by latkah left, Thu Jan 27, 2005 at 01:42:05 AM EST
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Starr also trots out the clichéd notion that the reliance of women and gays on courts, rather than legislatures, for remedies to unequal treatment is politically foolish. The ability of conservatives to block popular state-level pro-choice laws in pre-Roe days suggests differently.
Democrats should resist such calls to reposition themselves to the "center" after each election defeat. The results are predictable: the center moves further to the right, and Democrats are painted as "flip-floppers" who don't stand for anything.
Kerry loses Ohio by around 119,000 votes. Issue 1, the issue that was marketed as the "anti-gay marriage" amendment to the State constitution, passed by around 60% of the vote. Take that issue off the ballot and we carry Ohio and win the election.
To me having George W. Bush as president for the next 4 years is worse than having the Mass. Supreme Ct. not recognize gay marriage, but that is just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Since the ban received 61.8 percent of the vote in the state, the net gain for Bush was approximately 0.87% of the statewide vote, or 46,000 votes.
So that would not have been nearly enough to carry Ohio for Kerry. There is very little evidence that the Democrats are losing elections over these social issues.
But there is a lot of evidence that people have no clue what Democrats stand for, and that people think Democrats are flip-flopping opportunists who will say anything to get elected.
Every time we do one of these "blacks to the wolves!" "gays to the wolves!" "women to the wolves!" deals after an election loss, we just reinforce that notion.
Kerry would have been far better off taking a principled stand against the gay marriage bans based on an equal rights justification, rather than his wobbly "I'm against gay marriage but for civil unions" stance.
Why would people vote for a law that bans straight marriage? The answer can be found if you look at similar bills that were passed by iniative and referendum in California. There is often a general lack of understanding of the amendments being passed. The same is true here. The right, with support of "liberals" such as yourself, is able to perpectuate its misinformation. By the way, the anti immigration amendment in CA that passed back in the 1990s is a prime example of how misinformation can be used to obtain a result with the electorate greater than what they intend.
Also, I find it funny that you think the reason for the turn out in Ohio was a result of gay marriage. You must have a very low opinion of your fellow voters in the state. Let's be clear,the turn out was high across the country for both Republicans and Democrats. Are you also attributing this high turn out to gay marriage in states that didn't have the amendments on the ballot?
You wrote: Every time we do one of these "blacks to the wolves!" "gays to the wolves!" "women to the wolves!" deals after an election loss, we just reinforce that notion.
Is raising the questions that Starr is raising or for that matter that I am raising really throwing people to the wolves? Shouldn't Dems be able to debate these issues among ourselves?
In his article Starr doesn't suggest throwing anyone to the wolves but he does suggest that using court decisions to advance social causes can be counterproductive.
Courts are anti-majoritian institutions. They don't base their decisions on what the majority wants, but on what the law dictates. When you have a anti-majoritian institution make a decision that a significant number of people don't agree with, there will be a backlash.
You write Kerry would have been far better off taking a principled stand against the gay marriage bans based on an equal rights justification, rather than his wobbly "I'm against gay marriage but for civil unions" stance. Do you have any polling data that shows that what you call a principled stand would have made any difference in the way the final vote came out?
I don't think that questioning tactics is not the same as questioning strategy. Is Starr really questioning the Dems' strategy or is he questioning the tactics? Can you accept such questioning of tactics or do you regard it as off-limits?
By Alan Abramowitz November 8, 2004
An analysis of the results of last week's election indicates that the presence of gay marriage referenda on the ballot had no effect on the outcome of the presidential election at the state level.
There was a very strong correlation between President Bush's share of the vote in 2000 and his share of the vote in 2004 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The president consistently ran a few percentage points ahead of his showing in 2000, but he did not improve on his 2000 performance any more in states with gay marriage referenda than in other states. In 11 states with gay marriage referenda on the ballot, the president increased his share of the vote from an average of 55.4 percent in 2000 to an average of 58.0 percent in 2004--an improvement of 2.6 percentage points. However, in the rest of the country the president increased his share of the vote from an average of 48.1 percent in 2000 to an average of 51.0 percent in 2004--an improvement of 2.9 percentage points.
In 2000 Gore gets 46.46% of the vote which represents 2,186,190 votes. Difference is 165,019.
In 2004 Bush gets 2,859,764 votes which represents 50.81% of the vote.
In 2004 Kerry gets 2,741,165 votes which represents 48.71% of the vote.
Difference is 118,599.
If you stop the analysis there, then I can see how you reach that conclusion, but look at the increases in the Republican vote compared to the increases in the Dem vote. The Dem vote went up by around 500,000. So did the Bush vote, but would it have gone up that amount if the gay marriage amendment hadn't been on the ballot?
I don't think so. It is hard to say because we don't know what would have happened if things had been different, ie, no Issue 1. Assume, though, just for a second that I am right, the question then becomes would you have traded no gay marriage decision for Kerry winning Ohio?
B) My agenda is that I don't want the party wasting time on trying to find the magic formula of issues to cave on b/c they believe that somehow the voters will like us better. There are many reasons why this is wrong as a long term strategy. One of which is that triangulation of issues tends to lead to bad analysis of what has actually occured. I was believing the stuff that the general press was saying too until I start to get behind the numbers. Weeks later there were polls by Pew and NY TImes which confirmed that innitial analysis was wrong- the moral that people were talking about wasn't gay rights, it was character. If you want to check it out, do a google search. Even outside of gay marriage, if we get into health care issues we can see how the debate gets skewed if you start from how can I convince them how to like me.
Although we increased our turnout by around 500,000 votes so did Bush. Given the horrible economic problems in our state compared to 2000, Bush should not have carried Ohio,but he did. I believe, and will continue to believe, that the presence of Issue One on the Ohio ballot led to Bush carrying Ohio. Issue One wouldn't have been on the ballot without the Mass. Supreme Ct. decision on gay marriage.
Originally, though, my question was whether it was more important for Kerry to carry Ohio than to have the Mass. Sup.Ct. make its gay marriage decision. I will continue to believe that it was more important,although I recognize that there is no way to prove the point one way or another.
When we speak about agendas, though, it is important for Dems to keep in mind that we are a coalition party and don't all have the same issues in the same priority. Here is what I mean by that: I am a Democrat more for economic reasons and, although probably less so, for reasons relating to racial relations as opposed to issues relating to gay rights or abortion.
Does that mean that I support the Republican position on those topics? No. It does mean, though, that I rank issues such as Social Security, universal health care, job security and protection, etc higher than abortion and gay rights. Other Dems have a different priority.
Now if we are to remain a coalition party, then we can't be riding people out of the coalition when they don't agree with us tactically. We aren't big enough to have that luxury.
In the right place and under the right circumstance, black evangelicals posed a stealth danger to Democrats. As it turned out, the right place for Bush was Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida. These were must-win swing states, and Bush won them with a considerably higher percent of the black vote than he got in 2000. In Ohio, the gay marriage ban helped bump up the black vote for Bush by seven percentage points, to 16 percent. In Florida and Wisconsin, Republicans aggressively courted and wooed key black religious leaders. They dumped big bucks from Bush's Faith-Based Initiative program into church-run education and youth programs. Black church leaders not only endorsed Bush, but in some cases they actively worked for his re-election, and encouraged members of their congregations to do the same.
I don't understand how this was spun in your state. Please explain. . .
Thanks
Kerry's position, which by the way seems to have adopted by Bush himself right before the election, got lost in the translation.
14% of Ohio Voters hadn't voted before 2004. Of that 14%, 59% voted for Issue 1. Of the yes votes on Issue 1, 81% voted for Bush over Kerry.
Total number of votes in Ohio for President:5,627,903. Assuming CNN Exit Poll is accurate, first time voters constituted 787,906 voters.
Of those voters, again assuming that CNN Exit Poll is accurate, 464,865 voted for Issue One.
Of those voters, Bush picked up 376,541 votes.
Now since he only won Ohio by approximately 119,000 votes, and since first time voters who voted for Issue One gave him 376,541 votes, you can follow my reasoning that had Issue One not been on the ballot, he wouldn't have won Ohio.
Can I prove that is the case? Obviously not because I don't know any polling data on whether Issue One in Ohio was the only motivating factor getting those voters to the polls, but I think it is a reasonable assumpation that had Issue One not been on the ballot, Bush doesn't carry Ohio.
News flash: When the pseudo-Christian conservatives didn't see what they wanted in the polls, they set out to change people's attitudes. Rove knew this. Atwater new this. They were damn good at building their bases. I absolutely despise both of them, which tells me they certainly weren't trying to appeal to my demographic.
Blaming Kerry's defeat on the gays and cities/states that recognized their marriages is like blaming the cute girl in the miniskirt for being raped. With gay marriage, the wingnuts have built a straw man and the Dems have been fleeing like crows.
My own feeling is that until the Dems stand for something, they won't stand for anything. Who are they? What do they want? When Hillary starts talking about appealing to anti-choice voters, I wonder about them all.
Except Boxer.
Or, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to the "go-slow" clergymen in Letter from Birmingham Jail (emphasis mine):
Since it's been less than two weeks since we celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. (remember him?), let's recall the Letter from Birmingham Jail. We can see that Starr's attitude is quite a bit like that of the eight Birmingham clergymen who questioned the wisdom of the Birmingham civil rights campaign, As King wrote:
King's response?
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Scott Lemieux puts it a little bit more bluntly:
Lakshmi Chaudhry posted an interesting interview with Noami Klein today on Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21099/.
Here's a highlight:
<snip>
Lakshmi Chaudhry: What is your take on why the Democrats lost in 2004?
Naomi Klein: The Democrats didn't fully understand that the success of Karl Rove's party is really a success in branding. Identity branding is something that the corporate world has understood for some time now. They're not selling a product; they're selling a desired identity, an aspirational identity of the people who consume their product. Nike understands that, Apple understands that, and so do all the successful brands. Karl Rove understands that too.
So what the Republican Party has done is that it has co-branded with other powerful brands -- like country music, and NASCAR, and church going, and this larger proud-to-be-a-redneck identity. Policy is pretty low on the agenda, in terms of why people identify as Republicans. They identify with these packets of attributes.
This means a couple of things. One, it means people are not swayed by policy debates. But more importantly, when George Bush's policies are attacked, rather than being dissuaded from being Republicans, Republicans feel attacked personally -- because it's your politics. Republicanism has merged with their identity. That has happened because of the successful application of the principles of identity branding."
We must distill the essence of what it means to be a Democrat, and rebuild our brand. We cannot expect brand loyalty if we don't have an identity, a stronger sense of who we are, what we represent, what our vision of change can do.
I think we gotta get back to the basics: re-examine the lessons of the Progressive Era and re-think what it means to be a progressive in our time.
I suggest we start with Wikipedia's definition, and go from there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
It's a start...
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