An interesting analysis of the election from Znet:

[AP]

What I didn't find was any sense of strong support for John Kerry as a politician or a leader, or even a feeling of familiarity with him. The personality of Bush seemed vivid among voters, whether they admired him or hated him; the personality of Kerry was faint, indistinct, and where I found its mark most strongly was among those Bush voters who saw the Massachusetts senator, or the depiction of him that the Bush campaign had succeeded in creating, as a threat to their security. To counteract this Kerry would have had to become a known quality, trusted, familiar; but even after the hundreds of millions spent on advertising and his strong performance in the debates, for most voters he seemed a distant figure. He never entered that great stock company of celebrities -- the "Oprah touring company" -- that ordinary Americans welcome into their living rooms and believe they have somehow come to know. Love him or hate him, the President had long since taken his place as a recognizable, powerful personality in that company; John Kerry never did.

...

Kerry might have done better to declare early on that Iraq and the war on terror could no longer be separated, and to argue, forcefully and consistently, that Bush had conducted both incompetently -- so incompetently, in fact, that four more years of his leadership would put Americans at ever greater risk. But to have been convincing, such a strategy, at least implicitly, would have meant accepting the necessity of going to war in Iraq -- a position that many committed Democratic voters strongly disputed and that Kerry's own past statements tended to contradict. And it would have meant demonstrating the kind of single-mindedness, relentlessness, and rigor that the Bush campaign managed but the Kerry forces never did. Either way, as long as Bush was able to succeed in melding Iraq and the war on terror and placing them firmly at the center of the campaign, Kerry faced an incumbent "war president" who, whatever his missteps, Americans would be hesitant to abandon -- without a very good reason for doing so. Kerry never produced that reason.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=6902

[Skittles]

1. Kerry couldn't sink low enough to identify with ignorant Americans

it takes a real dipshit to do that, and Bush does it very well.

[AP]

2. You have to be really smart to win campaigns.

Bush may be stupid, but his campaign was smarter than Kerry's.

Of course, they had a lot of advantages. But their advantages weren't insurmountable.

[Skittles]

3. I would NOT call it "smarter"

people with no consciences are able to do things we would never CONSIDER doing

[AP]

4. The ability to concentrate, predict behaviour, draw out arcs, have back-up

strategies is, unfortunately not a correlative of good or evil.

[Skittles]

5. the ability to lie, steal and cheat is what they are best at

nt

[AP]

6. ...and predict human nature, and organize a lot of disparate groups around

a single principle.

[Skittles]

7. it is much easier to pander to ignorance than to intelligence

yes, they are good at that because it is much, much easier

[AP]

12. FDR, JFK, Clinton found simple ways to communicate complicated

and compelling truths that people preferred over the Republicans' ideas.

[KittyWampus]

8. A Large Pantload. Kerry Couldn't Get Air Time & Certainly Not Positive

coverage.

Despite all that...

Kerry won against all odds.

The Fraud threw the results.

[unblock]

9. the first paragraph is crap

gee, bush was well known and kerry wasn't quite as well known.

wow, what a shocker for a challenger to be a less vivid image than the incumbent.

when an incumbent is running for re-election, it's ALWAYS a referendum on the last 4 years. the challenger REALLY doesn't matter much, as long as he's from the right planet.

of COURSE the incumbent is more well known! duh!

[AP]

14. I couldn't disagree more. Compare 1992 to 2004. People had a very clear

idea of Bill Clinton's personality when they voted for him. They weren't just voting against Bush. They were voting for Clinton.

and then compare 2000: people thought of gore what Republcans told them to think. Gore didn't define himself so well.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. Bull fucking shit- Kerry did the best that anyone could do

Try this article featuring chief Kerry pollster Mark Mellman, where towards the end it reads:

“Why did President Bush win this election?” Gary Langer, the director of polling at ABC News, said at the Stanford conference. “I would suggest that the answer can be expressed in a single phrase: 9/11.” No one there disagreed.....

Assuming that the election did come down to a referendum on terrorism, there was very little that a Democrat could have done to win it. Kerry could not change the subject; war and terrorism were in the news every day. According to Mellman, polls showed that although only thirty-three per cent of voters thought that the invasion of Iraq was worth it, fifty-two per cent thought that it was the right thing to do. Those are tough numbers from which to devise a campaign strategy. They are the numbers behind Kerry’s notorious trouble in parsing the matter of his own position on the invasion—his attempt to criticize the outcome but not the decision. It’s getting hard to remember now, when Iraq has become a violent and ungovernable mess, but the invasion of Iraq had overwhelming public approval, and people don’t like to admit that they were wrong. Neither does the President. It’s one of the attributes that voters seem to identify with.....

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041206fa_fact5

[3days]

11. If he won cause of 9/11 how come he lost New York and DC

He won supposedly, just like all the other shuckster ministers who are able to win over their flock. He used religion and fear and apparently that works on a large section of the country.

Who knew?

[AP]

13. So are you agreeing or disagreeing?

As far as being a referendum on terrorism, one thing Demcorats could have done was what FDR did: tell people that the only thing to fear is fear and that America is strongest when Americans are strong (and not unemployed and in debt). They should have basically said, "of course we're going to keep you safe -- it's absurd to think that we wouldn't -- keeping people safe is the easiest thing in the world to do. Even George Bush can do it sort of (not well of course). Keeping people safe defies political persuassion. What's hard is making everything else work, which clearly Bush and Republicans have a tough time doing, but Democrats prove over and over again that they can do."