It's been one week
since the election.
My thoughts:
(1) There is still reasonable doubt as to who won Ohio (and thus the Presidency). The exit polls, which until now have been very reliable, predicted a Kerry win. There have also been several disturbing events (see www.blackboxvoting.org , among other sites) that suggest that considerable voting tampering. A switch of 60 to 70,000 votes all that would be required. Also remember that the CEO of Diebold pledged to deliver Ohio for the President.
(2) Even if the official numbers are correct, this was no landslide. Bush has no legitimate claim for a mandate. Bush's margin of victory was the smallest for a sitting President since Woodrow Wilson. Kerry received over 250 electoral votes. Kerry also received 55 plus million votes, the most ever except for Bush.
(3) The red state/ blue state divide is real. 2004 was an almost exact repeat of 2000 - only NH (for Kerry), NM and Iowa (for Bush) exchanged. The Gore/Kerry states are clustered as are the Bush states.
(4) We Democrats and liberals should not try for the south and the west. We are not going to win votes there and we shouldn't try to appease those folks.
We can be competitive in the industrial midwest (we should have won Ohio and should have had stronger victories in PA and the other rustbelt states), the border states (like Missouri, TN, and possibly Kentucky, and the southwest (we could go after AZ, we should have won New Mexico and Nevada).
(5) Compromising with Bush only helps him. And he has used and will use our compromises against us.
(6) It's going to be four very long years.
My thoughts:
(1) There is still reasonable doubt as to who won Ohio (and thus the Presidency). The exit polls, which until now have been very reliable, predicted a Kerry win. There have also been several disturbing events (see www.blackboxvoting.org , among other sites) that suggest that considerable voting tampering. A switch of 60 to 70,000 votes all that would be required. Also remember that the CEO of Diebold pledged to deliver Ohio for the President.
(2) Even if the official numbers are correct, this was no landslide. Bush has no legitimate claim for a mandate. Bush's margin of victory was the smallest for a sitting President since Woodrow Wilson. Kerry received over 250 electoral votes. Kerry also received 55 plus million votes, the most ever except for Bush.
(3) The red state/ blue state divide is real. 2004 was an almost exact repeat of 2000 - only NH (for Kerry), NM and Iowa (for Bush) exchanged. The Gore/Kerry states are clustered as are the Bush states.
(4) We Democrats and liberals should not try for the south and the west. We are not going to win votes there and we shouldn't try to appease those folks.
We can be competitive in the industrial midwest (we should have won Ohio and should have had stronger victories in PA and the other rustbelt states), the border states (like Missouri, TN, and possibly Kentucky, and the southwest (we could go after AZ, we should have won New Mexico and Nevada).
(5) Compromising with Bush only helps him. And he has used and will use our compromises against us.
(6) It's going to be four very long years.