Sweet, Sweet Victory

Congratulations to Bush and the GOP. They had a very good night.

I look forward to evaluating the candidates in 2008.

Micahel,

A victory is a victory, but I hope you're planning to at least acknowledge that you were wrong in your prediction of a Bush landslide.

michael -- i just read barrett browning's "sonnets from the portuguese" #43 this morning. amazing! good use of literary allusion there. megan's and my county was the one causing much of the trouble in ohio yesterday ... my flatmate from orange county said that's the most publicity clevelanders have had since we blew out all the east coast's power a few summers ago ... i guess we take what we can get! go bush.

Hey Michael! I've been reading your blog for about 3 months. I agree with you about 75% of the time. But 100% on the election!!!

Michael - You nailed the election. Congrats. I hope you cleaned up on tradesports.

Earth to JT: Bush got more popular votes than any presidential candidate ever. First presidential candidate to get more than 50% since 1988. Bush won 30 states. That's a landside in my book.

Hooray! I made some shirts to celebrate the occasion

http://www.cafepress.com/elec04

Jim C.,

You're spinning. If spin is the game, I can also truthfully claim that Bush had more votes cast against him than any incumbent in history.

Bush got a solid win. But you're smoking something I might be interested in trying myself if it gives you the hallucination to allow you to seriously believe that 3% of the popular vote and 283-252 in the electoral college is a landslide.

As to Bush getting a majority as opposed to a plurality in the popular vote, yes he should also be given credit. Still, I think Florida in 2000 made a lot of voters, both Democrats and Republicans, believe that their vote really matters.

Let me apologize about the "earth to" comment. Sorry. No need to be sarcastic, that is the tactic of the fact-less and clueless.

Maybe you’re right, not a landslide for Bush, but a landside for the GOP and moral values; and a rout of Kerry, the Dems, and the left elite. Bush had a lot of negatives going against him, some out of his control, some his fault. But in the final analysis, the election was not close.

I forgot to mention the four senate seats picked up by the GOP (that is a major feat!) including giving the boot to Daschle; Kerry lost every state outside the northeast, great lakes, and west coast; and every gay marriage ban passed, even in lefty Oregon.

(Why did Daschle lose? There was a lot of outside money and involvement in that race. It was a nationwide referendum against the chief obstructionist and immoral political leadership and for President Bush. For an incumbent senator, party leader, to be voted out is resounding.)

The demographics also moved in Bush's favor, picking up a greater percentage of minorities, for example. Sean Hannity said last night that 96% of counties were won by Bush. That's not the PV, not the EV, but we can see that those voting democratic are limited to the major cities and a very small proportion of the land mass in the US. Even in states won by Kerry, he generally only got the cities. I know we live in a Democracy where each vote counts, still it's very interesting to me.

(Honestly, I cannot confirm the 96% number without doing a lot of work looking at each state. I cannot find a good 2004 nationwide county-by-county map on line, would appreciate a tip. If you look at the 2000 map, it tells a similar story.)

So, I'll stipulate that it was not a landslide, but what I'll say is that it was decisive. The president has a mandate. The Dems have been in secular decline (pun intended) and that will continue because they have clung to their immoral social positions. The majority has spoken clearly.

I think the absolute numbers of the votes do mean something, just not what the Sean Hannitys of the world seem to think it means. Some increase is numbers is a function of population size; ignore that part. The rest is attributable to one of two things: Republicans like him better than they used to, and a few rich Democrats really, really, really hate him. Bush's win was not just a repudiation of John Kerry, but also of Michael Moore, George Soros, Bruce Stringbean, P. "vote or I'll kill you" Diddy, and too many other self-important celebs to count. That Bush was able to win a race like that by any margin at all, let alone by roughly seven times the margin Al Gore got in the 2000 popular vote, speaks volumes.

Xrlq,

I agree the numbers mean something. However, the mistake many will make is the assumption they mean something for four years from now. That might or might not be true.

I look at the numbers a little differently. I concede that the numbers mean that Bush won. I concede that it means that Americans don't like abortion (which I, too oppose). But the numbers also mean that many Americans don't like gays, resent Blacks, etc.

I never in my wildest dreams thought any Democrat after 9/11 could come close to defeating a war-time president. Not too long ago, I was expecting a Reagan-type landslide.

Republicans will not forever be able to use fear of gays and minorities to win elections. (Michael can't resist the need to trash one of African-Americans' greataest heroes and treasures, Martin Luther King, Jr. You go for it Michael as it just delays the day that Blacks will vote Republican in significant numbers.)

JT: Dude, the Dems were the ones peddling fear to gays and minorities. Republicans aren't scared of either, and we don't try to scare 'em.

And I'm not going to refrain from trashing a lying cheater just because he happens to be black. I'm a color-blind critic of immorality, particularly when trumpeted as virtue.

Dude Michael,

In Oklahoma the Republican National Committee ran an ad showing people receiving welfare checks. ALL of the hands were clearly dark-skinned. That was done for F-E-A-R.

Victorious Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Tom Coburn spread the word that lesbianism is so rampant in southeast Oklahoma schools that only one girl is allowed to use the restroom at a time. Losing Arkansas Senate candidate Jim Holt claimed that homosexuals represent a greater threat to America than terrorists. I call that also F-E-A-R. In many states, Republicans want to bar gays from being school teachers at all grade levels. Republicans don't want gays in the military. That is F-E-A-R.

I'm not totally bashing all Republicans. Toward the end of the campaign, George Bush endorsed the idea of civil unions for gays. I thought that was a great stride forward.

As clergy, I received a lot of mailings from groups in favor of Oklahoma's marriage amendment. Many of these materials showed gays and lesbians kissing. I think that was done to spread F-E-A-R.

As to Martin Luther King, well Benjamin Franklin, (and some say George Washington) was a philanderer. Does that do away with Franklin's accomplishments? Andrew Sullivan and others claim that Abraham Lincoln was gay. Now maybe that is just Sullivan's wishful thinking. But even if it were true would that negate the good Lincoln did?

Here's the link for by-county wins. Not as impressive as I thought, but still pretty good.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm