Posted on 11/05/2004 3:31:05 PM PST by demlosers
Bush's Victory in Iowa Highlights Trouble That Looms for Democrats in Shifting Midwest
AP
DES MOINES, Iowa Nov 5, 2004 — President Bush added another stroke of Republican red to the electoral map by winning Iowa on Friday, underscoring the GOP's gains as well as the political problems that loom for Democrats in a shifting Midwest.
As county officials tabulated absentee and provisional ballots, totals showed Bush with 745,980 votes to Sen. John Kerry's 732,764. The number still to be counted was far too small to change the outcome of the election.
Not that Iowa's seven electoral votes mattered to Bush's overall victory winning Ohio on Wednesday gave him the 270 electoral votes necessary for a second term. With all 50 states decided, Bush finished with 286 electoral votes and Kerry 252.
Iowa had voted Democratic since 1984. Bush made a strong challenge here and in Wisconsin and Minnesota, three states the Democrats once considered their own.
"They are not Democratic states. They are competitive states," Michigan State University political science professor David Rohde said. "For the last three elections, Iowa has tracked the national popular vote."
Republicans only narrowly lost Wisconsin and Minnesota. The shift toward the GOP sends a troubling signal to Democrats who are finding once comfortable states in the upper Midwest increasingly up for grabs.
"Minnesota has certainly been decreasingly Democratic," said Drake University political science professor Dennis Goldford. "Minnesota is not the liberal bastion it used to be in the days of Walter Mondale. Wisconsin may also be moving in that direction."
Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, encouraged Democrats to move more toward a voter mobilization model that relies on local volunteers getting out the vote.
"The Deaniacs showed in Iowa there are limits to the effectiveness of Boston activists appearing on the front porch of rural Iowans," Borosage said.
In Iowa and elsewhere, Kerry didn't make a strong enough economic argument to prevent lower income, older rural voters who might have supported him from sliding back toward focusing on cultural issues, said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, an informal adviser to the Kerry campaign.
"These voters were waiting for a different kind of election focused on economic issues and they didn't get it," Greenberg said.
Bush put a high priority on winning Iowa, campaigning in two communities here on the day before the election.
Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver had asked the public for patience while the state pursued its vote-counting process, in place for 30 years.
Absentee ballots in Iowa can be counted up until noon on Monday, but they must have been postmarked by Nov. 1. That means nearly all absentee ballots have arrived at local election offices.
Voters cast a smaller number of provisional ballots, as many as 15,000, and some of those already have been reviewed by special precinct boards meeting in each county.
Counties must canvass their votes on Tuesday, but they have until Nov. 12 to submit vote tallies to the secretary of state's office. The state will not certify the results until Nov. 29.
Both candidates have considerable political history in Iowa. Bush campaigned in Iowa before winning the state's first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses in 2000, launching his campaign for the Republican nomination.
Kerry began campaigning in Iowa nearly three years ago. His surprising win in the Jan. 19 caucuses over a slate of eight other candidates gave him the momentum to claim the Democratic nomination.
My yawn was so big it almost broke my jaw.
Next Senatorial target...Tom Harkin
While the author makes a good point about the direction of the political winds in the Upper Midwest, the cynical side of me wonders how many Bush votes were really just purchased in these three states through the $150 billion farm bill that was passed a couple of years back.
To quote a once-and-future obscure Presedential candidate,"Iowa, I looove you!"
I hope so. I can't stand old Dungheap!
Next Senatorial target...Tom Harkin
Hmmmm...that that! I will never forget his ranting and raving about the President!
we here in South Dakota tend to make fun of Iowans, but with Iowans voting for Bush and giving him the state i promise to not tell any more "Iowegian" jokes. Thumbs up to all of you. And i agree, Tom Harkin is next.
Just about to say the same. When is his term up? He ranks right up there with Daschle as a crud.
That may not go as far as you think.. Daschle had just secured a porky farm bill for his S.D. constituents before the election and he was ousted...!
He's just to the left of Stalin and he's in a newly minted (albeit barely) red state. A good organization, someone not afraid of union thugs, should be able to defeat him. Of course, I'll defer to my Iowa friends as to that statement's veracity.
He's got 4 more years. Plenty of time to see the folly of his ways and seek redemption. However, the little tidbit about his military record is surely in a folder at the Iowa GOP offices.
Can a northeasterner ever win the Presidency again? Think about it. The only Democrats to win since LBJ were from Georgia and Arkansas. Dean is from Vermont. I just don't think it's possible for a northern Democrat to get elected.
I was in South Dakota for a couple of days in September, and I heard some of the campaign ads on both sides. I think what finally caught up to Daschle was the high cost of fuel -- which affects just about every single person in any jurisdiction. The Thune campaign took Daschle's vote on the 1993 budget, which included that 4.3-cent per gallon gasoline tax increase, and draped it around Daschle's neck.
If my memory serves me correctly, there hasn't been a northeastern Democrat on a winning national ticket as EITHER a presidential or VP candidate since FDR in 1944.
JFK 1960.
Ah, are we forgetting John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts?
I think I'm losing my mind . . . I came up with this thought on a different thread, and now I realize I was thinking of New York, not the Northeast in general.
Thanks for clarifying that!
And I don't think even a Northeastern Republican would do well in a Presidential election, not even Giuliani.
Still . . . that's a long time, isn't it?
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