We all need to stop haggling over this and get on with things - yes, mourn (I cried during Kerry's concession speech yesterday)- yes, have conversations with like-minded friends and family --- but stop being immature and pedantic. There is nothing that any of us can do to reverse what happened on November 2nd and 3rd.

We liberals need to take the time that we need to re-group, and then organize and spend the next 4 years fighting for what we believe in (in the words of Planned Parenthood Action Network: Organize, don't Agonize!).

and yes, "Janine (another Janine though)" I DO think we should have a national, standardized voting procedure... if India (which some people refer to as a "3rd World Country") has one, is it not ABSURD that we, the "American super power", do not???

Wow... a bit ticked, nasty?

let's see - inbred moron, eyebrow overhang (like Kerry's? - is it unibrow as well?), country brethern, idiot... I love you too, nasty - you open-minded, tolerant liberal, you... xoxoxoxo.

Kerry took 14 or 88 Ohio counties - Cuyahoga by the largest amount. That would be 16% of the counties.

Bush took 51% of Ohio popular vote - mirroring the national totals - with 84% of the counties. If you look at the USA today link, the national county map shows a similar pattern. Blue NE, blue big cities. If you drill and drain the cesspools of Philly, Detroit and Chicago - Bush wins those states hands-down. (btw - as for the voting machines: Rendell is a dirtbag, I would not put it past him and the only denial of cheats in Philly that I saw came from him...)

hey - losing sucks, not learning from it sucks even more. the election was a true abattoir for the liberal left. Daschle went down in a heep, and the GOP took 4 Senate seats to get to 55.

But you know what is really funny though - the overbearing sense of schadenfreude aside - is that all these doorknobs from the DNC are on TV saying "this isn't a mandate!!!" my ass it isnt a mandate. I'm sure these same people felt the same way about Kennedy's 49.7% / 300 electoral vote total in 1960... ha...

in any event - the DNC is down to inner city welfare slugs, union thugs and 'intellectuals' from metro areas: people so smart in their own minds that they don't realize that LIBERALISM DOES NOT WORK. NEVER DID, NEVER WILL. As soon as the inner city people figure out that 35 years of liberalism has enslaved them and robbed them of their human decency, you'll be down to you and the greasy-knuckled UAW guy that fixes your Volvo.

Oh sure, the folks in Brown County OH may not grow up to be Rocket Scientists and MBA's (oh - wait - I did... hmmm....) but they work hard, live clean, and are a hell of a lot smarter in a real-world sense than you could even hope to be.

I expect, as in 2002, that the Dems will decide that they (a) did not get their message out and that (b) their loss signifies a need to go further left. HAHAHAHAHA.... yeah, brilliant!

ahhh - drink deep the emetic elixir of defeat, nasty! mmmmm..... ahhhhhhhh.....

Lest visitors to this board come to the rash conclusion that everyone from Cincinnati is an inbred moron with an eyebrow overhang like the oh so cutely named Livin in Cin, I would like to defend my state and remind everyone that Ohio was not a sweep for Bush. My county, which is decidedly not stupid, nor overwhelmingly poor, had a significant turnout for Kerry – of which I was one. Also, Cin, while we're on the subject of 'stupidity' the majority of folks in Ohio who voted for Bush were rural voters who, statistically speaking, have the lowest rates of education in the state. So, Cin, in essence you're calling your country brethren stupid. How absolutely charitable of you. Oh, and by the way, the "preloaded" votes in Philly turned out to be excitable Republican poll observers who read the counter on the machines wrong. Idiot. The truth can be SO inconvenient. Go start your own party, I do believe you're too full of crap to be in either one.

1992, 1996 - Clinton won both without getting anywhere near 50% and in 2000, as we all know, Halliburton and the Supreme court appointed Bush even though he didn't get 50%. That would be three elections.

the point was that for a guy that didn't get 50% last time, he blew past it this time.

again with the education, it seems the poor and stupid vote for the democrats; as is evident in the county-by-county results from USA Today (eliminate Philly, Detroit and Chicago and Bush wins PA, MI and IL). If those folks ever figure out that 35 years of liberal-socialist utopia has turned them into wards of the state, surfs and slaves, the Dems are in trouble.

Did not realize that brackets would make my quotes disappear. The parts I quoted were

1. "first since 1988 to top 50% of the popular vote" from Livin in Cin,

and

2. "And, as Livin in Cin mentioned, the only education-related groups who voted for Kerry were the people who never went to school ("No High School"), and the people who never left school to get a job ("Post Grad Study")."

>

I just don't find that very impressive, considering that there have only been 2 other elections since 1988, and that 50% was only topped by 1.3.

>

That's not what Livin in Cin said. He said "post grad degree," which means they did leave school to get a job, and probably got one of the best jobs.

further breakdown (by county) of the vote.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm

pretty amazing how RED even the blue states are whenyou look at them county-by-county.

BF:

Bush did not "orchestrate" the election or his victory any more than Kerry "orchestrated" his own demise. Kerry was the one that kept switching handlers (borught in the Clinton hachet team at the end - never heard a peep from Mary Beth Cahill throughout October, did you???? hmm?

honey2:

As for the electronic voting machines and such - you better wrap a cullender with aluminum foil and wear it on your head so the black helicopters don't pick-up your brain waves. It was Philly, mind you, that started the day with 5,000 pre-loaded votes for Kerry, and Chicago, in 1960, that had the IBEW punching Kennedy ballots into the wee hours of the morning. It was also in Toledo that the Dems rolled out "Crack the Vote" - paying homeless guys with crack to fill out fraudulent voter registrations. those are facts.

why did "terrorist targets" like Chicago, NYC and California go Kerry? not because of terrorism or

security - it's the inner city poor, the unions, the uneducated as was shown previously, the slaves of the nanny state. that is why the worker's paradise of Detroit (for instance) went for Kerry, and why NYC did as well. NJ should have been locked up for Kerry but was in play because of 9-11.

and yes I know we have more people and higher turn-out, but a fact is a fact - first since 1988 to top 50% of the popular vote, and the most votes ever. so while 48.2% of the population voted for Kerry and are nursing their wounds today, 51.3% of us are pretty damn happy. btw - check the CCN map of PA - only Philly and Pgh went heavily Kerry.

Although to be honest - I am far more excited by Daschle's loss than by Bush's win.

joe,




I didn't intend to guess at your affiliation -- I'd been hearing the same argument from the Dems I live/work with, and was really speaking more to them. You just happened to bring the topic up.




In a similar vein, I also found myself pointing out several times during the day that the "popular vote" controversy of the last four years somehow managed to disappear overnight.

j, how do you know I'm a Democrat? I was just pointing out that our population has grown a lot, more than doubled in the last century, and the pool of eligible voters has grown even faster. John Kerry received the 2nd greatest number of votes in history, more than Ronald Reagan in 1984. Mean anything? Not really, there are 50 million more people living in the U.S. now than twenty years ago.

Folks,

Geroge Bush is no fool, and libs who spit that are doing themselves a disservice.

But I think he is a man who mostly takes pleasure in the life of leisure. I was struck yesterday when I heard him say on NPR, reflecting on this last leg of the campaign, "There's just something so refreshing about giving your all..."

This seemed gentlemanly enough. But then I started to think: who would say that but someone who wasn't USED TO giving his all?

In truth, Bush's unbridled confidence and paradoxical lack of locution ability that charm me (maybe some NYC dorkophiles can identify). But this is also a guy who's less indebted to his citizenry than to a "higher authority." That makes him about as useful as a kosher hot dog to those of us who could use health care, or social security, or abortions.

Trouble is, unless Dems can find themselves a candidate who is smart and also seems like he might be good company at a barbeque, they (we) are going to keep losing.

So Hillary better start flipping those burgers right quick.

Does anyone else think we should have a national, nonpartisan, standardized voting procedure? I know it would be really expensive, but wouldn't it be worth it?

Leave it to a Democrat to point out that the vote totals and disparity are a function of a larger population, even as others spout off about the number of people currently jobless (in comparison to Hoover's day, of course) without making for the same allowance.





Incidentally, people who earn over $50,000/year voted 56% for Bush and 43% for Kerry. And, as Livin in Cin mentioned, the only education-related groups who voted for Kerry were the people who never went to school ("No High School"), and the people who never left school to get a job ("Post Grad Study"). EVERY SINGLE OTHER GROUP voted for Bush by at least 5% (high school grads, "some college", and college grads). Oh, the no-high-schoolers were split 49% to 50% -- so, Kerry barely carried the idiots.





As long as I'm rollin': 11% of registered Democrats voted for George Bush.

You make some good points, Livin in Cin, but you also repeat some mathematical fallacies.

That Bush won more votes than any previous Presidential candidate, and won by a wider margin of votes is a function of population growth and his popularity. There's a really good chance the next person elected President will get more votes, and win by a greater number of votes, than Bush simply because the US population will be larger.

The vote did not "come down to Ohio". The media media repeats that nonsense ad infinitum. The winning candidate has to get 270 electoral college votes. It may make convenient, compelling drama to have Ohio, a closely contested state, be the state to report when the vote gets decided, but the order in which the state results are reported are irrelevant.

What if Ohio's results were exactly the same but they were able to process their vote count much faster? Tom Brokaw might then report "As reported earlier Ohio had a very close vote today, but it was Utah, with only five electoral votes, that pushed Bush over the top when he won 71% of the vote in that state."

So can someone please explain to me what exactly George Bush is protecting your rural or suburban Midwestern town from? Surely if there was no answer then the hot buzzword "security mom" wouldn't have been coined, right?

vit, you're talking to BF. I was the one spewing partisan hate (which I will continue to do at least through the weekend).

Janine -- I come by gothomist by way of chicagoist and it is very true what you say that those cities who are most affected by terrorists threats (and having our resources drained trying to fund responses to unrealised threats) voted against Bush in the largest numbers. Kerry won 81% of the urban vote here in Chicago.

electronic voting lost this election for kerry. no paper trail. no way to verify that the data wasn't screwed with. The code and security procedures were never examined by a nonpartisan group. There is no way repubs can prove this election wasn't stolen. The computer voting machines were made by Wally O'dell, the head of diebold, who said that he would deliver Ohio for Bush. This is why electronic voting without transparency and a paper trail is a bad. BAD for democracy. Bad for trust. Bad for unity. Bush stole the election. He can't prove that he did not.

Livin in Cin (awesome name by the way!)

You think Bush himself orchestrated this election? You are an idiot, obviously.

What is interesting is that the areas most affected by terrorism (NYC and other major cities, California, etc.) voted for Kerry. I think that says something.

We have to accept it. The majority of the country is homophobic. The majority of the country does not think the Bill of Rights is important. I could go on, but it makes me very depressed. What do you do now that it's clear that people WANT a regressive agenda? don't know. I am an educated professional living in NYC, I'll be okay, barring an attack. To tell the truth, the next time I see some unemployed mid-westerner with no health-care lose her husband in Iraq (or Iran, or whatever's next), my liberal heart will bleed a lot less.