"I don't like to give grades to the president. It's kind of early in the term, but it certainly wouldn't be a good grade at this stage," Reid said.
Posted on 02/23/2005 6:28:48 PM PST by NCjim
RENO, Nev. (AP) - Sen. John Kerry lost the presidential election partly because Democrats "neglected rural America," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday.
"I think around the country people just thought they could win in the cities," the Nevada Democrat told The Associated Press.
Reid said he expects new Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean to help reverse that trend, especially in the South and West, and he predicted Democrats will close the gap Republicans hold in the Senate in the off-year elections.
"We are going to pick up Senate seats in 2006, it's only a question of how many," Reid said at a Reno news conference before his scheduled address to the Nevada Legislature in Carson City.
"First of all, history is on our side. Secondly, George Bush is on our side," he said.
"I don't like to give grades to the president. It's kind of early in the term, but it certainly wouldn't be a good grade at this stage," Reid said.
Democrats lost three seats in the U.S. Senate in November and gained 76 among the 3,000 state legislative seats across the nation, Reid said.
But in the presidential race, Nevada was representative of what happened nationally as President Bush carried the state even though he lost the two urban counties that have 91 percent of the voters - Clark County surrounding Las Vegas and Washoe County surrounding Reno.
Kerry carried the urban counties "certainly by enough to win the election, everybody thought," Reid said. But the 9 percent of voters in Nevada's 15 rural counties "was absolutely dramatic in Nevada and around the country."
Douglas County turned out 94 percent of its registered voters and voted heavily against Kerry, he said.
"There is not one of those 15 counties that had a voter turnout less than 84 percent. Think about that. They went heavily against John Kerry and as a result of that, Kerry lost the state by 2 percent," Reid said.
"Same in Ohio. Same all over the country. We neglected rural America."
How do Democrats change that?
"All we have to do is be there and let them know we care," Reid said in an interview after the news conference.
"In the farm programs, we are the ones who support the farmers, (Republicans) support the bankers," he said.
"In the Medicare bill, that is Democrat stuff in there related to helping rural hospitals," he said.
Reid said he questioned during the campaign why Vice President Dick Cheney took time to make a personal appearance in Elko in rural northeast Nevada.
"Well, he got the last laugh on that one," Reid said, "He was gathering votes. They did a good job in rural America, we didn't."
Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons, who won a fifth term in Nevada's sprawling 2nd District, offered a similar analysis immediately after the election.
"I believe rural Nevada carried President Bush to victory," Gibbons said.
One of Kerry's worst showings was in Elko County, where 54 percent of the registered voters are Republican, 26 percent Democrat and 20 percent independent or third party. Bush won there with nearly 80 percent of the vote.
Cheney's visit to Elko - the first by a sitting vice president since Richard Nixon in 1958 - was tremendously important, Gibbons said.
"It showed the people of Elko County that this administration was serious about everybody's vote, every state, every county," the congressman said.
Reid, who said he talks with Dean regularly, expects him to help win the party votes in rural areas. Dean plans a visit to Nevada on Monday.
Reid said he told Dean that he was not his first choice for party chairman. Reid backed Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack early on.
"But I'm so impressed how he has taken the darts that were thrown at him," Reid said.
"Say what you want about Gov. Dean, he is an organizer. In the state of Vermont, they know what kind of person he is. He is not some wild-eyed, left-wing nut," he said.
"Gov. Dean balanced the budgets of the state of Vermont. He's been supported by the National Rifle Association in eight successive elections. He handled the same-sex marriage thing as well as has been handled any place in the country. ... with civil unions."
"We're off and running."
"I don't like to give grades to the president. It's kind of early in the term, but it certainly wouldn't be a good grade at this stage," Reid said.
Wow! Reid must have blazed new trails to come up with that gem. The rats would stand a better chance of picking up seats if they all had their vocal cords severed and learned to smile and listen. Getting out of the way would be a good idea too.
No, they thought they could get enough votes in the cities through fraud to steal the whole election.
Wrong again Harry. They got your message loud and clear, and they saw it as dog waste on a hot sidewalk.
The Dems just don't get it, do they? They think it's all about them, and can't accept that rural America rejected their "message". Rural America knows the smell of manure, and we know where it comes from. Their party symbol is a jackass for a reason....
Now's the time to begin organizing to make sure the RATS lose Senate seats, not gain them in 2006! Reid is a loser and needs to be removed from office as soon as possible.
HST being DOA is AOK. AMF HST and take some more DNC with you.
Proving that if the casino owners are behind him, and they surely are, he will be hard to beat. They have all the money and influence in Nevada, especially in the legislature.
Oh yea Harry is untouchable. But he needs to go!
"I think around the country people just thought they could win in the cities"
WHAT ..?? They're a political party and they don't even know if they are winning in the cities or not .. and why don't they know ..?? Maybe because they took too many voters for granted ..??
You're right - they still don't get it.
That's very interesting math. The Republicans had 51 seats before and now have 55. 55-51=3?
It just never seems to cross the feeble little pea brains of these blithering morons that it wasn't that people didn't get their message, but that they heard it loud and clear, and soundly rejected it.
I shouldn't be surprised that the AP got it wrong again. President Bush carried EVERY county in Nevada with the exception of Clark. I live in Washoe County and can tell you for fact that President Bush carried this county by at least 4,000 votes and that is the county that surrounds Reno-Sparks. God I wish I had the money and name recognition to run against Harry Reid next time. I would love nothing better than to replace him in the Senate.
I guess they used the same math that they used to calculate the number of Senate seats picked up by the Republicans.
BTW..if you've ever seen Citizen Kane..with the great "Rosebud" line..every time Reid makes an appeaance, someone needs to go "Searchlight"
America is waking up to these clueless princes who ride around in jet planes and limousines between their mansions, telling the rest of us how to live and demand that we hand over more of our hard-earned wages to maintain their vassels in the Democrat fiefdom.
See, I can ámen' a Calvinist!
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