Posted on 04/05/2005 9:16:25 PM PDT by presidio9
It was several months before Election Day. George W. Bush and John Kerry had pulled to a statistical dead heat, and the pundits were poring over the polls in an effort to divine the reasons for the latest shift in public opinion. But MoveOn.org had more pressing concerns. It was moved to ask its network of true believers: "Why aren't we talking about a landslide in November?"
Such groundless conviction "was not at all unusual in the world of MoveOn," writes Byron York in "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." The triumphalism flowed, he notes, from a deceptively simple rationale. Feeling a passionate contempt for the president and his policies, the MoveOn rank-and-file labored under the illusion that they represented the majority of the American people.
They weren't the only ones. In the months following the 9/11 attacks, there emerged an activist movement of left-wing loyalists, Democratic operatives and deep-pocketed financiers all united under one aim--to defeat President Bush--and all confident that history was turning in their direction. Mr. York, the White House correspondent for National Review, gives us an engaging account of the partisan passions that made this "the biggest, richest, and best organized movement in American political history" and that ultimately proved its undoing.
All the usual suspects are here: Bush-bashing billionaire George Soros; politicos like Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean; squadrons of Democratic strategists and spin-men; left-wing luminaries like Michael Moore and Al Franken. There are new players, too, like the so-called 527s, ostensibly nonpartisan lobbying groups that massaged campaign-finance laws in the service of the Democratic cause. (The Republicans had their versions, too, of course.) Mr. York even takes us inside the brain trust of the anti-Bush network, the new Center for American Progress. "Our goal is to win," announces John Podesta, the center's founder and head.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
And yet the article asks why the Democrats failed?!?!?!!!! TO me it is quite obvious why, and the article clearly states it as well (at least several of the reasons why).
He's right. Look, I love to laugh at these guys, but that's like a snake handler laughing at a rattler. Laughing at that rattler is dangerous, and stupid. That's because the rattler, like the Left, is dangerous, and... well, you know.
Well said!
Hillary is too slick for her own good. Bubba used to slip up every now and then, even though he was as slick as molasses, and that unbelievably garnered him 'sympathy' votes. Particularly from women. Hillary however is too self-cohesive for her own good. She has all the slickness of Bubba, but without the flaws. Making her seem inhuman (which i guess is pretty accurate when it comes to her). She would have great difficulties becoming president.
You forgot 'major league wussy.'
You're absolutely right. He was an utter nothing who offered nothing. Even the Dems I spoke to could not articulate what he was supposed to stand for; if you can even use that phrase referring to him. Other than being the non-Bush. Frankly, the Dems made a serious tactical and strategic mistake picking him as their candidate. Who else they might have come with is of course an open question, but Kerry was lackluster personified.
But at the end President Bush and the Republican party utterly crushed them.
They were dangerous last year, they will be dangerous in 2008.
Hillary is also lacking in Bill's charm. I don't know how she's going to master stumping without sounding like nails on a chalkboard.
This piece doesn't even mention the dem voter fraud that they were counting on as insurance to win the election.....we KNOW it occurred because the dems made only feints at investigating/exposing alleged Rep voter fraud. Because of this, they are acutely aware that Bush's re-election was really a true landslide.
York wasn't going into this area, but you are certainly right. Also, prominent Dems (including a former First Lady) are lobbying for a federal law to allow convicted felons to vote. They say they're just trying to compensate for bias in the system, but do you think it just might be that they're trying to compensate for the fact that Democrats can't win the votes of law-abiding citizens?
The Democrats truly believed they could sell "Anybody But Bush" and with Karl Rove's leadership, it almost worked. A president with Bush's growing economy, high approvals and defensible war record *should* have slaughtered a lightweight like Kerry. If they had showed any real stomach for taking the fight to the Democrats, they could have won 35 states.
The Democrats' big error may have been that they believed their own lies. They truly believed nobody liked Bush because, well, they didn't *know* anybody who liked Bush. Amongst their conclaves of Bush haters, this was probably true. They just didn't realize there was a whole big flyover country out there that didn't agree with them.
My own view is that if the reporting of the 2004 campaign was even remotely unbiased, Bush would have gotten close to sixty percent of the vote. If the mainstream media was as biased towards Bush and Republicans as they were for Kerry and Dems, Bush might have gotten two-thirds. I don't care about contributions, however large, made by advocacy organizations of whatever political bent. I'm far more concerned about the still overwhelmingly liberal bias in the media and the culture. Those are two areas that are changing but are still powerful assets for liberals.
Top three billionaires in the US, Gates, Allen and Buffet all contributed to Kerry. Also, 23 out of the top 25 contributors to the 527s went Democrat.
Since the Democrats claim the Evil Rich back those who help them at the expense of the poor, who is the Evil Party again? DEMOCRATS!
Also, the average contribution is larger for the Democrats.
If political money is evil, Democrats are evil.
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