesi as state comptroller even though he faces charges of fraud that may end his tenure in office. Andrew Cuomo is the state's new attorney general even though he cannot account for the millions that went missing when he was in charge at HUD and, according to the New York Post, refuses to release his 2005 income tax return. New Jersey voted for Robert Menendez despite accusations of corruption involving millions in federal funding while he was a House member. Corruption charges apparently have an impact only on Republican politicians.
As for the war connection, Senator Lieberman was re-elected in Connecticut even though he lost the Democratic primary because of his pro- Iraq war position, while Senator Chafee lost in Rhode Island even though he voted against the war."
Saturday, November 11, 2006
The Bush Factor In the Victory By Democrats - November 10, 2006 - The New York Sun
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4 comments:
Sooooo....
Hilary will run as a corrupt warmonger!
You know they did not like Bush in 2004 and he still won. I think they just picked off enough vulnerable people to win. There were lots of reasons.
Look at Ohio for instance... is anyone surprised at how that turned out?
Terrye,
They did pick off enough vulnerable people to win, but that's not all there is to it. The results are too systematic, across too many different subcultures, for that to be the whole explanation.
Again, I think part of it was the harping from the purists who convinced themselves that Bush represented them and then he didn't. They implicitly decided that they would rather have real Democrats in charge, and that's what they got. There are studies indicating that there was large Republican turnout which didn't vote Republican. I think part of it was general war-weariness. People feel very uncomfortable with the war in Iraq and want an easy way out, but nobody really knows what it is. Finally, I think the 24/7 full-court press of all the main media outlets without exception has played a large role here. People casually see that 100,000 or 600,000 people have been killed in Iraq and don't usually bother to get to the bottom of it the way people on the blogs do. They accept that as a fact and move on. They see that Bush created a mess in Louisiana and don't bother to dig down and discover it was really the governor of Louisiana who created a mess. People hear that Bush sold our ports out to the Arabs and they don't bother to figure out the real story. Any one of these takes a slight toll; in toto they amount to death by a thousand cuts.
I think the truth is that ever since the hotly-disputed 2000 election Bush became a hate-object for a good 40% of the population and nothing that has happened since, no objective fact, has changed that fundamental aversion those people feel.
If this thesis is correct, then it is necessary as a purgative for the Democrats to have won here, so that they can start to feel once again that the electoral process is legitimate and that they are empowered.
I think a deeper issue is that there is no real dialogue going on. The Democrats amongst whom I live have no idea that I am not just like them. The demonization of Republicans has forced me to maintain my complete silence. They never hear, accordingly, a dissenting thought to any of their policies or beliefs. If Bush or any Republican dissents in a public forum, he or she is immediately demonized and nothing the person says is heard. Because they don't want to hear it.
So, in their minds, they have merely freed themselves from a 12-year long unjust tyranny. Actual honest discussion of the issues never occurred.
MHA:
I agree. Even here where there are a lot of conservatives I have gotten into fights with people just because I refused to go along with their tirades.
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