Why 60.6 Million Americans Voted for Bush,
While 57.3 Million Supported Kerry (so far)

By Henry J. Stern
November 23, 2004

First, a Velellagram

By now, you should all have read of Judge Lottie Wilkins' decision yesterday to study the Velella case for a week before ruling on whether the new LCRC had the authority to void his illegal release by the old LCRC. We reported the judge's ruling to you yesterday afternoon, as soon as we learned of it. The Internet allows practically immediate transmission of information. We also offered four reasons why the senator is likely to be free for some time. If you don't have yesterday's item before you, link to it here. The ability to link to other material is another advantage of this modern marvel.

The major media are now providing exhaustive coverage of this exploration of due process of law, which we began to cover on September 29, the day we learned of it. There are now so many links, we will not list them here, so if you want to read more, Google "Velella." There is, however, one unusual item: a full page in the Intelligencer section of New York magazine, devoted to a cartoon, titled "Guy Velella's Colorful Career." Boris Kachka and Tomer Hanuka are the author and illustrator.

Man's Fate?

Despite remarkable scientific advances (such as the Internet), people still solicit and receive bribes, assault and kill each other, engage in religious wars, and plot mass destruction. Indeed, it is science that has made it possible to kill millions of people at a time, through one decision by one person in a position of control. That is something which is in the back of many minds. It is up to the federal government to do what it can to prevent that kind of tragedy, or at least to make such a horrible event less likely and less devastating, if that is possible. That fear impacted the election.

Why Bush Won: NY Times and NY Civic Agree
 
In 2004, as always, voters made their decisions for a variety of reasons. The election has been described as a triumph of religious zealotry, a backlash against gay marriage, and a victory for conventional moral values. We believe that is a greatly exaggerated view. While some voters were undoubtedly motivated by such beliefs, they were not the swing voters who chose Gore in 2000 and switched to Bush in 2004. Although they were not enchanted with his policies, many middle Americans felt intuitively that Bush, flawed as he undoubtedly is, was a more trustworthy person and more vigilant about terrorism than Kerry.
 
Gore appeared somewhat smarmy in the 2000 debates, although he knew much more than Bush. Kerry was quite good in the debates, except for his gratuitous and tasteless reference to the vice president's daughter, which made people squirm as they heard it. Kerry's words had a Nixonian ring: it makes no difference to me that my opponent is gay, but I thought the voters should know about it so they can make that decision for themselves. Ugh.
 
Voters did not sign on to the Bush economic agenda, nor to anything in particular he wanted to do. Indeed he never seemed to want to do much of anything, whereas Kerry wanted to do a great many things, which he would most likely not have been able to accomplish, especially with the Republican Congress on its way to victory.
 
In the voting booth, rational fear was an unspoken component of peoples' decisions, and Bush, even though people disagreed with him on many issues, appeared to be a more calming figure. These ideas are reflected in a long Times story today by Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder, reporting on a New York Times/CBS News poll. Although written from a viewpoint on the issues similar to Kerry's, the authors report the poll results faithfully, and add their own insights:

"Across the board, the poll suggested that the outcome of the election reflected a determination by Americans that they trusted Mr. Bush more to protect them against future terrorist attacks -- and that they liked him more than Mr. Kerry -- rather than any kind of broad affirmation of his policies."

The irony here is that the Democrats chose Kerry because they believed him to be more electable than Howard Dean. They may have been right — in recent years, the Democrats have nominated two tickets that only carried one state out of fifty. They were George McGovern-Sargent Shriver, replacing Thomas Eagleton (1972), which won only Massachusetts, and Walter Mondale-Geraldine Ferraro (1984), which prevailed in Minnesota. Those were both races against incumbents — McGovern v. Nixon, and Mondale v. Reagan. So Kerry's 286-252 electoral loss was not a rout, and if another Democrat could have done better against Bush, how do you explain Kerry's winning every primary except Vermont, which supported Dean, its former governor?

The man who may have had the best potential to win some red states, General Wesley Clark, started his campaign very late, and was self-contradictory and foolish in his early public statements. His aura of achievement faded as he became better known. Skipping over the character issues raised by his military colleagues, how could a person who was first in his class at West Point have been unable to present a credible rationale for his candidacy, or tell us what we should do in Iraq or anyplace else?

To sum up, history is made by people, and electoral judgments are made by choices between candidates, none of whom is usually entirely satisfactory. Since 'all politics is local,' let us apply the lessons of the national election of 2004 to the municipal election in 2005. The aspiring candidates now nipping at Mayor Bloomberg's heels will have to prove themselves as mature and credible individuals who could do better than an honest, intelligent mayor who has done some unpopular things, is not a glad-hander by nature, and occasionally makes mistakes. We cite Rule 30-L: "The leopard cannot change his spots." At best, it would take a broad swathe of spot remover for any of the current hopefuls to persuade New Yorkers that he or she should be the next King (or Queen) of Beasts.