Who lost Ohio..?

[12th Doctor]

I had dinner with Charlie Cook the other day.  He said that the funny thing about Ohio was that the Democrats acctually surpased the number of votes they thought they would need for a "sure win" in the state.

[12th Doctor]

Cook is right, and the penultimate paragraph of the Times article is a good summary.

"Therein, perhaps, lies the real lesson from Ohio, and from the election as a whole. From the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially after the disputed election of 2000, Democrats operated on the premise that they were superior in numbers, if only because their supporters lived in such concentrated urban communities. If they could mobilize every Democratic vote in America's industrial centers -- and in its populist heartland as well -- then they would win on math alone. Not anymore. Republicans now have their own concentrated vote, and it will probably continue to swell. Turnout operations like ACT can be remarkably successful at corralling the votes that exist, but turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds."

Will that last sentence be a significant requirement three years from now as the field of Democrats for President head into the primaries?

You all realize that this means something.  The Deomcrats admit that, according to their turn-out models, they should have won easily.  The fact that the high turn-out no longer means a win for the Democrats means that, after 20 years of dealignment, we finally have a new, Republican realignment.  The majority of the American people now identify with the Republican Party.  

All hail the new Republican Age!

[12th Doctor]

I'm not pulling this out of my ass, by the way.  We have been discussing realignment since the class before the Charlie Cook visit.

[12th Doctor]

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I'm not good at maths, but I don't think that 37% is a majority...

Could both sides quit spinning? It's irritating...
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As to why Kerry lost Ohio: I agree with JNB. I'll add that Kerry's last rally should have been in Dayton or Eastern Ohio (Portsmouth or Zanesville. Maybe Steubenville)

The Democrats need to learn the hard lesson that Labour learned in the '80's: when a large amount of you're natural supporters are not voting for you you need to find out why and do something about it... even if it means abandoning a smaller group of voters.
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Re: Higher Turnout... I personally think that the higher turnout *did* help Kerry. If turnout was as low as it was in 2000, I'm pretty sure that Bush would have won big.

It is not spin Al.  First off, it is a fact that most people who are "Independent" in fact align themselves with one party or another.

Second, in the past, high turnout favored the Democrats because most people identified with that party.  This past year, highturnout benefited the Republicans.  In order to win, the Democrats are now in the possition that the Republicans were in all that year, they have to figure out a way to steal voters away from the other party, or depress turn-out.

You know what that means, Al?  Realignment.  I'm not the only one who is saying so either.  I hate to pull names, but my professor Dr. David Kozak, who is called the "John Madden of American Politics" by Charlie Cook, also believes that there has been a realignment.

[12th Doctor]

It is not spin Al.  First off, it is a fact that most people who are "Independent" in fact align themselves with one party or another.

Yes and no.

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I disagree with that. Just because there was a higher turnout, doesn't actually mean that the people who voted this year but didn't in 2000 were responsible for the % increase in self ID'd Republicans (IIRC % of self ID'd Democrats was pretty static from 2000. Could be wrong).
There's a strong case that a lot of 2000 voters flipped instead.

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When? I don't see any evidence of most voters aligning themselves with either party.
I see a lot of evidence that both Parties are failing to please a very large section of the electorate.

It doesn't matter, Al.  If both parties play a game of maximum turnout and one party clear defeats the other and the defeated party admits they they turned-out every vote they could possibly have, as is the case here, then what we have is a clear alignment towards a party.

If you hadn't read earlier, we noted that many sources have said that that in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin and many other states, the Democrats admitted that their calculations showed that they had every vote they thought they needed for a clear victory and that they turned out every vote that they had.

If the Democrats turned out every vote they had and still lost, that means that the Republicans are the dominate party for the first time since the New Deal.

[12th Doctor]

Except we're talking about Ohio, a state that's always been assumed to have a slight Republican tilt. Might I point out Ohio still voted more Democratic than the national average.

Using your logic supersoulty though, then will you at least admit Minnesota is a Dem-leaning state?

I admit that in a maximum turnout situation, Minnesota is still a Democrat state, much to my chagrin.

Unlike most of those who have responded, I think that you at least get my point.

But this was not just Ohio.  The Democrats achieved maximum turnout or better in every battleground state.