1. Does Terry McAuliffe have to resign? Or can he say "At least we built a really nice DNC building in DC, even though we got hammered again under my nonleadership"? Cause the building is all they've got now.
2. Did anyone really think Kerry would lose this big? Other than Bob Novak and a few people whose direct contacts with reality are largely nonexistent? I was sure Kerry would win, though I thought it would be close. Kerry didn't win, and it was not particularly close.
3. Should Erskine Bowles start a "rent-a-doormat" business? "I'll spend millions of my own money, and make ANY other candidate for office look smart!" He hasn't lost a Governor's race yet, and that other Senate seat comes up again in four more years. Richard Burr is a fencepost with ears, yet he beat Bowles pretty handily. Who in the world is telling Bowles he has any talent as a politician?
4. Big winner: conventional wisdom. Given the performance of the economy, Bush should have won. Given that most of the seats up for grabs in the Senate were in Dem hands, the Repubs should have picked up seats. And that all happened.
5. I was just flat wrong, on net Senate seats and the Prez race. I had thought the Dems would be able to take advantage of obvious low-hanging fruit (the war thing, the job loss in key states, Bush's obvious problems in the debates, that sort of stuff). But the Dems live in a dream world, and both Kerry and Dem Senate candidates (including Bowles) ran like they were incumbents, not challengers. Challengers have to challenge. One of my Duke colleagues, a big Dem guy, told me as late as Monday this week he was sure Kerry would win North Carolina. And it was because everybody he talked to hated Bush so much. "Look, there's Dorothy, get those ruby slippers! There's no place like Oz; there's no place like Oz...." You might want to get out more, man.
6. Bush was completely, totally beatable. Kerry was a weak candidate who ran a terrible campaign (which I have been saying for months, even though it made my Dem pals at Duke crazy to hear it.) But if they had run any of the other nebishes (Dean? Gephardt? Graham? Edwards?) the outcome would have been the same. The Dems are intellectually bankrupt. Their only platform is "Vote for us, and we will give you other peoples' money." It's not working.
Ick. Somebody has to take the Repubs down. Cause this is terrifying.
5 comments:
BLOTTO! you are a cruel and vengeful god.
So I'm a Dem (former student of yours too) from TX who was cautioning friends and colleagues against believing in this big victory. I agree with most of what you said (what about Edwards, though?). Any suggestions for the Dems to turn this back into a multi-party country?
Tommy the Wannabe Canuck is applying to Canadian immigration for well...something!
They didn't even legalize pot in Alaska...
The country is going to hell!
Other big loser: political betting markets. those dudes panicked huge on election day. Kerry was up over $.6 in the afternoon and Bush was supposedly toast. Not a good showing.
I am not sure how conventional wisdom that bush should have won can be true and also the observation that Kerry ran a crap campaign can be true both at the same time. Since bush did worse than the fair model predicted, isn't he the poor candidate and kerry the overachiever?
EZ_Angus
Angus: Sure, that makes sense. Fairmodel doesn't handle war very well, of course. Maybe under the "scandal" variable.
I just meant that the straight up Fairmodel predicts a pretty big win for Bush, and it happened. Maybe there was nothing Kerry could have done, after all. Unless you believe, as I do, that war actually SHOULD have made Bush vulnerable (a la the SCANDAL variable), and Kerry just botched it.
And....wow! The markets sure got it wrong. I was on a radio show today where one of the other guests actually suggested Drudge was participating, maybe unwittingly, in a "corner the market" scheme to depress Bush. Then, lots of people bought at the low. Probably not right, but if one had ANY inside info on early polls you could make a KILLING.
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