The Washington Times posts an excellent synopsis of Michael Barone’s reflections on the 2004 elections, culled from the introduction to his latest Almanac of American Politics.
Among his observations:
In the safe Bush states (213 electoral votes) and the safe Kerry states (179 electoral votes), a similar pattern prevailed. In both sets of states, Mr. Bush increased his vote share by more than Mr. Kerry did, prompting Mr. Barone to observe: “The 2004 results showed the red states getting redder and the blue states getting less blue.”
And he noted that Bush won although anti-Bush forces spent “more than $55 million above what the pro-Bush forces spent.”
Now, that I’ve whet your appetite, read the whole thing and get the book!
Hat tip: Polipundit.
The $55 Million figure probably doesn’t include the drumbeat of anti-Bush propaganda put out by the MSM (How much would it cost to buy the entire editiorial page of the New York Times every day for a year?) , or the money spent promoting Fahrenheit 9–11, or Bob Burkett’s FedEx-Kinko bill…
Well, said, V the K. And also, recall that colleges and universities paid upwards of $30,000 for Michael Moore to speak. PLUS the fact that, in the campaign for the Democratic nomination, the candidates also spent millions bashing Bush (attacking him more often than they attacked each other).
Some media guy, I think Evan Thomas (of Newsweek? maybe not), openly said that the media had a drumbeat for Kerry/Edwards and it would be worth 15 points at the polls.
Later he scaled it back to 10, then 5….. 🙂
But I think he was right. If the media were objective and unbiased (not 90% pro-Kerry as many Pew Center studies have shown, and consistently over-negative on the economy and Iraq), I think Bush would have won the popular vote at least 54-45, maybe even 57-42, rather than only winning it 51-48 as he did.
….and that’s an encouraging thought. Because it means that whenever Bush can break through the layer of media crap, to reach people directly, majorities come back to his side.
That (“breaking through the layer of media crap, to reach people directly”) of course was President Reagan’s greatest strength, and why he was able to pull off such landslides.
Unfortunately, President Bush is not a great public speaker (though he has phenomenal speech writers, in my opinion).
If the GOP can just find a candidate for ’08 who can give a stirring public address, it should be good for a ten point boost — especially if he or she can convince Bush’s speechwriting staff to stay at it for another eight years.
If the media were objective and unbiased (not 90% pro-Kerry as many Pew Center studies have shown, and consistently over-negative on the economy and Iraq), I think Bush would have won the popular vote at least 54-45, maybe even 57-42, rather than only winning it 51-48 as he did.
But I thought we’re supposed to believe that the media has a conservative bias.
I don’t know, in 2008, I fully expect the MSM to tell us that Hillary can heal the sick and raise the dead, but voting for Republicans causes cancer.
VtK-
Edwards effectively tried the former in ’04 (here) — it didn’t take.
The real question will be to what extent the MSM has figured out how to deal with the decentralized fact-finding of the moderate conservative blogosphere — which hamstrung their more egregious attempts in ’04.
I thought it kinda funny that Edwards said “Christopher Reeve will get out of that chair and walk” after he was already dead.
My favorite quote re Bush’s speaking abilities:
“Hearing Bush speak is like watching a drunk man crossing an icy street.”
The person who said this was a fan of Bush, BTW.
Clint — Doubt it. Last I heard, Dan Rather was still maintaining the Bush TANG memo was real. That’s the real problem of the MSM. Denial. They can’t even admit their bias… much less do anything about it.
VtK-
That doesn’t mean they don’t notice a challenge to their power — they just call it something else…. witness all of the talk about lynch mobs and blogswarms….
The left blogosphere may think Gannon-gate makes them even for Dan Rather and Eason Jordan. Don’t think for a second that CBS and CNN feel that way.
I don’t expect them to change their biases — but they may find a way to (long enough for one election, at least) deflect fact-based criticisms. Or perhaps they are gathering dirt on prominent radical-right-wing-lynch-mob-blogswarmers (I mean moderate conservative bloggers). I have trouble believing they don’t at least think they are doing something to challenge a big threat that they are aware of.
Gannon-gate? WTF ever came out of that????!
I have a feeling we’re going to end up with 2 competing media – rightstream and leftstream – which will be an improvement over the Big MSM era.
Some would say we’re there already, but I think a few more dead branches on the MSM tree need to fall first, for it to be true.
If the media hadn’t been as biased as it was and the anti-Bush forces had not outspent the pro-Bush forces, I expect the president would have been reelected by at least the popular vote margin with which his father was elected to Reagan’s third term, possibly as high at 57%. When you look at the returns from ’04, if the president had not looked so poorly in the first debate, he would have easily added Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire to his total–and possibly also Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maine and Oregon.
I’m not convinced the president didn’t win Wisconsin. The margin was very close and the vote fraud in Milwaukee was massive.
And my two cents: the significant vote fraud in three key areas -Flint, metro Detroit, and Saginaw tipped Michigan into the Kerry column. The Doom-ocrats here want to liberalize voting laws, suspend identification requirements, and allow same-day registration and voting in 2006. They’ve become the party of vote fraud enablers, liars, and flip-floppers.
I wonder if these costs include the Boat ads or Moveon.org, because I saw more of these ads than the traditional party and candidate ads. No matter. If the election showed us anything, it’s that this country is pretty evenly split between religious right-wing and the ultra-far-left, 51% to 48%. I wonder what a moderate candidate would have done, had either party nominated one. And of course, Barone doesn’t factor in the advantage of incumbency and a Commander whose mismanagement of the Iraq war was only beginning to show itself. Based on current polls, GWB couldn’t be reelected dog catcher, having the least public support since LBJ. To this day, I still can’t figure out how a party that raised discretionary spending by 33%, federalized education, broke down the Church-State wall, created the largest deficit after years of surplus, etc., attracted so many votes. Whatever else GWB may be in the minds of others, he’s neither a classical conservative nor libertarian-leaning like Barry Goldwater.
I *think* Barone included 627 costs.
“Barone doesn’t factor in the advantage of…a Commander whose mismanagement of the Iraq war was only beginning to show itself.”
Cheap shot, but also – Yes Barone did, implicitly. There was plenty of shrieking about that from MoveOn.org, DNC, and the MSM already. They have been proclaiming / arguing for Bush’s supposed “incompetence” since before he ever became President. In particular, they have been shrieking about his supposed incompetence in the Iraq war at least since early 2003 – before the war’s current cycle began. Well do I remember them all proclaiming, nine days into the invasion in 2003, that because the troops hit some slight speedbumps on the way to Baghdad, the invasion was incompetently planned and we were supposedly in a “quagmire”.
Sorry, 527 (not 627) – sorry for the typo.
Since NJ’s hot on this blog, here’s a link to a very interesting graphic representation of the hefty pro-Bush swing that occurred there from 2000 to the 2004 elections: http://www.patrickruffini.com. Simply amazing. The map is broken down by municipality and you can click the images to enlarge. (Those alergic to the color RED may wish to avoid this.)
Joe-
Re: 9th day quagmire, Afghan winter of starvation, battle for Baghdad, no elections, no constitution, etc,etc….
Is there someone keeping a good reference web site on all the mind-numbingly wrong predictions prominently featured on the left over the course of the last few years?
Super site!