Bush election was far from close (pro-Bush, CDN reaction)

The Edmonton Journal (Canada) ^ | Fri 05 Nov 2004 | Lorne Gunter

[GMMAC]

Bush election was far from close

Fri 05 Nov 2004
Page: A18
Section: Opinion
Byline: Lorne Gunter

"More Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history."

That was the silver lining Howard Dean, a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, found in the American presidential election results. George W. Bush may have won, but Dean was comforting his supporters on the website Democracy for America (www.democracyforamerica.com) by pointing out that the 55.8 million votes cast for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry were the most ever cast against an incumbent president.

Except they weren't.

In 1992, 64.7 million votes were cast against George Bush Sr. Admittedly, those votes were split between two candidates -- Bill Clinton and Ross Perot -- but they were still cast against Bush.

Given the much-increased U.S. population of today, the 43.9 million votes cast for Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980 work out to the 2004 equivalent of 56.6 million -- also more than were cast against the current Bush.

But I get Dean's point: Bush may have won, but the Kerry vote total proves there is lots of opposition to him.

Maybe.

The truly amazing thing about the Republican win Tuesday is the enormity of it. From the presidency through the Senate to the House of Representatives to state governorships and ballot initiatives, the Republicans cleaned up.

They didn't exactly sweep the Democrats, but they certainly overwhelmed them.

And Dean's bromide misses the flipside of the presidential results: Bush won more votes Tuesday than any other candidate for the presidency in U.S. history -- 59.3 million, nearly four million more than Reagan won in his shattering landslide of 1984. (Although, again, on a population-adjusted basis, Reagan received more. The 2004 equivalent would be 60.3 million, one million more than Bush.)

It has been noted many places that the fact Bush won 51.1 per cent of the popular vote makes him the first presidential candidate since 1988 to win a majority of Americans' votes. The winner that year was his father, who bested Michael Dukakis 53.4 percent to 45.7 per cent.

Bill Clinton never won a majority of the popular vote. In 1992, he received just 43 per cent and 49.2 per cent in 1996.

Al Gore won a plurality -- 48.4 to 47.9 for Bush -- in 2000, but Gore did not get a majority either.

The fact that this Bush won a clear majority in the popular vote is significant.

It is said to be one of two reasons Kerry conceded, rather than hand the election over to the lawyers and the courts. The other reason: None of the states Kerry might have contested had results anywhere near as tight as Florida last time.

Bush's margin in Florida was under 1,500 votes on election night 2000, less than two one-hundredths of one per cent; the final margin this time in Ohio -- the critical state for a Kerry win -- was over 136,000 votes, or two full percentage points.

What hasn't been noted -- or at least commented on much -- is that George Bush received nine million more votes this time. For a man who is supposed to be so hugely unpopular, a liar, a cheat and a thief, a failure, incompetent, and corrupt, this is a remarkable achievement. If he were as unpopular with Americans as the mainstream media and the likes of Michael Moore claim, how is it that he won an additional nine million votes the second time around? Clearly, while the vocal anti-war, blame-America crowd turned out to vote against Bush, middle Americans and many lunch-bucket Democrats turned out for Bush in overwhelming numbers.

Not nearly as much was made of Bush Democrats as was made of the phenomenon of Reagan Democrats, but I'll wager that once Tuesday's results are more closely analyzed, it will turn out that much of the Bush increase came from Democrats disgruntled with their party's inconsistent stand on the war on terror and social values.

George Bush also had very large coattails, pulling into office with him scores of other Republicans.

The conversion of the American South into a Republican bastion from a Democratic one is now complete. The GOP picked up former Democratic seats in the Senate from North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The Republicans also held on to a seat in Kentucky they had thought they might lose.

They lost seats they had held in Illinois and Colorado. But the Illinois loss was expected and the Colorado Democrat is thought to be a conservative on social issues who might vote with the Republicans on judicial appointments.

Perhaps most remarkable of all, South Dakota was won by Republican John Thune. Thune defeated Democrat Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, only the third defeat ever of an incumbent Senate party leader. Daschle was the great obstructionist, using most of his energy to block President Bush's appointments to the federal bench. Now that he is gone, and the Republicans have at 55-45 majority, Bush's judicial nominees, even to the Supreme Court, should begin to get through the confirmation process.

This "close" election turned out not to be so close after all.

[GMMAC]

Note: The Edmonton Journal has a pay-to-view website and the url supplied, though connecting to some biographical info on Lorne, only confirms the article's source.

[Coop]

The GOP picked up former Democratic seats in the Senate from North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana.

And let's not forget Georgia.

[Justaham]

The Democrats will never stop spinning Bush's victory. They are still in denial.

[white trash redneck]

"More Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history."

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

[truth_seeker]

Nice little epistle from what might one day be our 51st state.

[eagle11]

Great analysis. Does this paper reflect a redder western Canada?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Dumbs were blaming everything and everyone but themselves today during their press conference. What will they be like in '08 when Her Hillariness gets her ass handed to her?

[KwasiOwusu]

"More Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history."

I see Howard Dean has finally flipped his lid and joined the Micheal More school of lunatics and psychopaths.
Shame that. He sounds exactly like the fat, ugly one. The good doctor USED to be half part of civilization before.

[KwasiOwusu]

And BTW, more American voted FOR George Bush than any sitting or not sitting President in American history.
Maybe the hollering doctor can chew on that one?

[Former Proud Canadian]

How close would this election have been if dem vote fraud was ELIMIATED in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis and elsewhere. I really wonder if Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin would not have swung to Bush without the fraud.

Also, the constant media drumbeat for Kerry must have been worth something. 5 points? 10? Evan Thomas says 15. Without the fraud and the media, was it a landslide?

[GMMAC]

"Great analysis. Does this paper reflect a redder western Canada?"

By "redder" I presume you mean conservative and (or) Republican?
In answer, Alberta is essentially Canada's conservative heartland and thus as "red' as it gets up here.
Please note that in Canada and most of the western world, excluding the US, blue is the color usually associated with the political right.
Those of us who are both fiscal and social conservatives are "true blue conservatives".
What Americans call a RINO, we call a red-Tory. In the UK, these socialists in conservative clothing are referred to as "wet" or "wets". There's an amusing story where Lady Thatcher (God bless her!) once uttered a double-entendre to our ears in stating admiringly about a certain quite right-of-center gentleman: "he makes me feel positively wet."

The association of blue with the US left apparently only dates to the mid-70's when the then "big 3" American TV networks reversed the traditional colors in an attempt to remove the communist taint from their 'rat fellow travelers.
(evidently, Tuesday's electoral results indicate that this color switcharoo once again hasn't fooled enough people to suit Dan Rather et al!)

[eagle11]

Yes, I was refering to conservatives in general as "red", as they are associated with the US election map. I'm struck by the division in Canada between the liberal east and conservative west. Should our Republicans and your Conservatives work closer together, or would this be received as American "hegemonism"?

[GMMAC]

re: your Kanuckistani political analysis

British Columbia is a lot like CA and the Pacific Northwest - very polarized; either fairly conservative or very much to the wacky left.
Alberta is marvelously conservative - only the game laws protect Liberals.
The other 2 prairie provinces are like BC but not quite as emphatic in either direction.
Ontario is like New York State in the sense that if you subtract NYC, Buffalo and a couple of other urban areas what's left is fairly conservative. With Ontario, subtract Toronto (or San Francisco North as some call it) and the rest is pretty reasonable.
The U.S. (fortunately!) has no state even remotely like Quebec - but just keep your southern border wide open a bit longer and you'll have several!
The 4 maritime provinces are a joke with virtually no one living in them. Think generation after generation of welfare moochers but with an aggressive sense of entitlement pretty much unknown south of the border.

Many Americans don't realize how thinly populated it is up here. Although considerably geographically larger than the U.S., over 90% of Canada's population lives in a thin band within 100 miles of the U.S. border. California alone has a couple of million more inhabitants than all of Canada.

[eagle11]

I have friends up in Nova Scotia, who are ultra-liberal, and I know that some of their kids who move off the farm to Halifax, and go on social assistance. Meanwhile, immigrants in their little ethnic neighborhoods have no work, except their shops and restaurants. High taxes, little growth and opportunity. And the same liberals are puzzled when racial and ethnic tensions get out of hand....