Kerry was my second choice, so why am i so upset?

[bearfartinthewoods]

from the begining, my focus for this primary was for it to be a trial by fire for the nominee. it's been a trial by fire but not for kerry. from the day after iowa, when the media gang rape of dean over the scream, it has been kerry as the presumptive winner and that's that.

they has been no coverage of the rest of the field which hasn't been sculpted to give the impression of 'also ran'. i'm starting to wonder if the people will ever have the ability to choose a president again.

[onebigbadwulf]

1. I feel your pain

The sheep just bah their way to the chopping block.

[Woman of the Phoenix]

2. I understand.

It DID start out that Kerry would simply be nominated.

Then, there's been some faux excitement.

It's seemingly ending that Kerry will simply be nominated.

Why wouldn't we be upset?

[bearfartinthewoods]

3. i am sooo NOT a tin foiler but

given the power of the dean campaign and the obvious attractions of clark and edwards when it came to "electability" the idea that within one caucas and one primary, we were right back where we were a year ago, with it being kerry's 'turn' is almost unbelievable.

[Woman of the Phoenix]

8. I agree

On this one, call me a conspiracy theorist.

[vi5]

4. I think this leaves out an important point....

You say yourself that the Kerry media thing came after he won in Iowa, which I think we can all agree was a surprise.

However, it seems that what the media wasn't noticing or stressing was that there were a lot of undecideds in Iowa who didn't make up their minds until the last minute. When they did make up their minds they decided on Kerry by a pretty wide margin. Despite the weeks prior, him getting lackluster coverage.

Now what you are saying is assuming that all the people in primary states after Iowa who have also voted for Kerry by wide margins are only doing so based on the media exposure and not because of the same reasons that Iowans did.

Were some people swayed by the media attention Kerry got after Iowa? Perhaps. I'm not so naive as to be able to admit that. But to completely discount that the undecideds in other states would not have come to the same conclusions that undecideds in Iowa did, without the post-Iowa media coverage is also pretty unfair.

[BruinAlum]

6. I agree. I think the voters are being vastly underestimated

and far too much credit is being given to the media and far too little credit is being given to voter intelligence and awareness of the candidates and the issues. Primary voters ARE given to research the candidates and their positions on the issues. Yes indeed.

[bearfartinthewoods]

16. but that is the difference....primary voters are voting with their own

sensibilities and perspectives. i'm not at all sure that they vote with the "big picture" of the general electorate in mind.

let me try it this way....unlike primary voters, a big proportion of the general election voter seems to give more attention to the externals of the candidate. kerry isn't an "attractive" man, he doesn't have a stirring oratorary style and is even more unlike the average joe than bush is.

we need two things to win any campaign..an attractive product and an attractive salesman. we have the product. obviously i believe that but i'm not so sure kerry is the salesman that can best present it.

[BruinAlum]

19. Nor should primary voters cast their votes with others in mind

First of all, people are already pissed with Bush. Most Democrats and Independents have already decided they want to get rid of Bush. Kerry is already polling 51% to 43% against Bush with the general electorate.

Kerry is not THAT bad. He's not animated and exciting like Edwards or Sharpton but I wouldn't call him unattractive. And I don't think the general electorate is THAT shallow. Kerry is presidential and comes across very statesmanlike.

People want a President, not a bowling buddy. We just had 3 years of a good ole boy drinkin' buddy. Look where THAT got us. I think Kerry will compare well against Bush. He's a pro.

[bearfartinthewoods]

24. i give you most of the dems, although i've seen polls with a 5 percent

dem/bush vote. but most of the indies need wooing.

as to 'presidenial' i'm not really sure what that means. was 'clinton' presidential? whaqt are the similar qualities between him and kerry thjat the both qualify as 'presidenial'?

[bearfartinthewoods]

7. kerry beat edwards by 3 or 4 percentage points

how do you get that this is a wide margin. edwards came from single digits to 33% within three weeks. how is that not surprising?

had it not been for the circus surrounding the dean scream, the amazing surge of edwards might have gotten notice but it didn't and somehow, kerry's 3 point victory became a "pretty wide margin".

[vi5]

13. Sorry, I should have clarified...

The wide margin was in comparison to Dean since from what I gleaned from your post that is who you were referring to (and since you mentioned the Scream I'm assuming that is who you were mostly talking about).

The scream came AFTER Dean lost in Iowa not before, so it's pretty hard to relate the Iowa win and the thought process that went into voters decision to something that occurred AFTER it happened.

[bearfartinthewoods]

17. i was referring to the post iowa press which was monopolized

by two stories of the media's choice. kerry beats dean and dean screams. heaven help us if there was actually more than two stories. someone may have had to talk about the narrow kerry victory and the dramatic rise of edwards. if the media hadn't, as they have now admitted, gone bonkers with the dean story, we may be looking at a different picture today. a like case could be made in favor of clark, who, considering how late he entered, did an outstanding job.

[JackRiddler]

9. How was Iowa a surprise?

It was preceded by six weeks worth of "Dean Unelectable!" and two weeks of "Sudden Kerry Surge Saves Democrats from Doom."

[vi5]

12. No, it was preceded by 6 weeks of "Dean is unstoppable"...

just as much as it was "Dean unelectable". There were equal amounts of both, it just depends on what you want to hear.

Even most people on here were declaring Kerry's candidacy dead in the water and were kicking Kerry supporters when they were down.

[spooky3]

22. I don't consider 6 percentage points a wide margin.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/19/elec04.prez.main/

[RainDog]

5. I've been feeling pretty cynical about it all since

the big deal about Dean's scream.

I am repulsed by the American media b.s. machine.

Kerry supposedly has the "goods" on the Bushies, but he's not going to go for them yet...according to the big Kerry supporters here, he's waiting for the right time when media has the issues of Bush corruption in view of the American people (as if this is going to happen with a, basically, CIA controlled media machine.

Well, if Kerry has anything to say about the Bushies, now is the time, if you ask me, because this is going to be the nastiest campaign in history, and Bush has so much money to spend, Kerry had better get the message on the Bushies out there now because the longer he waits, the longer the Bushies have to claim "gutter politics" or whatever else they want to call it, while they engage in sleaze as a way of life.

A dem can beat Bush, because Bush is the worst president we've ever had the misfortune not to elect.

But a dem cannot beat Bush by holding back.

Kerry is not my first choice, but I'll vote for him. But if he refuses to obtain some justice for the American people by outing the corruption going on now, no matter who gets smeared in the proecess, I suppose my time would be better spent on other fiction, rather than the idea of a democratic process in America.

For all his faults, real or invented, Dean has made people, at the grassroots level, think they can make a difference in the political process.

Kerry seems like politics as usual.

[Woman of the Phoenix]

10. When push comes to shove,

I will vote for Kerry, but I will have no illusions. I will vote only because I'm so afraid of who Bush might stack in the Supreme Court. The rest of it should be too close for my tastes!

[bearfartinthewoods]

11. i'm sorry, but i pretty much disagree with your plan

i don't think we can beat bush with negativity. the pubbies didn't beat clinton with that approach. the more they hammered him the tighter we got, plus a lot of people were turned off by their efforts.

maybe i'm a lost minority here. i think we can win because we stand for the right things. if the people get a clear chance to choose between pubbie positions and dem positions, we've got a good shot.

in fact, i think our best bet is to let bush be bush and let the people watch it happen. i'm not saying that we should lay back. i want us to put forth our plans, our policies LOUD and CLEAR and just blanket the country with the choice.

[RainDog]

14. negative is what America has become, to me

since the soft coup of 2000.

that the dems didn't fight back like our very democracy was at stake...which, it seems to me...it was and is, when I voted for people to represent me AND the constitution...

Yes, I know America likes the happy face approach to life.

It's been pretty hard for me to put on that happy face since I do not make enough money to survive, do not have health insurance, yet I did all the "right" things.

but I'm a divorced mother of two, and I have made difficult choices which none of the candidates will ever have to face.

but I did these things in the best interests of my children, not realizing how screwed I would be for putting family first.

it's sort of hard for me to get excited about politics as usual among the senate club.

[bread_and_roses]

15. Help me out here

This is the first time I have followed a Primary, so my memory of other Primaries is vague at best. But my memory is that it was always over by the time it got to NY? Is this year different? Have not many States always (or for a long time) held their Primaries well after the nominee was essentially decided?

Would not the only answer to the disparity of influence be to hold the Primaries in all the States on the same day? If so, would it not have to be fairly early so as not to bankrupt the nominee before the General? Or, if campaign finance reform made that less of an issue, so as not to promote divisiveness by a long and bitter struggle? (Although I haven't followed primaries I have worked extensively on campaigns, and the longer and harder one works for a candidate the more invested one becomes).

Regarding this particular primary, while I don't dispute the influence of the media or front-runner momentum, I don't think the media is totally responsible for Kerry's surge. It looks to me as if the undecideds coalesced in Iowa and New Hampshire. Kerry at that time was not receiving any media push. I don't think Dean's scream hurt him among people taking the interest to go out for a caucus or primary...it was so plainly media hype. I think both the media and Dean's campaign over-estimated the depth of his support based on the limited world of cyberspace and some problematic "counting" if I interpreted the account I read of the campaign practices correctly. (Counting someone as a supporter who says to your face that he/she will support the candidate is not good practice in my experience.)

But back to my primary question, how different is what is happening in this Primary? And what is the solution to the essential disenfranchisement of those voters whose States hold later Primaries?

[bearfartinthewoods]

18. in recent times, super tuesday in march was the declarative contest.

this season was engineered by the PTB to be 'front loaded' to produce an early nominee in order to start the push against bush asap. or at least that's what they said.

a cynical person might wonder if the front loading wasn't designed to end it all quickly, to protect the candidate most favored by the establishment from successful insurgent candidates.

there used to be a couple weeks between each of the early primaries and caucuses which allowed a more in depth look at each of the candidates instead of the five or six days, as we had this year, during which the only talk was who won the last contest.
even the american media would have to find other stories to report if there were more than five or six days between contests.

[bread_and_roses]

20. But why should the voters in one State

or two, or whatever, have less time to examine the candidates than the voters of another State? And what about the debilitating effects of a long primary? And given the insane amounts of $ required to run campaigns these days, is a long primary season at all practical or good strategy for the non-incumbent Pary? I am not being oppositional, these are genuine questions. And thank you for taking time to address my question above.

[bearfartinthewoods]

23. again, it comes back to the media

in this case, the local media covering the concerns of the locals. the candidate don't really address issues that affect minorities until they get to states with significant minority populations so their positions and records don't unusually get play in local papers until the local primary is near.

as to the debilitating effects of a long primary, i don't see it. bush is the opponent and all our candidate's are on him at every opportunity while he couldn't really cut loose until we have a candidate. every time any of our candidates hit a local venue, they got local coverage in TV, radio and print for FREE. seven times the free chance to talk about bush.

now, with it all over but the voting <sigh> Kerry is the only one of note and sooner or later, him campaigning will be old news because there is no one campaigning against him. ho hum...Kerry won again..ho hum. poof....there goes the free press.

from here on in, it will be bush v kerry ...for nine long months.
even the most stalwart in their attention will get bored. i think the longer we had an interesting primary, the better off we would have been,,,,but i don't run the party.

[Monte Carlo]

21. Hey, Kerry's my first choice, and I'm worried, too.

I was glad and proud when Kerry pulled out the suprise victory in IA and NH, but since then it seems things have been made WAY too easy for him. I suspect a trap, and I can only hope that Kerry and the others do to, and are ready for it.

[TheDonkey]

25. It's the media... this is nothing new...

was there any coverage of anything BUT Dean in the summer... then it went to Dean and Clark.

Kerry and edwards were ignored for months while Dean was on many magazines and cable news shows.