Newsweek Throws a Wrench Into the Meme Machine

[Yeggo]

If Democrats do better than expected in November, it will be because Republicans aren't providing an alternative. We've been down this road before, when OUR anger wasn't enough to get John Kerry elected. Anger is only a motivator if you give people a place to channel it. I'm not sure Republicans are doing that.

http://bit.ly/dt2Jaw

[villager]

1. In the case of Kerry, though, the theft of Ohio helped Bush's re-"election..."

n/t

[Yeggo]

2. Don't know about that, but...

if Kerry was a DECENT candidate, he wins that in a walk. Shouldn't have been close enough for anything like that to have mattered.

[baldguy]

3. I think Kerry was MORE than decent enough, but 2004 was stolen.

Just like 2000 was.

[valerief]

5. +666 trillion!

[truedelphi]

6. The Republicans shaved off

Millions of popular votes all over the nation.

This was not a simple matter of voters in one state. It was voters across America having their ballots switched, dropped from being counted, disappeared and on and on.
The state of Florida did its nefarius playing around with dropping people whose names were similar to those on aprohibited voting list - so John Smith in one county ws labelled as being "felon" John Smith of another county and saw their ability to vote denied. (Although only in Ohio were there enough uncounted ballots with regarsds to electoral votes at the time that Kerry conceded to put him over the top.)

Even Marin County Calif, which has an 85% turnout on election day, saw only 72.3% of voters voting for Kerry. Meanwhile Sonoma County had an equal turnout and had 82% of its voters voting for Kerry. (Sonoma is usually far more consdervative than Marin.)

Marin's Office of the Registratr of Voters also employed a neo-nazi (who was registered as an "R") who went around discouraging Young Voting Activists from handing out paphlets. This was illegal on her part, and amounts to voter intimidation - a felony! Yet the District Attorney in Marin was forced to hand the matter over to the FBI - who did NOTHING. (The Republicans and the way that they reformatted the FBI and the Federal Judges is certainly part of the puzzle.)

[DCKit]

4. It wasn't our ANGER, it was the 7% spread that allowed the theft to be plausible. n/t

[DonCoquixote]

7. Don;t forget

a lot of democrats did not vote for kerry because they still were angry that Dean did not win.

[Yeggo]

8. Valid...

which goes to my original point. Newsweek's poll clearly shows that the "angry" folks aren't any more likely to vote than your run of the mill voter who's calling themselves "content" or merely "frustrated." Anger can motivate people, but in the end, there has to be somewhere for those people to go, and Republicans are banking on anger being enough for people to forget that in the voting booth, there's no "I'm angry" box to check. It's about candidates after all.