f the s

Bravo Ben for finally pinning the blame where it belongs, on those who weren't capable of providing a better alternative for those undecided votes. The efforts to demonize Bush were unsuccessful and defining Kerry as the Anti-Bush didn't do anything to sway the undecided vote. Congratulations on your repeated failure to win any support.
 
nonsense, the Democratic party's blame is tertiary at best (I am not a Democrat). the blame first and foremost goes to the American people, especially (but not only) those in the "red" states. descending orders of blame belong to the Bush Administration (including Karl Rove) for their dishonest campaigning, the media for not reporting Bush's atrocities as they should have, etc. down to the Democrats somewhere down the line.

you can't blame a rape victim for not doing a better job of defending herself more than you blame the rapist.
 
Can't blame the American people for being uninformed if those who were supposed to inform them failed (Democrats), your resaoning is circuitous. Both campaigns that were run were entirely dishonest, the dishonesty of the Kerry campaign cancels out the dishonesty of the Bush Campaign. The only media group that didn't report every action by the Bush administration as an "atrocity" was Fox news and if you watch them for actual information without comparing it to an adequately liberal counter-source, you were a Bush voter to begin with. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic Party for failing to pick a worthy candidate and for failing to define their stance on the issues as being anything more than anti-Bush and claiming that Bush is an incompetent, slow southerner, with little more intelligence than a grade schooler, was not going to change minds. If the Democratic Party could have showed Kerry to be more than a stereotype and shown the American people that liberalism is not elitism, we wouldn't be having this tete-a-tete because you'd be too busy shitting yourselves with delight while I would still be shrugging my shoulders as to the significance of the victory.
 
yeah, I used to live in MS for a few years and went to the U of MS for a semester. political education has certainly taken a backseat in that state/region. my poli sci class was pretty terrible. either the people didn't wanna be there or were completely uninformed. it was sad that I had to point out flaws in the prof's points as well. we had a "debate" which consisted of ~65 people for Bush and ~13 for Kerry. I was lumped with the undecideds (since I voted for a 3rd party) who asked questions of both sides. only like 2 people from each side could even begin to answer my questions and really failed to answer them effectively. thusly, I no longer live in MS and don't ever plan to live in the "Deep South" again. so, while I've lived in the South my whole life I never could call myself a southerner. my complete lack of an accent also raised eyebrows since I'm not one of "them". anyway, yes, f the s (or about 98% of it).
 
haha it's scary how much i can relate
in one of my labs that has only 12 people in it, i realized from everyone's discussion i was seriously the only one who voted for kerry...or was at least the only one willing to admit it
it's weird because even in the deep South I had thought for a while that,in general, college kids would be open-minded, progressive, and critical of authority figures.
 
yeah, I started college at a really liberal school in North Carolina. so, my idea of college students was pretty skewed. moving back to MS was a huge wakeup call to my thoughts that most college kids were fairly liberal. I suppose conservative ideals have been so engrained in many people here that they can't break away from that mode of thinking, which is sad.
 
Well the guy that wrote the article has a point though, and it reflects the difference between the campaigns:

War: The central issue facing Americans right now is the war in Iraq and the bigger war on radical Islam that the country is fighting. We in the South have a bitter memory of what it means to lose a war and what it means to be conquered. We can’t imagine ever losing another one and when your man John Kerry starts talking about global tests, more sensitive campaigns against terrorism and rot like that, we just tune you out.

We disproportionately make up the Active and Reserve components of the military, and we don’t like discussing anything other than total victory in this fight or any other. You never talked about victory. Democrats, we in the South are so passionate about winning that we fire football coaches mid-season even if they have winning records. How could you possibly think that we would trust you with something far more important than a football season when you never talk about delivering victory?
Click to expand...

Bush was all:" We are going to win this war on terror, we are going to win this election" and not much else was really going on as far as policies. The democrats being always more diplomatic were more:"Hopefully, if everything goes well, we are going to win this election. We will change the way we deal with terror and achieve some results..." It seems like americans like people that are arrogant enough to tell them that they are going to win, kick their ass and piss on their grave.
 
Additionally, I think the biggest problem that American politics has is that as soon as the leaders/candidates start talking about real issues (the war is not an issue at this point, it is a reality and you just have to deal with it and tough it out, it is way too late to start questionning whether or not to get out) the public tunes out. Kerry's campaign, at first, was all about dealing with issues concernign the american people and it was terrible, he was way back in the polls. When he started demonizing Bush is when his campaign took off, he still tried to kick some issues in but not with the same will. Bush's campaign was simple, talk about the war on terror, how you couldn't afford a change in the plans, how you were winning this war and how Kerry was anti-war and a flip-flopper.

I also think this unwillingness to deal with more complicated things is a general trait of the american culture (its all about entertainment).
 
Lizard, not to be a dick, but what are the sources and quantifiers of these studies grading the quality of negativity in the ads?
 
I can't remember specifics...you're not being a dick, you're asking a relevant question. As a political science major, especially one from UNH, I'm well aware of how criteria can skew results.

but...I can tell you that virtually every bush radio ad I heard here in ohio was about how kerry didn't do this or didn't do that, whereas kerry's ads were about the future. I'm not talking about ads from bushandsaudis.com or stuff like that, just the officially sanctioned ads.
 
Those sources are quantifiable and the amount of spending is quantifiable at least for the specific campaign ads. Even the only article calling them even was written by a college staff writer (I know our staff writers, not buying it), so I'll have to concede that I was wrong about that. However, mentioned in the one article in USA Today, the independent, Anti-Bush ads made up for the spending Kerry's campaign didn't do on negative ads. The other articles fail to mention independent contributions. So I suppose I shouldn't fault the Democratic Party but should fault those who are not democrats but are vehemently Anti-Bush, those who were choosing between the lesser of two evils by picking Kerry.
 
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