I Forgot to Remember to Forget

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLII

Over at ABC's The Note yesterday, we discover how clueless we must be here at The Blog from the Core.

Today, The Note gets all serious and macro.

It is our most fundamental job to regularly tell you three things:

1. where the presidential race stands

2. that where the race stands now is only a snapshot

3. that things can change

And/but the reality is — as amazing as this seems — this is now John Kerry's contest to lose.

Forget the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs (and Team Bush's inability — so far — to enunciate a second-term jobs/growth agenda or find a compelling Rubinesque spokesperson on the economy).

Forget the fact that that we still can't find a single American who voted for Al Gore in 2000 who is planning to vote for George Bush in 2004. (If you are that elusive figure, e-mail us and tell us who you are and why: politicalunit@abcnews.com.) ....

Let's stop right there.

Back in July — five weeks ago and more — OpinionJournal published messages from 17 individuals (only two of whom do not use their full name) who say they voted Gore in 2000 and will vote Bush in 2004.

First, Gore No More, Jul. 1 (emphasis and links in original).

(Editor's note: These letters came from readers in response to yesterday's Best of the Web Today item, "Landslide Kerry?")

You quote Josh Marshall as saying: "I take it as a given that virtually no Gore voters from 2000 will pull the lever for Bush." What planet is he on? Since 9/11, I can't begin to tell you the number of my friends and family members who have said "I voted for Gore, but thank God George Bush is president!" The Angry Left feels that Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, but there are plenty of Americans—including plenty of 2000 Gore voters—who feel otherwise.

Besides, having watched news clips of recent Al Gore speeches, I suspect that more than a few Gore voters feel a shiver go down their spines when they think of how close the Tennessee Nut Case came to serving as our commander in chief.

—William White

Mr. Marshall is wrong in his assumption that "virtually no Gore voter will pull the lever for Bush." I voted for Gore, and I intend to vote for President Bush this time. It was our president's strong stand against terrorism that swayed my mind.

I still dislike numerous positions of the Republican Party, including its near-constant attack on abortion on demand. But the issue of public safety overrides all others. I suspect Bush will garner quite a few people who normally vote Democratic.

—Jean Notestein

Your item on Josh Marshall, particularly his contention that Gore voters won't move to Bush this year, reminded me of this Reason.com thread of a few weeks ago. Tim Cavanaugh predicted a Bush lock, the very first commenter made a point similar to Mr. Marshall's, and more or less the rest of the thread was a few hundred posts of people claiming to have voted for Gore in 2000, and planning to vote for Bush this time around.

I sort of count myself in that group; I am undecided but leaning toward Bush for now. You can take a thread of anonymous posters for whatever it's worth, but Democrats should be very, very careful about taking anything for granted. Turning it around, could anyone possibly have voted for Bush, witnessed Gore's subsequent meltdown and said, boy, I sure wish he were our president? I'm not sure what the case for Kerry (rather than against Bush) is, either.

—"Ferncrombie"

I wanted to e-mail the gent who claimed virtually no one who voted for Gore in 2000 will vote for Bush in '04; however, no e-mail address was available for him. Perhaps you might forward my message.

I accompanied my parents as they campaigned for John F. Kennedy; my husband and I went door-to-door for George McGovern; I've lived in major urban centers my entire adult life, haven't had a TV since '75, lived abroad during much of the '80s, speak and write Japanese, have an advanced degree but no children, and produced and hosted a feminist radio show on an NPR affiliate in the '70s, and of course voted for Gore in 2000. All very nice and leftish.

However, I believe George W. Bush is one of our greatest presidents and I will cast my vote for him in November. I can only speak for myself of course, but if a committed lefty like me can change her mind, all I can say is carry an oxygen tank, you might get buried in that landslide you're predicting.

—Kelly Colgan Azar

Here's one Gore voter who will vote for Bush. I've met a handful of others like me—self-identified conservatives who don't like Bush's cultural conservatism and felt Gore was the more traditionally conservative of the two. Now we believe that the left, as epitomized by Gore, has gone off the deep end and can't be trusted with the reins of power, especially during wartime.

Actually, my vote for Bush won't be so much for Bush as against Michael Moore and his ilk. I still don't like Bush very much, but I don't trust Kerry to be tough on our enemies, and Moore and the rest of the left-wing nut cases shouldn't be rewarded for their lunacy.

—Howard Owens

The confidence of people like Josh Marshall is overextended. He assumes, from the anti-Bush energy on the left, that there is no center remaining to be swayed. Well, maybe he's right—the process of switching is already complete. I'm a Gore voter who's long since moved through the center to the right after 9/11. You'd think a blogger would have noticed a few others of us around the blogosphere.

—Mike Gebert

Mr. Marshall may be right that "virtually no Gore voters" will switch sides, but he can't say absolutely no Gore voters will switch, because I voted for Gore and I will most definitely pull the lever for Bush this November. (Although in my district, voting actually involves drawing a line to connect the head and tail of an arrow. It's got an arts-and-crafts feel to it.)

Mr. Marshall makes the mistake of a partisan by assuming that everyone who voted for his candidate did so with the same hard-core, I-drank-the-Kool-Aid-licked-the-punchbowl-and-am-now-sucking-on-the-ice-cubes fervor that he did. I sure didn't. What I remember about the 2000 election was how unenthused most people were about either candidate (kind of like Kerry now). What I remember most about the aftermath of the election was Al Gore and his lawyers trying to disqualify the votes of military personnel stationed overseas because they were likely to be Republican. It's the only vote I cast of which I am now ashamed.

Well, 2000 was so long ago. What does the Democratic Party offer today's voter? Oddly enough, Al Gore, newer, louder, scarier. In the past Gore has made numerous statements about the danger posed by Saddam; now he screeches, "They lied!" when the Bush administration points to the same intelligence reports that Gore used. Well, someone's lying.

Then there's Howard Dean, also screeching (what is it with Democrats and volume control?), "I want my country back!" Do you know how annoying it is to have someone scream that at you? It's my country, too, you little—well, never mind.

Teddy Kennedy stands on the floor of the U.S. Senate and announces that the torture chambers of Saddam have reopened under U.S. management. What a despicable statement, on so many levels. In the first place, it's a lie. What a handful of soldiers did at Abu Ghraib does not approach the horror that Saddam inflicted for 30 years, and Kennedy knows this. He knows it. Secondly, whether you agree with the war or not, we have thousands of Americans serving with courage, honor and distinction, and their accomplishments should not be diminished by the misdeeds of a handful of malcontents or by slander from a United States senator. But, if it gets some votes or hurts Bush, tearing down the morale of those risking their lives simply because we asked it of them seems like a small price to pay.

Then there's John Kerry, who feels that terrorism is a law-enforcement issue. Excuse me, but isn't that the policy that got us 9/11? Wait until some Americans are murdered, arrest some low-level conspirators, and blow up a couple of camels? I'm voting for pre-emption. If you know where the bad guys are, get them before they can do bad things. I just now displayed my lack of nuance, and John Kerry is big on nuance, and nuance is in no way to be confused with flip-flopping, indecisiveness, trying to have it both ways or playing the ends against the middle. People who hack off other people's heads are not evil. They're misguided, confused, the product of a bad environment, or justifiably distressed by the Burger King being built where the falafel stand used to be. It could be a multicultural thing.

Kerry's also big on the U.N. You know, the organization that opposed freedom for Iraqis while running a corrupt Oil for Food program that they are now covering up while making a hash of Kosovo and supplying peacekeepers who murder our peacekeepers and who demand sex for food from already brutalized refugees? Sure, let's turn things over to them.

What else are the Democrats offering the would-be voter? Oh, yeah. Michael Moore, the controversial mockumentary filmmaker. After 9/11, Moore posted on his Web site that he couldn't understand why the terrorists killed people in largely Democratic states that went for Gore. Apparently, if 3,000 people had been murdered in largely Republican states, Moore would have been OK with that. Also, he seems to think that Osama bin Laden was upset that we don't have national health care or government-funded preschool. What Moore and the Democrats have in common is their contempt for the American people. When Moore isn't making money here with his mockumentaries, he's in Europe making money by telling the Europeans how stupid we Americans are because we don't have passports and when we meet people, we smile and say, "Hi, how ya doin'?" For their part, the Democrats have endorsed Moore's movie even though they know we didn't go into Afghanistan for a pipeline or Iraq for Halliburton, but if you can sell it to those stupid Americans, it might get some votes.

There are many other issues behind my vote this November, but as things stand now, it's Democrats minus one, Bush plus one. That's a two-vote swing.

—Laura Bangs

I am a 52-year-old New Yorker who has never missed voting in a major election. I have never voted for a Republican and voted for Gore in 2000. I am an agnostic, but nonetheless, after 9/11, I thank God that Bush won. My wife has never voted for a Republican either. We live in the liberal state of New York, with roots in the liberal elite. I am a psychiatrist who read the New York Times every day until I canceled my subscription one year ago. The fact-checking and real reporting by parts of the blogosphere were instrumental in helping me make the break; the accretion of distortions that the liberal media consider "news" finally tipped me after Jayson Blair, but I was heading in that direction for several years in any event.

I also have two voting-age children. My son recently enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, to the horror of innumerable (former) friends and associates, and my daughter is in a liberal arts college in New York. My son is a confirmed Bush supporter; my daughter wavers only because she finds the right of a woman to have an abortion (in our house we generally support a woman's right to choose, first trimester: definitely, second: probably, third: only in very exceptional circumstances) to be vital and worries about pro-lifers on the Supreme Court taking that right away. Despite that, she is leaning toward Bush because she thinks the War on Islamofascism, of which Iraq is only one front, is the crucial issue facing our country.

Just thought you should know that two former Democratic voters, plus two voters who all precedents would suggest would be Democratic voters, are going to be voting for George W. in the fall. I might add that I find many people who tell me they agree with me on this, though they tend to whisper it since deviating from the liberal, mainstream-media party line is dangerous around here. I have actually heard from one patient, a psychologist herself, that her friends tell her they could never see a therapist who is a Republican.

Personally, I am hoping for a landslide Republican victory, since I think it is the only thing that can save the Democratic Party from its lunatic fringe (just as the Goldwater debacle ultimately saved the Republican Party). When and if the Dems grow up and refind "reason," I will reconsider voting for them.

—Perry Branson

(Editor's note: These letters came from readers in response to Wednesday's Best of the Web Today item, "Landslide Kerry?," and yesterday's follow-up.)

Please include me in your group of former Gore supporters now planning to vote for Bush. In 2000, Gore was the former senator with the long record of having been fiscally conservative, strong on defense and environmentally responsible, while generally supporting a woman's right to choose, and being quite the intellectual. I felt then, and feel now, that the Supreme Court decision that put him in office was a travesty of justice—that the intentions of the voters in Florida were ultimately ignored, to the peril of the Constitution.

That being said, Bush's weakness—his intellectual simplicity—became a strength on September 11. Unlike Gore, he is not so distracted by the trees so as not to see the forest of good and evil. His clearheaded stance on terrorism, Islam, the U.N. and Israel is a breath of fresh air. I do believe that his positions on the environment, energy, taxes, abortion and other domestic issues are not ideal, but I also believe that events have occurred that relegate these issues to the back burner. And the bulk of the Democratic Party has completely failed to take national security seriously (with Joe Leiberman being a notable exception, bless his soul). And so I, and my entire family of Gore supporters, will now be voting for Bush. True, living in New York our votes don't really count, but we'll be voting nonetheless.

—Jonathan Weinberg

Although currently undecided, I may vote for (and, as a moderate, usually defend) Bush, whereas last time I voted for Gore. Gore (circa 2000) seemed more rooted in reality, and Bush's change-of-heart from an isolationist free-trader to a hawkish protectionist seems to indicate that Gore 2000 is actually closer to Bush 2004 than either is to Bush 2000, to Gore 2004 or to Kerry 2004.

—Michael Baer

Don't forget the Roe Effect. The Roe Effect is accelerating. I have three new presidential election voters in my family this year (18 to 21), and all of them, I'm sure, will vote and vote for Bush.

—Craig Shelley

I work with three 2000 Gore voters here in Florida who will almost certainly be voting for President Bush this year. One guy explicitly stated that he changed his mind when Bush made a personal appearance here at our company. There's something about his personality that turned him around. I'm ashamed to admit, I voted for Harry Browne in 2000, but the president will have my vote as well.

—Bob White

First, as you point out, Gore himself is turning many, or at least a significant number, of his voters off. It defies logic that the Dems can marshal the same level of voter turnout this year. Two thousand was a high-water mark, and with Gore alienating his supporters and blacks not really on board with Kerry, Bush only needs a few percentage points to seal the deal. When you have 90% of blacks, the only direction is down.

Second, on polls about job approval: If a pollster called me, I'd tell him that I disapprove of Bush's performance. I'm one of those appalled conservatives who think Paul Bremer was too much the bureaucrat and are morose about federal spending, and I'm an especially morose Pennsylvanian still smarting about Bush and Sen. Rick Santorum's over-the-top support for Sen. Arlen Specter. But if the pollster asks who I'm voting for, it's Bush all the way. I'm not alone.

—Dan Herchenroether

You said that you've gotten anecdotal evidence that at least some Gore supporters from 2000 would be pulling the other lever this fall. Well, add me to the pile, brother.

I turned 18 in 1990. I voted for Clinton twice, then Gore in 2000. (I stayed awake through high school civics, however, so I wasn't among those whining about the outcome of that election.) Then 9/11 happened, and the leadership of the Democratic Party, in my opinion, tried to act like the world hadn't changed suddenly and drastically. The president won some of my support with his speech to the joint session of Congress, then more with his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, then more when he acted decisively against Afghanistan, then still more when he was equally decisive about Iraq. (I wish he hadn't wasted quite so much time at the U.N., but what the hey.)

In November, I'll be voting to re-elect. I don't know if there are enough of us to make a difference, but I imagine there are at least a few of us "9/11 Democrats" out there who are just itching to get our hands on a ballot.

—Jeff Harrell

If Ohio is the battleground state, and Canton is the heart of it all, then I live on its valve and my wife's family is in a main chamber. In the '90s, she voted for Clinton, twice. I voted Perot, then a write-in for Nader, (pre-Green party, thank you). For Bush/Gore, we split the vote —one for Bush, one for Nader. (It wasn't personal with Al, it was more about how weak he was and how overbearing his wife and daughters are.) This time, both votes go for Bush. The same with our entire families. The only holdout is her dad, a lifelong Democratic city councilman, but like most of the Canton/Massillon area, he won't talk about Kerry as a viable choice.

Not sure if you know this, but the senator's fly-through in Massillon the other week got little local coverage. The reason? Lower-than-expected turnout. He pulled over 1,000 in Akron a few months ago. Now he grabbed under 500.

—Martin Sarafian

I shudder to think what our national security situation would be if the man I voted for had become president. Seeing George Bush win the last election made me quite upset, but he has proved himself to be a shrewd and strong leader in a time of great uncertainty. I wholeheartedly support President Bush and I intend to vote for him this November.

—Mary Ellen Lewis

Saw the posts and the mention of the Gore voters who are planning to vote for Bush in November. My site is specifically focused on those voters, because that's me too: longtime Democrat, Dukakis voter (Clinton and Gore too), who's 100% dedicated to getting Bush re-elected. Call me a "9/11 Democrat," or a "liberal who's been mugged," or whatever, but there you have it.

—"John S"

Serious and macro? A phrase to remember.

See also An Interlude of Breathtaking Honesty.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

P.S. I sent an e-mail to ABC with links to the OpinionJournal pages. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[Follow-up: Re: I Forgot to Remember to Forget.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 08/12/04 06:40:07 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.