It’s all over but the Democrat litigating. I believe the President’s lead is insurmountable in Ohio and it looks good for New Mexico and Nevada. Bush has won the popular vote and, even if you go by the minimum, has at least ensured a tie in the electoral college (if he’s won NM and Nev. then it’s not even close). Yet John Kerry won’t concede. Why? Because this election was never about the good of the country. It was about John Kerry’s ambition. (I thought he was a uniter not a divider; Why doesn’t he unite the country now?) You could read it in the way he said whatever he needed to whatever audience he was speaking to at the moment: To one group he was opposed to the war in Iraq; to another he vowed to fight and win there, and so on.
But it’s all over and I hope that sometime today the Democrats come to the realization that the President was re-elected.
A few more thoughts:
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The Angry Left can not claim, as they did for the past four years, that Bush is an illegitimate president. He won the popular vote, he won the electoral college, and no state victory is so close as Florida was in 2000.
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In Massachusetts, the news is more grim. Many of the pols supported by the homosexual activist PACs won office and a lot of very good candidates were defeated.
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The House and Senate moved further into the Republican camp. The only high point for them was Barack Obama. Tom Daschle losing was a big defeat for them.
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The popular vote split was 51-48, exactly the number that pollsters suddenly came up with yesterday. For weeks the numbers were all over the place, but suddenly they were right yesterday. Why?
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The country seems amazingly divided, but I don’t think it is. After all, George Bush won re-election despite the media’s constant dumbeat of negative news bias against him. In the next few weeks, expect a sudden upturn in the number of stories about an improving economy, improving conditions in Iraq, etc.
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Congratulations to my friend and former college roommate Jeff Fortenberry who is the new Representative to Congress for Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District..
Finally, I wonder if we’ll ever again have an election that can be decided on Election Night.
But Dom, they have a religion. Hawkes has made an idol of the bricks and mortar of her youth.
Some of the Israelites leaving Egypt had the same problem and we know what happened to them.
Flowers, Eucharist… whatever…
Bush got 3,000,000 more popular votes than Kerry. He swept up! Thank you, America, for restoring my faith in this nation by making the right choice for our country. That last election really soured me on the state of things here, and this was just what I needed.
We’re up in the Senate and that’s the key to moving forward on the Roe v Wade repeal.
Nationwide, gay marriage was defeated. A lot more to be cheerful about. More in my blog.
The polling organizations—especially the exit polling organizations have a lot of ‘splaining to do. I think they were spinning for the result that Big Media wanted: oscillating from a Kerry win to too close to call.
About #4—ya think it might be because they kept “adjusting” the results in the other polls, and decided, for credibility’s sake, they’d better post their real numbers before looking like fools? (Unlike Zogby, who decided – what the heck – in for a penny, in a for pound).
That’s my guess, at any rate. I believe that some people had the correct numbers all along, and played with them to get “plausible” scenarios to go with whatever story they had.
Nationally, the election brought fairly positive results, I would say. Here in Illinois, however, the news, like in Mass., is more grim. Not a surprise, though.
I’m glad Alan Keyes was able to muster about 30 percent of the vote. Granted, he was soundly defeated, but it could’ve been worse.
Thank God it’s over and that W appears to have won. What concerns me is that, according to the exit polls, it looks like Catholics didn’t vote all that differently from the rest of the population. Maybe this belongs on the thread on catechisis, but where did we go wrong?
Why don’t Catholics vote according to their faith? This should be a wake-up call. We had a golden opportunity to make a statement that Catholics are not going to support the pro-abortion candidates. What happened? We blew it.
This wasn’t a non-statement. It was a very clear statement that nearly half of the people who claim to be Catholics don’t give a damn about Church teaching, or else they don’t understand it.
Like all Catholic clergy, I took a vow of loyalty and obedience to the Archbishop at ordination. However, there are some Bishops who have failed terribly in their responsibility to the Church and to their flock. I feel fortunate that mine isn’t one of them.
If this bunch had been around in the first century, Catholic men would be circumcised in some dioceses and not in others. It would have left up to the “local ordinary”.
We have two years until the next elections. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get Catholics to vote their faith? We are one of the largest voting blocks in the country. We could make it clear that we’re “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”
Or, we could sigh and say “oh, well” and just continue losing people to the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the First Church of Jesus Christ of the Divine Light and Holy Spirit of the Assembled Multitude or wherever they’re going.
Even crazier, Deacon Mike, in Detroit a group of priests and nuns publicly announced their disagreement with their Archbishop, leading the faithful to believe that their souls were not in jeapordy for voting for Kerry and against the Marriage Proposal.
Whydo you think I stay in Churchwork?
I will say, however, what worries me is that during the Clinton administration we were seeing a trend towards conservatism in the 39 and under crowd. Now, it seems a huge majority of college students (read, our next leaders) are turning away from Bush and all that he stands for simply based on the fact that they despise the war.
Now, I may be wrong, this Conservative bent may continue. The clothing is more conservative, higher percentages of incoming college freshmen believe that abortion is wrong, more youth want to know what the Church teaches, adore the Holy Father and want all the good stuff…but it’s still an uphill battle.
PS Why is Dan Rather still on the air? Do you know what my favorite memory of this election will be? Dan Rather announcing George W Bush the next president of the United States. I think I”ll make a tape of it…
This is about as unscientific a poll as you can get, but my son, who attends the University of Missouri, told me that there seemed to be a lot more Bush/Chaney buttons on campus than buttons for the other guys.
It’s interesting because MU is known for two schools, Journalism and Agriculture. You would expect the J-School students to be very liberal and the Ag-School kids to be more conservative.
Also interesting is the fact that my son was very pro-Kerry but recently jumped over to the other side. His reasoning? We shouldn’t change leaders in the middle of a war. Smart kid. Takes after his father.
Peace
Hail Steubenville.
When John Kerry came to Steubenville, Ohio he was greeted by the largest Catholic pro-life protest of the campaign (see article on NRO).
On the Today Show this morning Douglas Brinkley, the John Kerry biographer, said Kerry lost Ohio because of the poor turnout of the youth vote and because “industrial towns with Catholic communities” (aka Steubenville, the only such town) resisted Kerry as a Catholic candidate bc of his pro-choice views.
Hail little town on the Ohio.
Actually, I’ll disagree with the thought that the Catholic vote “failed”—by the accounts I’ve seen, Bush won the majority of the Catholic vote—not just frequent mass-attenders. It was something like 51-48.
Perhaps not great, but still better than Bush did in 2000, when he narrowly lost the Catholic vote to Gore.
More importantly, he did so *with a Catholic opponent replacing the Protestant Gore.*
That is *profoundly* significant in my book. Kennedy got what—80+% of the Catholic vote? And Kerry couldn’t even draw a majority.
This will be a very interesting lesson to Catholic Democrats with national ambitions, and will be absorbed more readily than any statement from a bishop.
Actually, I’ll disagree with the thought that the Catholic vote “failed”—by the accounts I’ve seen, Bush won the majority of the Catholic vote—not just frequent mass-attenders. It was something like 51-48.
Perhaps not great, but still better than Bush did in 2000, when he narrowly lost the Catholic vote to Gore.
More importantly, he did so *with a Catholic opponent replacing the Protestant Gore.*
That is *profoundly* significant in my book. Kennedy got what—80+% of the Catholic vote? And Kerry couldn’t even draw a majority.
This will be a very interesting lesson to Catholic Democrats with national ambitions, and will be absorbed more readily than any statement from a bishop.
Congratulations to Jeff Fortenberry!!
Congratulations to Jeff Fortenberry!!
Jen, I don’t think college students as a whole are all that liberal now. I think much of the polling continues to show that younger people are trending conservative, despite what MTV and the mainstream media try to show. Part of the explanation that has been given for it is the Roe effect, that is that liberal people have tended to have fewer children, either because of abortion or birth control, in the past 30 years and conservative families have had more children. And as we go forward that effect will only be magnified.
Jen, I don’t think college students as a whole are all that liberal now. I think much of the polling continues to show that younger people are trending conservative, despite what MTV and the mainstream media try to show. Part of the explanation that has been given for it is the Roe effect, that is that liberal people have tended to have fewer children, either because of abortion or birth control, in the past 30 years and conservative families have had more children. And as we go forward that effect will only be magnified.
I donThere were flowers on the altar.
The “flowers on the altar” thing seems to be becoming one of her stock phrases. Maybe it will go down in history like John Kerry’s “I’maCatholicIwasanaltarboy”.
I donown on the Ohio.