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| Similarities Between Australia's Election and Our Own? |
| 2004-10-11 |
| Severely EFL - Be sure to read the rest. Hat tip: Tim Blair This is spooky: Many of us have been astounded over the years at the ease with which the But even so, to watch the party so blithely sacrifice the jobs of From your pen to God's ear. Fingers crossed that he can write the same thing about America on November 3d. |
| Posted by:Barbara Skolaut |
| #11 I can summarize why Howard won and Labour lost in one short sentence. Howard stood for something coherent, while Labour put forward spin. It was fascinating to watch the media judge the campaign on debating points and ignore the substantive issues/differences. And then afterwards agonize over why Howard won in landside, when they had judged it even. The lesson was people are concerned with substance, and the media with trivia. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-10-11 11:49:54 PM |
| #10 For those of us that take the MSM and LLL with the grain of salt that is their due, this has all been obvious this whole election cycle. My brother and his friends have been *heavily* into politics since college. They fretted in '02 for nuaght while I laughed at them. They go through episodes of girly-men fretting now when the polls turn bad for Bush, when the MSM gets in a shot, when Jon bon Skerry gets a little oil in his joints... I laugh at them. The majority knows that we are in the midst of a religious war, and anti-crusade if you will. They ain't going back to sKerry-land 9/10. This election will be conclusive for Bush and the perhaps we will finally be able to get down to... Faster, please. |
| Posted by: Atropanthe 2004-10-11 7:32:04 PM |
| #9 Lex: Not Wall Streeters. |
| Posted by: Sharon in NYC 2004-10-11 5:42:56 PM |
| #8 Perhaps memory fails but I recall the polls showing Dukakis far ahead with weeks to go in 1988. Most voters don't go through a checklist or lengthy decision trees before pulling the lever. At the end of the day, if the economy's not on its back, the choice will come down to whether they like and trust the guy, and Bush trounces Kerry on this score. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-11 5:06:18 PM |
| #7 Any state that has a gay marriage referendum on the Nov 2 ballot should also be considered in play for (if not inclined toward) Bush. You'd never guess it from the way the MSM try to spin, ignore or bury the issue, but this is huge in the heartland, with Dems as well as Repubs (even Missouri defeated gay marriage by a landslide, with something like 65% of DEMOCRATS voting against it!). The prospect of judges arbitrarily turning over about 10,000 years of human tradition will not go unpunished by the voters. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-11 3:45:59 PM |
| #6 rj's probably right. The state polls and the candidates' own internal polls point to a solid electoral college victory for Bush. Lost in all the MSM spin, the horse-race stuff, is the iron fact that voters generally and swing voters especally go for "character", not "issues". Kerry's another Jimmy Carter. His ridiculous contortions, plus his flaming peacenik idiocies of recent days (give fuel to Iran, end bunker-busters, AQ as another mafia gang...) show him to be another clueless left-lib trying desperately and failing to speak sense on national security. This won't cut it during a time of great danger to national security. The voters know a wimp when they see one. Also, remember that Carter won in 1976 only because of the pardon and a reversion to party-line voting by Dems. Four years later, party affiliation did not hold, and Carter was trounced. In 2004, party affiliation's much weaker than it was a quarter-century ago, and Kerry also is contending with a 100% anti-Iraq War candidate running to his left. In sum, I think Bush will carry FL for sure, and probably OH or PA, along with a few other Dem midwestern must-wins like MN, WI, maybe even MI. In other words, an electoral college blowout. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-11 3:40:52 PM |
| #5 Until the day of the California recall election LA Times polls had Cruz Bustamante neck and neck with Schwarzenegger. Sometimes polls can be manipulated, sometimes they simply ask the wrong question, or the wrong people. Personally I think Lex is right and my guess is Democrat internal polling is showing them getting killed which is why we've seen burglaries and such at various Bush/Cheney headquarters around the nation, and why we've seen the first steps in an attempt to declare the election stolen. Even if it wasn't for gay marriage etc, there is one issue this campaign for most Americans. That issue is foreign policy/defense. Kerry has produced a wobbly Bush lite foreign policy, covered it in a thin layer of Bullshit and lies, and claims everything will be better. I don't think most people will buy it come election day. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2004-10-11 3:17:38 PM |
| #4 Lex, I think what the polls can't capture very reliably is how enthusiastic people are about getting out of bed and pulling the lever for each candidate. I find it very hard to imagine that there are a lot of people out there who really look forward to Kerry being president.(Undoubtedly there are a lot of Bush-haters out there; but I suspect a lot of those folks on the appointed day will be content to express their hatred by staying home out of cynicism.) Or in other words: I think it will come down to getting out the base, and I think that Bush has more to work with on that count than Kerry does. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-10-11 3:00:50 PM |
| #3 Uncanny. The Dems are becoming a regional party of francophile bicoastal ex-hippy/current yuppies, gazillionaire Wall Streeters, Hollywood idjuts, San Francisco socialites. This is a party that sneers at the religiosity of the American public (never mind that its core african-american voters are deeply religious), cannot comprehend the public's disenchantment with statism, and is clueless as to how to grasp the reluctance of the public to embrace gay marriage. Does anyone else sense that the polls are not at all indicative of what will happen Nov 2-- that most of the swing voters find gay marriage repulsive and Kerry completely lacking in credibility, and that Bush may therefore end up with over 55% of the vote? |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-11 2:48:15 PM |
| #2 Talk about pressure. I'm never going to be able to look an Australian in the eye if we can't pull this off. I'll be mumbling apologies to empty bottles of Shiraz. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-10-11 2:40:44 PM |
| #1 Barbara : You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead. Your next stop—The Twilight Zone ROD SERLING |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-10-11 2:38:35 PM |