Mine is obviously the minority opinion but I think folks are forgetting how despised Bush was by folks on the left. Until Trump he was considered by the left to be the worst President we’d ever seen in our lifetimes and in the top five of worst presidents ever. He gained office thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that his equal protection rights would be violated by a fair and accurate recount of the votes in Florida, he was unintelligent, he used 9/11 and bogus intelligence as a pretext to starting a war in Iraq that we all new he wanted from the day he took office, he was a puppet for the Neo-conservatives, he rammed through a tax cut that swelled the deficit to benefit the 1% and on and on. There was,to my memory, a feeling that he couldn’t possibly win re-election, that the country couldn’t possibly be that dumb and that those of us in the left would show up in droves to vote him out.
I don’t remember the primaries well enough to know if there was a better candidate and I think Kerry would have made a fine president but he was not someone people were passionate about. The attacks on him were unfair but every Democratic nominee faces the same thing. (Obama pals around with terrorists, etc.)
Timex says that this sounds like an argument to nominate someone with a cool personality and I wish this wasn’t the case but it seems like this has been the trend, Clinton oozed charisma and played the saxophone. Bush was a folksy regular guy you’d like to have a beer with. Obama was, well, Obama. Fucking Trump was a reality TV star. Yes, there were other factors at play in all of these elections. especially 2016, but only a small percentage of Americans are actively engaged with current events and policy. A huge percentage of the population votes, or doesn’t vote, based on general impressions. A lot of those people are not terribly intelligent. (See Obama/Trump supporters.)
I think we should pick the best candidate. I hate that Presidential elections often seem like popularity contests and that our media joins in and, to a certain extent, creates the dog pile of superficial takes. (Kerry’s a waffler, Gore’s a boring wonk, Bush is the type of guy you’d like to have a beer with, Clinton is plagued by scandal, etc.) Elections are narratives and too many Americans are terrible at getting off their asses to go out and vote for the reasons that matter. Give them an excuse to stay home and they will.
Finally, something that will likely surprise triggercut is my personal rage inducing frustration that many voters on the left refuse to vote pragmatically. Already on social media I see my progressive friends railing against this nominee or that as being part of the problem and while their concerns and criticisms are often not wrong, they are also creating a narrative where it is unpalatable for them to compromise their morals by voting for a candidate they have qualms about. Some of them will do the right thing nonetheless but it makes me furious that many will sacrifice everything they profess to hold dear to preserve the sanctity of their moral purity. These aren’t people who think their is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. They know the Republicans are way worse but they refuse to pragmatically vote for what they believe to be the lesser of two evils. Our two party system has in some ways made folks oblivious to the idea of voting coalitions wherein you support someone whose politics don’t line up exactly with yours because, working together, you can generate the numbers to control things.
Anyway, that was long and rambling and, as always, it’s just my opinion. There are obviously tons of factors at play in any election and, as triggercut says, I can’t offer much in the way of empirical evidence to support my view, though some of the figures MrGrumpy posted lines up with my recollection – “81 percent of the president’s supporters said they voted for him, rather than against his opponent. In contrast, only 55 percent of Democrats voted for Kerry.” Enthusiasm is at least one important factor in presidential elections. Maybe it shouldn’t be but, as Will Rogers says, “You know how dumb the average American is? Well half of them are even dumber.”
