I have to conclude that the reason that Bush is tied with Kerry at the moment is that Bush is “above the fray”. It is beneath him to engage in detailed criticism of Kerry. Generic charges of flip-flopping, etc., can be repeated ad infinitum, but why didn’t Bush just come out and say, after the Democratic convention, “John Kerry has spent 20 years in the Senate and has no distinguished record there to run on. As a result, he must spend his whole acceptance speech on his service in Vietnam 35 years ago. During most of the votes on important security matters in the last 20 years, John Kerry was absent. Can an ineffective senator be given serious consideration for President? Why John Kerry and not dozens of other senators who have attendance records superior to Kerry?”

Instead, these things are said on blogs and in newspaper columns, but not in campaign TV commercials. Why not? Why not in the TV debates?

Everyone keeps saying how shocked they are that Kerry is favored by half the electorate. But most of that half have never been exposed to the truth about Kerry. Dubya is above all that negative campaigning. He is bringing a new tone to Washington, you know.

Or, how about this:

John Kerry said he was “reporting for duty.” Reporting to whom?

(I saw that one over at Michelle Malkin’s site.)

I recall that during the 2000 campaign, Mark Steyn kept insisting that Al Gore would lose by a big margin. Steyn wrote that dorky Al was a sure loser and GOP partisans had nothing to worry about. Steyn was not atypical that year.

Two years earlier, the same people were saying that Clinton would be forced to resign over the Lewinsky affair. I remember seeing Bill Kristol on TV say, “Clinton will be gone in two weeks.” In fact, Clinton served out the nearly three years left in his term.

The Establishment Right and their pundits vastly overestimate both their influence and how “conservative” the American public is. I would like for one of these political geniuses to explain why the French-looking, treasonous, etc Mr. Kerry is not 20 points behind.

David’s comment exhibits the blindness that I was trying to point out in my earlier comment. It is not enough to point out that the Democratic nominee is a very weak candidate. In order for the victory margin to be decisive, the Republican nominee must be a strong candidate.

The GOP establishment continues to churn out weak, right-liberal candidates in every election cycle. Only the GOP outsider, Ronald Reagan, was able to win decisively. Rather than dispute the judgment of those who claim that the public is conservative, we need to realize that it takes a strong candidate to expose a weak Democratic nominee and penetrate the fog of ignorance and apathy that surrounds the typical American voter, who cannot even name his two Senators and his one Representative.

The typical American voter knows very little, even at this late date, about John Kerry, because the typical voter does not read blogs, does not read editorials at townhall.com, etc., and Bush only gives them a little boilerplate criticism of Kerry every now and then. Name the most shocking, treasonous things about John Kerry, and I can guarantee that 80% or more of the public simply is not aware of these things.

I believe that Mr. Coleman meant to say that the statements of the conservative pundits as discussed by David exhibited blindness, not that David’s comment exhibited blindness. :-)

I have been pointing out GWB’s shortcomings on this Forum for a good while.

Actually, I was disputing the assumptions behind this statement by David: “I would like for one of these political geniuses to explain why the French-looking, treasonous, etc Mr. Kerry is not 20 points behind.”

My explanation is that the American people are definitely more conservative than liberal, but they are ill-informed, and Dubya is such a weak candidate that he will not “stoop” to informing them. Similarly, other GOP establishment candidates have been not too conservative, so their tight races with weak, liberal Democratic nominees are not proof that the public is not so conservative after all. Rather, they are proof that the Bushes and Bob Dole and Gerald Ford are not very conservative and not very strong candidates or campaigners in general.

Here is a thought experiment: Picture going up to the average man on the street and asking if he thinks that “treasonous” is a fair adjective to apply to Kerry, and why or why not. I don’t think one voter in 10 would have any idea what you are talking about.

Mr. Coleman’s remark is right on target. The ability to relate and explain things to a numbed electorate was part of Reagan’s great genius. It really is astonishing how ignorant people are.

On FreeRepublic, in a thread about the looming vote fraud disaster, I offered what I thought should be the bare minimum requirement for any citizen (with proof of citizenship) to be registered to vote. They were:

1. Correctly name the current President

2. Correctly name the current Vice-President

3. Correctly name the two sitting US Senators from your state.

4. Correctly name your US Congressman in the House of Representatives.

Any one who cannot answer these four very simple questions has no business voting in a Federal election.

For this very bare-bones recommendation, I was denounced as a racist (not kidding) on a “conservative” web site. This is the kind of thing that Mr. Auster mentioned on another thread about there being no real conservative opposition to the endless advances of the left. Only a person who embraced leftist ideals could consider such a proposal racist.

I’m not the one saying Kerry has no chance. The people doing that are the various GOP pundits. I even predicted on this Forum a few days ago that Kerry would win. I have also said that it would be Bush losing more than Kerry winning, in that anti-Bush (rather than pro-Kerry) sentiment seems stronger than pro-Bush sentiment.

I have posted countless times that Bush spends his time pandering to groups that will not vote for him. Steve Sailer recently wrote on his blog that Bush is polling only about 30% of the hispanic vote, less than he got in 2000.

Alright, David was saying that the treasonous etc. Mr. Kerry is in the running and not twenty points behind because the American people are really more liberal than the Republican pols and pundits believe. Mr. Coleman is saying that Kerry is in the running because soft Republican politicians haven’t bothered informing the electorate about Kerry’s real record, and that if they did inform the electorate about Kerry’s record, then, because the electorate is really conservative and not liberal, Kerry would be 20 points behind as he deserves to be.

It seems to me that these are two interesting and conflicting theories. I don’t see why Mr. Coleman would refer to David’s theory as “blind” just because it differs from Mr. Coleman’s.

I agree with Carl’s voter qualification test, as a bare minimum. People who don’t even know the names of their own U.S. Senators are completely ignorant people and should have no right to vote in federal elections.

Also, I don’t think I entirely agree with Mr. Coleman’s explanation. Kerry’s antiwar record, his treasonous statement to Congress in ‘71, is pretty well known by now. The Swift Boat Vets’s ads blanketed the country. True, not everyone knows these things, but enough people know them to have dragged Kerry down, if those people had not been liberals.

Mr. Coleman writes:

“American people are definitely more conservative than liberal”

I honestly am not sure about that. Americans definitely more patriotic than liberals, may be more conservative in some segments of culture.

But:

1. Howard Stern listeners are working class males. In some cultural ways they are just as degraded as mainsteram liberals.

2. On some economic issues Americans are definitely more liberal than mainstream liberals. Mainstream liberals are for free trade and capital movement (as long as it benefits them). Most Americans would like to limit free trade and jobs movement.

Mr. Auster’s post of 12:18, Oct, 31 raises the all-important issue of how much liberal Kool-Aid has been swallowed by the average American. My position is less optimistic than Mr. Coleman’s. Correct as he is about the Reagan era, he forgets that there has been twenty plus years of liberal indoctrination through public schools, MTV, etc. Like my own father (a WWII fighter pilot) many of the generation who, having tasted the leftist insanity of Carter, embraced Reagan in 1980 have passed on to another realm.

Sumner Redstone, the CEO of a company that is seemingly dedicated to the indoctrination of America’s young with leftist babble, has endorsed Bush. He obviously sees no threat from that quarter. If Kerry wins (sympathetic as Redstone is to Kerry’s ideals), there is the very real possibility that Redstone and his ilk may end up facing a Sharia court sometime in the near future (poetic justice if ever there was). Thus he endorses Bush - who isn’t really bad at all from his own perverted wordview.

Carl’s test resembles the “50 Typical Questions” in the INS handout for prospective “citizens”: http://usgovinfo.about.com/blinstst.htm

(The link has 100 questions. They added some advanced placement items, I guess.)

I helped a somewhat immature Ethiopian fellow memorize these for his naturalization “test”. (More for my own education than for his— the experience taught me volumes!)

Voting. Citizenship. Promotion to second grade. Like, what’s the difference?

David wrires:

“I would like for one of these political geniuses to explain why the French-looking, treasonous, etc Mr. Kerry is not 20 points behind.”

I’m not a political genius but I give it a try.

Presidential contest almost always is a referendum on incumbent as long as challenger clears an acceptability barrier (set quite low as Clinton, GWBush and Kerry prove).

Contest is decided on economy in most cases, but not always (Bush/Gore was decided on cultural issues).

Kerry is not ahead by 5-7 points because he is simply not acceptable to at least 45% of voters.

Bush is not ahead by 15 points because he failed everywhere except Afganistan and the war that Bush dares not to speak its name. In addition to the war on islamism, economy is a huge issue for many, many people. Bush deserves a solid D there, being the first Prez since Hoover to loose jobs during his term (spare me the Repubs propaganda about Household survey jobs, Reagan and Clinton didn’t have to resort to this gimmick).

Outsourcing of jobs continues unabated and Bushies have nothing to offer except denials and advice for unemployed engineers with MS and PhD to go to community college and become nurses.

Long term unemployment in US is about 10% (see BLS data), as high as in France. Labor Force participation is at lowest level in a decade and it is not because people suddenly retired.

All you hear from Bushies is 5.4% unemployment, the figure that measures people perception of the job market more than anything less. (If nobody believes that there are any open jobs out there, unemployment figure will drop to approximately 2%, people who are currently on unemployment).

I would rate Bushies effort in Afganistan as A+. In my opinion security at home is C- (open borders), but perhaps most people unaware of the border problem rate it as A or B.

I have no idea how people rate Iraq. Left rates it F, it is clear. Personally I rate it between F+ and D-.

I believe that a believable solid patriot, strong on Defense (Gephardt, former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey) who would have run to the right of Bush on immigration and islamism would have won in a cake walk.

If not for islamic war on the Wast, even pathetic Kerry would have won by 2-3 points.

That’s a very good analysis by Mik. The only thing I can add is that a large percentage of the new jobs filled under Bush’s economy wern’t even filled by citizens, but by aliens both legal and illegal.

If the Dems would have run Zell Miller, or even Gephardt or Bob Kerrey as mentioned, the race wouldn’t even be close.

Mr. Auster wrote: “I don’t see why Mr. Coleman would refer to David’s theory as “blind” just because it differs from Mr. Coleman’s.”

True, that was not a very diplomatic choice of words on my part. Without making it sound personal, I will just say that many conservatives and Republicans overlook the weakness of GOP candidates, hence they cannot understand how a weak Democratic nominee is running a close race. To focus on the weakness of Kerry alone would certainly make you think that he should be 20 points behind. To focus on the weaknesses of Bush alone would make you think that he would have the support of about 10% of the electorate, as he should not be able to win votes from the Left (why not vote for Kerry instead of Bush if you are liberal) or from the Right (why vote for a liberal if you are a conservative?)

By comprehending how weak each of these men truly is, and understanding that John Q. Public Ignoramus views news of Kerry’s treason as a “he said, she said” spat between the Swift Veterans and Kerry that cannot be decisively resolved (especially given the way the mainstream media cover such stories), the closeness of the race is not that surprising.

Regardless of MTV and all that, a second Reagan who can communicate directly to John Q. Public would win in a landslide over Kerry.