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2004-10-29 Home Front: Politix

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Posted by tipper 2004-10-29 01:45|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Hawaii is up for grabs????? Good grief!

Posted by Dave D. 2004-10-29 1:49:39 AM|| 2004-10-29 1:49:39 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Hawaii suffered through very tough economic times in the 90s as investment there slowed due to the recession in Japan. There's a strong perception (even among my liberal friends there) that the Bush tax cuts are are at least partly responsible for them having (IIRC) the lowest unemployment rate of any state and economic growth of the sort they've not experienced since the late 80s. This is good news but I don't think that in and of itself it can be interpreted as an indicator of a larger blue state trend.

Posted by AzCat 2004-10-29 3:56:59 AM|| 2004-10-29 3:56:59 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Steyn is not blowing smoke. He'll make good on his pledge and quit if the president isn't returned to office. If Mr. Kerry is elected that's bad. If Steyn is gone that can only make it worse.

Posted by Mark Z. 2004-10-29 7:34:38 AM|| 2004-10-29 7:34:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 "This is the 9/11 election, a choice between pushing on or retreating to the polite fictions of September 10." Great summary.

Posted by Tom 2004-10-29 7:48:22 AM|| 2004-10-29 7:48:22 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 I would miss Steyn - too much. Not a girly-man, we need Mark on the job, maybe even more if Skeery does win.

I'm afraid this election is going to be a shambles. Decided in the courts - and that means politicized to the bloody end. Ugly and stupid.

__________________________________________________

Who here in RB is confident of a CLEAR Bush win? No quibbling, no provisos, no ifs - a solid popular and EV victory.

Posted by .com 2004-10-29 1:08:51 PM|| 2004-10-29 1:08:51 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 With unlimited donations allowed for the post-election lawyering, not confident at all...but still optimistic.

Posted by Seafarious 2004-10-29 1:20:58 PM|| 2004-10-29 1:20:58 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 I'm confident

Posted by Frank G 2004-10-29 1:50:45 PM|| 2004-10-29 1:50:45 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 .com-
Clear as in 5% or more? Then me, but I don't see anything past that.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2004-10-29 2:00:56 PM|| 2004-10-29 2:00:56 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 I'm confident of a clear Bush win, it's not going to be close enough to give the lawyers a chance to interfere.

Consider: Bush's team has done a masterful job of organizing the GOP, specifically the shiny new nationwide 72-hour "get out the vote" campaign (don't underestimate the magnitude & impact of this effort); Bush's support among black voters has doubled since 2000; Bush appears to be splitting the Jewish vote nearly down the middle rather than lagging far behind as would normally be expected; the traditional gender gap favoring the Dems has evaporated; Bush's "culture of life" will turn out the evangelical vote that stayed home in 2000 (if it doesn't Kerry's radical stances likely will); etc., etc., etc. No matter what the (heavily spun) poll numbers du jour might say the views of the underlying demographic groups seem to have shifted strongly in Bush's favor since 2000.

Further, states that shouldn't be in play (MN, WI, IA, HI, NJ, etc.) are and the Bush team has spent the last couple of weeks campaigning in areas where, by rights, they shouldn't really be wasting their time because they should have little or no chance of victory. Unless, of course, they know something we don't. With Kerry pulling out of battleground state after battleground state this smells like at least a very solid win for Bush in the electoral college and perhaps a landslide.

The Dem's pet 527s may have registered a ton of voters but lots of those groups were paying the folks doing the registering for each newly registered head thus giving them a strong incentive to cheat. Most of the newly registered fake voters will turn out to have been the Dem's paid 527 stooges opportunistically lining their own pockets (i.e., they're not going to show up and vote) rather than folks trying to vote multiple times. OTOH the GOP registered 3,000,000 new voters and has a nationwide effort that will encourage & assist them in getting out to vote. No matter what the numbers might appear to be today, after the election we'll be reading story after story about how effective the GOP effort was and how ineffective the donk's effort was which stands to reason as one side bothered to register voters that actually exist while the other side created a huge incentive for their stooges to invent voters.

And then there's Kerry himself. Latching onto this missing explosive story was simply moronic and to me is utterly inexplicable. First we go from 378 tons to 3 tons, then we learn that Mohammad el-Baradei is behind the story, next we learn that whatever was missing was missing before we arrived, and now we have soldiers who were there removing & destroying the stuff speaking out. Take your pick on the fallout here: a UN stooge trying to interfere in the US election, Kerry looking (no pun intended) very bush-league ... at best, Kerry taking shots at the military during wartime, etc., etc., etc. No matter how you spin this it doesn't play well for Kerry anywhere except on the LLL and their votes are already in the bag. If someone here told me that Karl Rove handed this story to Mohammad el-Baradei I'd believe it.

I could go on but suffice it to say that this election will be just like the last midterm election: the trend will be strongly Republican and the talking heads will spend election evening scratching their heads and wondering how they missed it. The fat lady will have finished warming up by the time the polls close in Florida.

Posted by AzCat 2004-10-29 2:25:24 PM|| 2004-10-29 2:25:24 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Turnout? That's the pivot point, the crux of this biscuit, right?

The voter registration fraud, the insane laws which rely upon honor ("Wily E Coyote, yep, that's me. No, no ID with me, but it's not required - gimme my ballot!"), the intimidation already in place at early voting - I dunno. When you're the only one who's abiding by the rules, things can get a little dicey.

I hate to dis such a fine post, AzCat - you put me in a tight spot here, lol! I'll offer that logic seems to be playing less of a role in this election that I would prefer - and that means excellent arguments are falling on deaf ears. Sad.

We will see if America deserves to be the bastion of individual Jacksonian Freedom - or not. I am sincerely hoping for a 8+ point blowout. Less than 5 is big trouble.

Posted by .com 2004-10-29 2:37:45 PM|| 2004-10-29 2:37:45 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 .com, Bush will win handily. For moreorless the same reasons Howard won a few weeks ago here in Australia. The most noteworthy reason is one the media can not speak, but is obvious to an outsider. Kerry is unelectable. He has no redeeming characteristic. Only hardline partisans will vote for him. The kind that in Ulster would ' vote for a donkey as long as it was the right shade of orange.'

Posted by phil_b 2004-10-29 2:59:38 PM|| 2004-10-29 2:59:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Could be academic discussion IF SBVT has former SecNav saying Lt. Kerry's discharge was less than honourable. Story on page 2.

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2004-10-29 3:05:52 PM|| 2004-10-29 3:05:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 As a rantburg reader I am confident that the final popular vote is 52:47:1 (Bush:Kerry:other) and that Bush picks up ca. 322 EVs. C-ya in a few days about this

Posted by Chemist 2004-10-29 3:31:35 PM|| 2004-10-29 3:31:35 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Chemist - I think you might be dead right... But that's definitely close enough for court, IMHO. Anything near the normal Margin of Error will end up there - so it might be more than a few days -- damnit!

Oh, please let there be a "silent majority" that decides to come out of the woodwork and send this scam artist packing...

Posted by .com 2004-10-29 3:38:01 PM|| 2004-10-29 3:38:01 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Guys I think the early voting is playing out this very scenario. Not one poll shows Kerry with a significant lead over Bush. Now the Bush team is shagging votes in Hawaii? Clearly he is on the offensive and Kerry keeps circling around four states trying to shore up a slipping lead. All this and a certain Senator from South Dakota is fighting for his life! I may be drunk for the entire week!

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2004-10-29 4:06:38 PM|| 2004-10-29 4:06:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Due to my recent frailty I have been watching Born again tv and they have been very agressive on get out the vote and do the right thing. OBLs down on Bush I guess too. But, damn, my mom voted for Kerry. Said Bush was awol and his dad paid for his HonD. When I told her the story was bogus she said that the Secretary confirmed it.
Mom!? I asked her how much it cost for the fake HD. I said it was prolly about $500 but since his dad was president it should have been alot more. Boy was I pissed.

Posted by Lucky 2004-10-29 4:35:14 PM|| 2004-10-29 4:35:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 Landslide for Bush,and I am getting the gloatmobile ready.

Posted by djohn66 2004-10-29 4:37:55 PM|| 2004-10-29 4:37:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 I'm 90% confident of a clear Bush win by 5%+ in popular vote and 300+ electoral votes. Here's why:

Assume you have roughly 30% registered Dems, 30% registered Repubs and the rest independent. Assume also that the independent vote splits 50-50. Then the race becomes in all probability a race of crossover votes. But 90% of Repubs support Bush whereas only 70% of Dems support Kerry. Now, assume that half of the dissidents in each party end up crossing over on Nov 2. That means Bush loses 5% of the 30% who are Repubs and Kerry loses 15% of the 30% who are Dems.

In other words, perhaps ~1.5% of the voters will be Repubs for Kerry and ~4.5% of the voters will be Dems for Bush, which means a net gain for Bush of +3%.

This is magnified by the fact that Repub affiliation is growing and that Repub turnout has traditionally been higher than Dem turnout. So it may be the case that the Repub share of the vote is closer to 32%, say, and the Dem share more like 28%. So add another 2-3% to Bush's lead. And any Dem defectors to Nader are gravy.

Not hard to see Bush winning by at least 5%, probably closer to 6%.

Posted by lex 2004-10-29 4:40:41 PM|| 2004-10-29 4:40:41 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 I am going to print this thread of comments out and sit on it until after the election, then we can either have an orgy of self-congradulation or drink Kool-Aid, heh heh.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2004-10-29 4:47:39 PM|| 2004-10-29 4:47:39 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 Folks, the polls are BS. They don't capture the voting preferences of millions of crucial swing voters who happen to be busy professionals and businesspeople who are reachable only through their cell phones. Many, perhaps most, of these voters are registered Democrats, but I guarantee you that many many more of these Dems will split their tickets this year than their Republican counterparts will. (This is esp true of the jewish liberals and lib-to-moderates who supported Lieberman). And these people turn out in much higher percentages than the population overeall.

This is how Arnold received some 60% of the Dem vote in the most liberal state in the Union. But don't expect these crossover liberal voters to ever admit publicly that they tapped the "R" button in the voting booth.

These Closet Bush supporters represent at least 20% of the jewish vote nationally (ie about 1% of the popular vote) and another 10-15% of the non-jewish registered Democratic vote (ie about 3% of the popular vote). That's at least a 4% popular vote shift to Bush from usually-reliable Dem votes.

Any way you cut it, Kerry loses. As in the California guv fiasco, the Dems' candidate is incapable of holding his base. And nationally, that base is already a small minority and is shrinking further. Finally, the high-growth states in this country--ie, the ones that have gained and continue to gain electoral votes-- are almost without exception red states. Result: Bush wins, easily.

Posted by lex 2004-10-29 4:49:59 PM|| 2004-10-29 4:49:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 I lied straight down the line to the Quipinniac pollster who called me.

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2004-10-29 4:52:14 PM|| 2004-10-29 4:52:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 It is OK Mrs. Davis, as long as he presented his credentials to you that he was a certified Infidel, Insh'allah...heh heh.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2004-10-29 5:04:36 PM|| 2004-10-29 5:04:36 PM|| Front Page Top