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[Ben.]

Agree Mark and it works vice-versa for me now Bush has won, I never hated the guy in the first place, I've always said politicans get a bad rap and both Kerry and Bush where decent men despite my feeling that Kerry would have been a better president  

[Ben.]

Agree Mark and it works vice-versa for me now Bush has won, I never hated the guy in the first place, I've always said politicans get a bad rap and both Kerry and Bush where decent men despite my feeling that Kerry would have been a better president  

Ben,

Well said. Believe me, I was NEVER referring to you when I talked about some posters on this forum. In fact, I have often mentioned you as an example of the way decent people on both sides can have legitmate disagreements and still treat each other with respect. It used to be that with MOST people in this nation, but the Left has gone haywire the past several years, and it's not just a few crazies, but a strong, vocal minority of the Party who has increased their influence in a big way the past four years.

Thanks Mark, then again what would you expect from a Blue-Dawg, Kerry losing didn't hurt as much as John, Carson and Knowles losing, for me at least.

[Ben.]

Agree Mark and it works vice-versa for me now Bush has won, I never hated the guy in the first place, I've always said politicans get a bad rap and both Kerry and Bush where decent men despite my feeling that Kerry would have been a better president  

Ben,

Well said. Believe me, I was NEVER referring to you when I talked about some posters on this forum. In fact, I have often mentioned you as an example of the way decent people on both sides can have legitmate disagreements and still treat each other with respect. It used to be that with MOST people in this nation, but the Left has gone haywire the past several years, and it's not just a few crazies, but a strong, vocal minority of the Party who has increased their influence in a big way the past four years.

Thanks Mark, then again what would you expect from a Blue-Dawg, Kerry losing didn't hurt as much as John, Carson and Knowles losing, for me at least.

Good point. Even conservative Democrats lost in a lot of these Senate races. Our Senate losses, at least, can't be blamed on being too liberal.

I don’t think its that simple I think its because conservative candidates where hurt by association with a party that many moderate and conservative voters in the south saw as too liberal and as a result they suffered just as candidates like Coburn and Murkowski where greatly helped by being associated with a conservative candidate in Bush.

So the Democrats being perceived as “too liberal” even when they are not (in the case of the likes of John, Carson and Knowles) is still a problem. In Short in the South many conservative democratic candidates lost because they where associated with a party that nationally was “too liberal” and was headed by a liberal ticket.           

[Ben.]

I was implying that I agree with Ben, and that the problem wasn't candidates for the Senate that were too liberal, but rather endemic of a national problem of perception. I guess I should have been more clear about that.

I will agree that Kerry was too liberal (although the degree to which he was was distorted, but in politics, perception is reality, so it really doesn't matter how liberal he actually was, only how he was perceived), though he still came pretty close to winning despite having zero charisma, so I don't believe that a liberal can't win. However, it is certainly more difficult for a liberal to win, and easier for a moderate.

Agreed.