Did Hillary cost Kerry the election?

[2952-0-0]

There was a general consensus that if Kerry won then Hillary would never be president of the United States. And in late October, several polls emerged in states like Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and New Mexico that Kerry wins the Registered Voters but loses the Likely Voters (i.e. he had trouble getting Democrats out). So some "Hillary in 08" Democrats stayed at home on November 2. The question is: were they enough? I guess this talk of Hillary running in 2008 was one giant right-wing conspiracy [/sarcasm?

[agcatter]

No, Kerry cost Kerry the election. He was a horrible candidate.

[Blue Rectangle]

No.

Also:
Bush did not secretly catch Osama and announce it on Nov 1st.
Cheney did not feign a heart attack and withdraw to make room for Rudy as VP.
CBS did not coordinate with the DNC to fabricate an 11th hour smear against Bush.

[J.R. Brown]

I think Kerry did a pretty good job considering what he was up against. A incumbant president in the middle of a major war. He was only 120,000 votes away from winning the presidency. Not 3 million since the overall popular vote doesnt count in this country.

[Alcon]

I think few people point it out, but I find it true that both were awful candidates. It became a contest of who was less awful and, in Bush's case, who could play the flag card.

[Akno21]

I think few people point it out, but I find it true that both were awful candidates. It became a contest of who was less awful and, in Bush's case, who could play the flag card.

Bush is a terrible candidate, but had a great campaign strategy. He has a very effective machine.

[Andrew]

I doubt if you could find even one voter who stayed home on election day because they wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008.

[RJ]

He was a horrible candidate.

I thought Kerry was a good speaker whether or not someone agreed with the content. He came the closest to unseating a sitting president in the face of some kind of major conflict. He did not initiate the "smearing" the way the Republicans did during and after their  convention. He recieved 251 electoral votes as well as 57 million popular votes. And when the spotlight was on him, he really came through: He embarassed Bush in the first debate and won the others narrowly.

He wasn't the greatest candidate, but horrible is one of the last words I'd use to describe him. Mondale was horrible. Goldwater was horrible. I'd like an objective point of view as to why he would be in a class with either of those two.

I doubt if you could find even one voter who stayed home on election day because they wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Couldn't agree more.

[Will F.D. People]

He was a horrible candidate.

I thought Kerry was a good speaker whether or not someone agreed with the content. He came the closest to unseating a sitting president in the face of some kind of major conflict. He did not initiate the "smearing" the way the Republicans did during and after their  convention. He recieved 251 electoral votes as well as 57 million popular votes. And when the spotlight was on him, he really came through: He embarassed Bush in the first debate and won the others narrowly.

He wasn't the greatest candidate, but horrible is one of the last words I'd use to describe him. Mondale was horrible. Goldwater was horrible. I'd like an objective point of view as to why he would be in a class with either of those two.

I agree Kerry was a good speaker. He managed to say nothing but he said it very well. Therein lies the problem. Even in the first debate which he supposedly won, he still could not communicate what he would do differently in Iraq.

In addition to the general mistake of not having a vision about what he would do to run the country other than not be Bush, I think he made several specific blunders in the campaign that allow me to easily categorize him as one of the worst candidates ever.

1) Selecting John Edwards as his running mate. The conventional wisdom is that the first Presidential decision a candidate makes is selecting his running mate. Picking a do-nothing, pretty boy trial lawyer? Was not a good read of the country.

2) Making his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his convention. I believe you can legitimately claim to either be a noble warrior or a noble war protestor. It is awfully hard to claim to be both about the same war. Especially when you are caught lying about your war service.

3) Giving an acceptance speech so bad that your opponent actually linked to it from his web site.

4) Not finishing off Bush with the Iraq issue in the first debate. Kerry looked exactly like the flip-flopper he was made out to be by the Republicans when he had two different positions on whether Iraq was a mistake during the same debate. He could offer no new ideas on Iraq except to have a summit, which Bush said was already planned. While his voice had a very nice timbre, this was his moment to clearly show how he would lead the country and he failed.

5) Relying on nonsense issues late in the campaign. Dick Cheney's daughter? Christopher Reeve would have walked again if not for George Bush? Republicans want to bring back the draft? These smacked of desparation and the voters saw through it. If anything they energized the Bush voters.

As for Mondale: I really don't know what candidate the Democrats could have run against Reagan and stood a chance. At least Mondale was willing to do it. I disagree that Goldwater was a terrible candidate. He did run a campaign of ideas, and to this day people can claim to be a Goldwater Republican and you know what they mean. I don't know today what it means to be a Kerry Democrat; I doubt he will have left a lasting impression on the country 40 years from now.

[Silent Hunter]

I had the debates down as a draw overall:
1 Kerry
VP Cheney
2 Draw
3 Draw

[Reignman]

Silly.

[nclib]

I say no, but I don't think Kerry lost because he was a bad candidate either. He lost because the conservative base had a better GOTV effort.

[King]

No.

[MODU]

Kerry lost since he couldn't win the trust of the voting majority.  Like his policies or not, people trust Bush will follow through on his words much more than Kerry.

I think Kerry brought out much of the Democratic core, but Bush pulled out the Republican core plus those who were worried of what Kerry would do (or not do).  Call them independents, third-party supporters, first-time voters, or whatever . . . it's that group which carried Bush through.

[dazzleman]

The Hildebeast did not cost Kerry the election, though I think she was hardly broken-hearted over the outcome.

The Clintons went through the motions of helping Kerry, at least late in the campaign, though they did not want him to win.

I'd say Bill Clinton hurt Kerry more than the Hildebeast did by immediately leaking to the press the fact that he was giving Kerry advice, thereby making Kerry look weak and unable to make his own decisions.  Though he probably did this at his wife's behest.

I think Kerry's wife hurt him in the campaign.  She appears to have a "Betty Ford" problem, and kept making outrageous comments that could only alienate potential supporters.

[Gustaf]

It's funny how no one seems to think of the fact that considering the closeness of the election you cannot call one candidate horrible without calling the other at the very least pretty bad.

I think both were pretty weak and it was a matter of who was weakest.

[dazzleman]

It's funny how no one seems to think of the fact that considering the closeness of the election you cannot call one candidate horrible without calling the other at the very least pretty bad.

I think both were pretty weak and it was a matter of who was weakest.

Good point.  I don't think either one was a horrible candidate, but they both had significant weaknesses.  I think it turned out that Bush had some real strengths to balance out his weaknesses, while Kerry did not.  He was simply the ABB candidate, and that wasn't enough.  He offered nothing positive, and therefore most attracted the votes of people who simply didn't like Bush.

[Ebowed]

To the poll: no.

I don't think Kerry was a terrible candidate, though somewhat flawed.  But I don't think there was anything wrong with poor old Fritz Mondale.  At least the guy was honest.  I would have voted for him had I been old enough at the time.

Also, Barry Goldwater wasn't a terrible candidate either.  He was just an extremist, and a state's righter.  But he wasn't a terrible candidate.  He did make a lot of off-the-wall statements ("sometimes I think this country would be better off if we would saw off the eastern seaboard and let it flow off to sea..."), but the guy had convictions.  They mighta been crazy ones, but they were there.