The official Presidential Elections 2004 Nov 2 - Thread

[Ozir]

^^^ cool shit on those two sites above.

I didn't know you could bet on the presidency... my money is on Kerry!

VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY!

[white Boy]

electoral-vote.com

that site sucks.. it has the biggest changes day by day...

[Sikx]

its intresting to read ur toughts, but please dont post all those pictures, thx

[Ant]

This pretty much sums up the significance of the 2004 election:

"If Americans cannot bring themselves to vote against the President after this record, we must ask whether American democracy is capable of performing its primary function. Can voters no longer remove a failed leader from power? The answer is even more troubling than the question: American voters are very reluctant to turn against their president at a time of war. This is a truly terrifying idea. It implies that a president can virtually guarantee his re-election by keeping his nation in a permanent state of war."

[Ant]

And also the Rolling Stone JK interview:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6562106?rnd=1099117894695&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.872

[7even]

This pretty much sums up the significance of the 2004 election:

"If Americans cannot bring themselves to vote against the President after this record, we must ask whether American democracy is capable of performing its primary function. Can voters no longer remove a failed leader from power? The answer is even more troubling than the question: American voters are very reluctant to turn against their president at a time of war. This is a truly terrifying idea. It implies that a president can virtually guarantee his re-election by keeping his nation in a permanent state of war."

this is a very good quote, where's it from?

[Ras Kass' Toothpick]

It's not really a good quote. 

"If Americans cannot bring themselves to vote against the President after this record, we must ask whether American democracy is capable of performing its primary function"...Doesn't make sense.

"Can voters no longer remove a failed leader from power?"...Wow, how profound.  Ever think some voters don't think he failed?

"The answer is even more troubling than the question: American voters are very reluctant to turn against their president at a time of war. This is a truly terrifying idea. It implies that a president can virtually guarantee his re-election by keeping his nation in a permanent state of war."...no

[Ðøšïå]

i already voted for kerry. get the dumbshit outta office!

[Ant]

Predictions:

http://www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/Research/presprobs.html

[7even]

58,000 ballots disappeared in Florida.







no comment.

[Ozir]

[Ant]

The Economist Explains Their Perspective on the Election.  While the Economist tends to lean republican "with a heavy heart" it thinks Americans should vote Kerry on Nov. 2.  Full Article Below:

THE INCOMPETENT OR THE INCOHERENT?
> Oct 28th 2004 
>
> With a heavy heart, we think American readers should vote for John
> Kerry on November 2nd
>
> YOU might have thought that, three years after a devastating terrorist
> attack on American soil, a period which has featured two wars, radical
> political and economic legislation, and an adjustment to one of the
> biggest stockmarket crashes in history, the campaign for the presidency
> would be an especially elevated and notable affair. If so, you would be
> wrong. This year's battle has been between two deeply flawed men:
> George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has
> never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it;
> and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively
> about something only once, and that was 30 years ago. But on November
> 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must THE ECONOMIST. It is far
> from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent,
> dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather
> than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush.
>
> Whenever we express a view of that sort, some readers are bound to
> protest that we, as a publication based in London, should not be poking
> our noses in other people's politics. Translated, this invariably means
> that protesters disagree with our choice. It may also, however, reflect
> a lack of awareness about our readership. THE ECONOMIST's weekly sales
> in the United States are about 450,000 copies, which is three times our
> British sale and roughly 45% of our worldwide total. All those American
> readers will now be pondering how to vote, or indeed whether to. Thus,
> as at every presidential election since 1980, we hope it may be useful
> for us to say how we would think about our vote--if we had one.
>
> THE CASE AGAINST GEORGE BUSH
> That decision cannot be separated from the terrible memory of September
> 11th, nor can it fail to begin as an evaluation of the way in which Mr
> Bush and his administration responded to that day. For Mr Bush's record
> during the past three years has been both inspiring and disturbing.
>
> Mr Bush was inspiring in the way he reacted to the new world in which
> he, and America, found itself. He grasped the magnitude of the
> challenge well. His military response in Afghanistan was not the sort
> of poorly directed lashing out that Bill Clinton had used in 1998 after
> al-Qaeda destroyed two American embassies in east Africa: it was a
> resolute, measured effort, which was reassuringly sober about the
> likely length of the campaign against Osama bin Laden and the
> elusiveness of anything worth the name of victory. Mistakes were made,
> notably when at Tora Bora Mr bin Laden and other leaders probably
> escaped, and when following the war both America and its allies devoted
> insufficient military and financial resources to helping Afghanistan
> rebuild itself. But overall, the mission has achieved a lot: the
> Taliban were removed, al-Qaeda lost its training camps and its base,
> and Afghanistan has just held elections that bring cautious hope for
> the central government's future ability to bring stability and
> prosperity.
>
>  The biggest mistake, though, was one that will haunt America for years
> to come. It lay in dealing with prisoners-of-war by sending hundreds of
> them to the American base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, putting them in a
> legal limbo, outside the Geneva conventions and outside America's own
> legal system. That act reflected a genuinely difficult problem: that of
> having captured people of unknown status but many of whom probably did
> want to kill Americans, at a time when to set them free would have been
> politically controversial, to say the least. That difficulty cannot
> neutralise the damage caused by this decision, however. Today,
> Guantanamo Bay offers constant evidence of America's hypocrisy,
> evidence that is disturbing for those who sympathise with it,
> cause-affirming for those who hate it. This administration, which
> claims to be fighting for justice, the rule of law and liberty, is
> incarcerating hundreds of people, whether innocent or guilty, without
> trial or access to legal representation. The White House's proposed
> remedy, namely military tribunals, merely compounds the problem.
>
> When Mr Bush decided to frame his foreign policy in the sort of
> language and objectives previously associated with Woodrow Wilson, John
> Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, he was bound to be greeted with cynicism. Yet
> he was right to do so. To paraphrase a formula invented by his ally,
> Tony Blair, Mr Bush was promising to be "tough on terrorism, tough on
> the causes of terrorism", and the latter he attributed to the lack of
> democracy, human rights and opportunity in much of the world,
> especially the Arab countries. To call for an effort to change that
> lamentable state of affairs was inspiring and surely correct. The
> credibility of the call was enhanced by this month's Afghan election,
> and may in future be enhanced by successful and free elections in Iraq.
> But that remains ahead, and meanwhile Mr Bush's credibility has been
> considerably undermined not just by Guantanamo but also by two big
> things: by the sheer incompetence and hubristic thinking evident in the
> way in which his team set about the rebuilding of Iraq, once Saddam
> Hussein's regime had been toppled; and by the abuses at Abu Ghraib
> prison in Iraq, which strengthened the suspicion that the mistreatment
> or even torture of prisoners was being condoned.
>
> Invading Iraq was not a mistake. Although the intelligence about
> Saddam's weapons of mass destruction has been shown to have been flimsy
> and, with hindsight, wrong, Saddam's record of deception in the 12
> years since the first Gulf war meant that it was right not to give him
> the benefit of the doubt. The containment scheme deployed around him
> was unsustainable and politically damaging: military bases in holy
> Saudi Arabia, sanctions that impoverished and even killed Iraqis and
> would have collapsed. But changing the regime so incompetently was a
> huge mistake. By having far too few soldiers to provide security and by
> failing to pay Saddam's remnant army, a task that was always going to
> be long and hard has been made much, much harder. Such incompetence is
> no mere detail: thousands of Iraqis have died as a result and hundreds
> of American soldiers. The eventual success of the mission, while still
> possible, has been put in unnecessary jeopardy. So has America's
> reputation in the Islamic world, both for effectiveness and for moral
> probity.
>
> If Mr Bush had meanwhile been making progress elsewhere in the Middle
> East, such mistakes might have been neutralised. But he hasn't. Israel
> and Palestine remain in their bitter conflict, with America readily
> accusable of bias. In Iran the conservatives have become stronger and
> the country has moved closer to making nuclear weapons. Egypt, Syria
> and Saudi Arabia have not turned hostile, but neither have they been
> terribly supportive nor reform-minded. Libya's renunciation of WMD is
> the sole clear piece of progress.
>
> This only makes the longer-term project more important, not less. To
> succeed, however, America needs a president capable of admitting to
> mistakes and of learning from them. Mr Bush has steadfastly refused to
> admit to anything: even after Abu Ghraib, when he had a perfect
> opportunity to dismiss Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and
> declare a new start, he chose not to. Instead, he treated the abuses as
> if they were a low-level, disciplinary issue. Can he learn from
> mistakes? The current approach in Iraq, of training Iraqi security
> forces and preparing for elections to establish an Iraqi government
> with popular support, certainly represents an improvement, although
> America still has too few troops. And no one knows, for example,
> whether Mr Rumsfeld will stay in his job, or go. In the end, one can do
> no more than guess about whether in a second term Mr Bush would prove
> more competent.
>
> MAKING SENSE OF JOHN KERRY
> That does at least place him on equal terms with his rival, Mr Kerry.
> With any challenger, voters have to make a leap of faith about what the
> new man might be like in office. What he says during the campaign is a
> poor guide: Mr Bush said in 2000 that America should be "a humble
> nation, but strong" and should eschew nation-building; Mr Clinton
> claimed in 1992 to want to confront "the butchers of Beijing" and to
> reflate the economy through public spending.
>
> Like those two previous challengers, Mr Kerry has shaped many of his
> positions to contrast himself with the incumbent. That is par for the
> course. What is more disconcerting, however, is the way those positions
> have oscillated, even as the facts behind them have stayed the same. In
> the American system, given Congress's substantial role, presidents
> should primarily be chosen for their character, their qualities of
> leadership, for how they might be expected to deal with the crises that
> may confront them, abroad or at home. Oscillation, even during an
> election campaign, is a worrying sign.
>
> If the test is a domestic one, especially an economic crisis, Mr Kerry
> looks acceptable, however. His record and instincts are as a fiscal
> conservative, suggesting that he would rightly see future federal
> budget deficits as a threat. His circle of advisers includes the
> admirable Robert Rubin, formerly Mr Clinton's treasury secretary. His
> only big spending plan, on health care, would probably be killed by a
> Republican Congress. On trade, his position is more debatable: while an
> avowed free trader with a voting record in the Senate to confirm it, he
> has flirted with attacks on outsourcing this year and chosen a rank
> protectionist as his running-mate. He has not yet shown Mr Clinton's
> talent for advocacy on this issue, or any willingness to confront his
> rather protectionist party. Still, on social policy, Mr Kerry has a
> clear advantage: unlike Mr Bush he is not in hock to the Christian
> right. That will make him a more tolerant, less divisive figure on
> issues such as abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research.
>
> The biggest questions, though, must be about foreign policy, especially
> in the Middle East. That is where his oscillations are most unsettling.
> A war that he voted to authorise, and earlier this year claimed to
> support, he now describes as "a mistake". On some occasions he claims
> to have been profoundly changed by September 11th and to be determined
> to seek out and destroy terrorists wherever they are hiding, and on
> others he has seemed to hark back to the old Clintonian view of
> terrorism as chiefly a question of law and order. He has failed to
> offer any set of overall objectives for American foreign policy, though
> perhaps he could hardly oppose Mr Bush's targets of democracy, human
> rights and liberty. But instead he has merely offered a different
> process: deeper thought, more consultation with allies.
>
> So what is Mr Kerry's character? His voting record implies he is a
> vacillator, but that may be unfair, given the technical nature of many
> Senate votes. His oscillations this year imply that he is more of a
> ruthless opportunist. His military record suggests he can certainly be
> decisive when he has to be and his post-Vietnam campaign showed
> determination. His reputation for political comebacks and as a strong
> finisher in elections also indicates a degree of willpower that his
> flip-flopping otherwise belies.
>
> THE TASK AHEAD, AND THE MAN TO FIT IT
> In the end, the choice relies on a judgment about who will be better
> suited to meet the challenges America is likely to face during the next
> four years. Those challenges must include the probability of another
> big terrorist attack, in America or western Europe. They must include
> the need for a period of discipline in economic policy and for
> compromise on social policy, lest the nation become weak or divided in
> the face of danger. Above all, though, they include the need to make a
> success of the rebuilding of Iraq, as the key part of a broader effort
> to stabilise, modernise and, yes, democratise the Middle East.
>
> Many readers, feeling that Mr Bush has the right vision in foreign
> policy even if he has made many mistakes, will conclude that the safest
> option is to leave him in office to finish the job he has started. If
> Mr Bush is re-elected, and uses a new team and a new approach to
> achieve that goal, and shakes off his fealty to an extreme minority,
> the religious right, then THE ECONOMIST will wish him well. But our
> confidence in him has been shattered. We agree that his broad vision is
> the right one but we doubt whether Mr Bush is able to change or has
> sufficient credibility to succeed, especially in the Islamic world.
> Iraq's fledgling democracy, if it gets the chance to be born at all,
> will need support from its neighbours--or at least non-interference--if
> it is to survive. So will other efforts in the Middle East,
> particularly concerning Israel and Iran.
>
> John Kerry says the war was a mistake, which is unfortunate if he is to
> be commander-in-chief of the soldiers charged with fighting it. But his
> plan for the next phase in Iraq is identical to Mr Bush's, which speaks
> well of his judgment. He has been forthright about the need to win in
> Iraq, rather than simply to get out, and will stand a chance of making
> a fresh start in the Israel-Palestine conflict and (though with even
> greater difficulty) with Iran. After three necessarily tumultuous and
> transformative years, this is a time for consolidation, for discipline
> and for repairing America's moral and practical authority. Furthermore,
> as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability.
> He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view,
> impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the
> doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with
> America's great tasks.

[Rampant]

not only was that comic stupid, but it plays off the "bush cheated" stuff that the sore loosing democrats made up.

[Ant]

Even Far Right David Brooks Can't Quite Find Good Things to Say about GWB.

Hope and Frustration
By DAVID BROOKS

As I look back over the course of this campaign, I should confess I've gone through several periods convinced I should vote against President Bush. I know I'm not the only conservative to think this way. I look at my favorite conservative bloggers and see many coming out for John Kerry. I talk to my friends at conservative think tanks and magazines and notice that they are deeply ambivalent about the administration, even those who would never vote for a Democrat.

Like all these folks, I look at the Bush administration with a mixture of admiration, frustration and anger.

I'm frustrated that Bush didn't build the governing majority that was there for the taking. He came to power with good ideas on how to move the G.O.P. beyond the Gingrich stall. But time and again, he abandoned his reformist strategy to give spoils to the G.O.P. donor base.

To take one small example: on environmental policy, he showed interest in moving to a flexible, market-based system that would have cleaned the environment better than the current system. But too often rules were written to please key industries. Voters who could have been turned on by new, effective approaches were instead appalled at unseemly self-dealing.

I'm exasperated at the Bush communications strategy. His advisers came in with one rule: no concessions to elite opinion. They decided not to be open on how they make decisions. They would never admit mistakes. They would not fully engage with Washington or even with Republicans on Capitol Hill. In so doing, they pushed away many who could have helped them - most important, pro-war Democrats. They fed the misconception that this is an administration that does not deliberate. They further polarized the political climate, in ways that only make it more difficult to get anything done.

I'm angry at the decision not to send enough troops into Iraq. The history of the 1990's suggested that when societies are transformed, establishing law and order is the most important thing. Yet that lesson was ignored. People from the center to the right were screaming for more boots on the ground, but the administration never performed the elementary task of statecraft: matching the tools at your disposal to the goals you hope to pursue.

There are moments when I think, These are exactly the sorts of mistakes that administrations should be thrown out of office for.

Then other considerations come into play. The first is Kerry. He's been attacked for being a flip-flopper, but his core trait is that he is monumentally selfish. Since joining the Senate, he has never attached himself to an idea or movement larger than his own career advancement.

It's not for nothing that people in Massachusetts joked that his initials stand for Just For Kerry. Or that people spoke of him as the guy who refuses to wait in lines at restaurants because he thinks he's above everybody else. If the Democrats had nominated Dick Gephardt, this election wouldn't be close, but character is destiny, and Kerry's could be debilitating in the White House.

Second, for the next many years the madrassas will be churning out young men who want to kill us. In embarking on a generational challenge to transform the Middle East, Bush has a strategy to defeat their ideology. While many around him understand the challenge, Kerry has no strategy.

I fear his foreign policy would combine Carteresque pedantry with the cruel "realism" of the first Bush administration. Under the elder Bush, the realists paid lip service to democracy, but inevitably stood by whoever was in power at the moment: for Gorbachev and against the freedom-loving Lithuanians, for the Russian empire and against the independence-seeking Ukrainians.

That passive approach was tolerable in the face of a dying Soviet Union. It is not in the face of radical Islam.

Third, Kerry's Democrats seem to have no interest in reforming the entitlement programs that are asphyxiating government. Kerry merely promises to expand the status quo, thus punting on the central domestic challenge of our time.

I'm not allowed to tell you how I'm going to resolve these contradictory impulses (Times policy). But if Kerry wins, I hope he'll pick three things he wants to do - for the country, not himself - and stick with them. And if Bush is re-elected, I hope he will see his win not as vindication, but as a second chance to act effectively on the visions that inspired hope in the first place.

[7even]

It's Like An AIDS Test, All Impatiently Waitin For The Main Event - What's The Result??