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agcatter
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« Reply #275 on: December 30, 2003, 09:08:24 AM »

In 2000, Bush carried 72% of congressional districts in the 11 state South - almost half of those with 60% plus percentages.  This was against southernor Gore.  Don't expect a Howard Dean to do nearly as well against Bush in 2004.  However, republicans would welcome the Dems throwing as many resources as they want to at the South.  A little over half of the Southern congressional districts represented by Dems in the South were carried by Bush.  In other words, southern whites, while they sometimes vote for moderate southerners at the local level, are presidential Republicans through and through.

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jravnsbo
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« Reply #276 on: December 30, 2003, 09:45:15 AM »

I wasn't talking about polls here, but real polls.  In recent weeks PA, FL, MO, NH and many others have come out with Bush in a huge lead over Dean or Clark or whomever.


I noticed before when I checked, that after, what I think was hundreds of predictions, the median was actually that every single state would vote like they did in 2000. Points at a lack of fantasy, don't you think? Smiley According to Jvravnsbo it is leaning republican now, so maybe people are really making predictions now!
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #277 on: December 30, 2003, 09:47:20 AM »

Yes last re-elected was in 1999, and I guess that is if you don't count FL being in the deep south.

However the GOP did just elect governors in SC, MS, AL, AR (Hey this was a reelection in 2002) so to just say reelection is a bit misleading.


At the moment it looks as though Bush is polling worse in the Deep South than in most of the rest of the U.S(and this came as a shock to me. Mind you the last governor in the Deep South to be re-elected was Mike Foster in 1999...)
My map is also based on the presumption that the Dems will fight over the economy and possibly causalities in Iraq, not on social issues(and if they want to win that's what they have to do)

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jravnsbo
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« Reply #278 on: December 30, 2003, 09:49:23 AM »

Especially when Dean says we need to stop talking about "God, guns and Gays" and then comes out last weeka nd says he will talk more about his religion int he south.  He announced that.

FLIP FLOP--people are and will see through that.


In 2000, Bush carried 72% of congressional districts in the 11 state South - almost half of those with 60% plus percentages.  This was against southernor Gore.  Don't expect a Howard Dean to do nearly as well against Bush in 2004.  However, republicans would welcome the Dems throwing as many resources as they want to at the South.  A little over half of the Southern congressional districts represented by Dems in the South were carried by Bush.  In other words, southern whites, while they sometimes vote for moderate southerners at the local level, are presidential Republicans through and through.


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agcatter
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« Reply #279 on: December 30, 2003, 10:06:10 AM »

Just because whites in a southern district choose to elect a Democrat to Congress, doesn't mean they will swallow a national Democrat as President.  For instance, in Texas, there were 6 districts represented by Democrats in congress but carried handily by Bush.  5 of 6 by at least 60 - 40.  Southern whites are presidential Republicans.  Dems trying to project the election of some Dem victories at the congressional or state wide office level to mean that automatically transfers to a Dean vote as President are living in a fantasy world.  There just isn't any empirical evidence to suggest that.  None.

It is what it is.  I' ve said on this board that i'd love to believe that Bush is going to surprise in Massachusetts or Maryland or Rhode Island.  However, I'm a realist, and there just is no evidence in past voting statistics that this will happen.  I'd rather Rove run his campaign based on what is doable and not what he'd like to happen.  I'm afraid the Dean people are engaging in wishful thinking.  In fact, I know they are.
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #280 on: December 30, 2003, 10:15:39 AM »

Plus as I've said they are voting for CONSERVATIVE to MODERATE dems in congress, Dean is neither.

Here is a story about Kentucky and how the state Dem party is struggling, esp note how they are strugggling with the national parties stands ona lot of issues.

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Democrats Losing the Lease on Their Old Kentucky Home
 
     Related Stories

Party Chief Won't Break Up Scuffles
December 30, 2003
  Times Headlines  
 
Democrats Losing the Lease on Their Old Kentucky Home
 
 
Party Chief Won't Break Up Scuffles
 
 
Kerry Tackles Dean in a Backyard Battle
 
 
Money Pours In for Dean, Clark
 
 
Gephardt Proposes More for Disabled
 
 
more >
 
   
       
 
 
 
 
 POLITICS  
 
 KENTUCKY  
 
 KENTUCKY DEMOCRATIC PARTY POLITICS  
 
 DEMOCRATIC PARTY  
 

 

   
 
 
 
 
 
   
By John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer


LA GRANGE, Ky. — Dethroned Democrat John Black stands on his front porch and gazes ruefully across the street at the City Hall building that had been his life. The longtime public official was voted out of office last month — just one victim of a Republican fervor that has galloped clear across this horse-breeding state.

"It's over," he says softly, pacing in his socks on a cold Kentucky morning. After serving 10 years as mayor and two terms as judge executive, an office similar to county supervisor, Black sighs, "My political career is history, all because I'm a Democrat. And that's just a crying shame."

Kentucky is among a handful of states close to the Deep South — including West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas — that Bill Clinton carried in 1992 and 1996, but that George W. Bush won in 2000. Experts predict that the Democrats probably need to win some of them back to capture the presidency in 2004. .

Democrats once held unquestioned sway in Kentucky. But no more. The state recently elected its first GOP governor in 32 years. The GOP also has made gains from the coal fields in the east to the white-fenced horse stables of suburban Lexington. And this political transformation in Kentucky illustrates the hurdles Democrats will face as they battle to win moderate-to-conservative states in next year's presidential election.

Politicos like Black now view their national party as a liability. They have a stern word of advice for a Howard Dean or any other Democratic presidential nominee who might come calling to reclaim a state that went for Bush: You're in trouble.

The state's 4 million residents — 91% of them white, many the direct descendants of the original 18th century pioneering landowners — have rallied behind the Republican agenda of tax cuts, a well-funded military and increased domestic security.

Meanwhile, local Democrats say they have been hurt by the positions their national leaders take on divisive social issues, such as support for same-sex unions and abortion rights.

"The Republicans are strong in many of these states and becoming increasingly so," said Hastings Wyman, editor of a bimonthly newsletter, Southern Political Report. "These places are conservative on social issues, hawkish on foreign affairs — and that plays into Republican hands."

Even loyal Kentucky Democrats predict that Dean, the former Vermont governor broad-brushed by Republicans as an East Coast liberal, would turn off voters here if he emerges as the party's nominee. They say more moderate candidates, such as retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark or Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, would fare better, but still lose to Bush.

"George Bush is more popular in Kentucky than any state outside Texas," said Paul Blanchard, formerly of the Center for Kentucky History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University. "Nothing he does with the economy or in Iraq seems to diminish his popularity here."

In Gratz, tobacco farmer Ricky Fitzgerald gives voice to such attitudes, saying the Republicans speak his mind. "I'll be a Bush man until the cows come home. I was so sick of Clinton and the Democrats who ride that same donkey."

Kentucky's religious bent also seemingly works against the Democrats. The state ranks eighth nationally in the number of churches per person, with 18 for every 10,000 residents. And surveys in recent years have shown that church attendance has become an indicator of voting preferences — those who go to services at least once a week are far more likely to back Bush than those who rarely attend.

In 1992, Clinton was able to win in Kentucky by capitalizing on a faltering national economy. He won it again in 1996, but by a narrower margin.

"Clinton talked about a middle-class tax cut and presented himself as a political moderate," said Wyman. "He was a Southern candidate with a Southern running mate. That played well in Kentucky and elsewhere in the region."

But Kentucky residents soured on Clinton and, more recently, Democratic Gov. Paul E. Patton after well-publicized sex scandals. "The Democrats have worn out their welcome," said La Grange resident Meredith Recktenwald. "It started with Clinton and continued right on through ex-Gov. Patton."

Patton's last year in office was clouded by controversy after he first denied, then acknowledged, an affair with a Kentucky businesswoman.

A Democratic fiefdom for roughly 100 years after the Civil War, Kentucky became more receptive to the GOP in presidential elections and some Senate and House races in the 1960s, when the national Democratic Party shifted to the left. But for the most part, state and local offices remained solidly Democratic.

Registered Democrats, in fact, still outnumber Republicans in the state 60% to 40%. But now, many of those Democrats routinely cross party lines when casting their ballot.

"People here didn't leave the Democrats — the party deserted the people of Kentucky," said Paducah Mayor William F. Paxton, a registered Democrat who regularly votes for Republican presidential candidates and in November voted for the new Republican governor, Ernie Fletcher. "With their gay rights and abortions, they just became too darned liberal."

Kentucky state Sen. Tim Shaughnessy, another Democrat, plans to disassociate himself from the national party during his run for reelection next year. "The Democrats are beginning to look like an extremist fringe group," he said. "There's no clear message being delivered — not here and not on the national level."

Shaughnessy is now in the minority in the state Senate, something that would have been hard to imagine in 1988, when Democrats controlled the chamber by nearly a 5-to-1 margin. Republicans now outnumber the Democrats 22 to 16. The GOP took over the chamber in 1999, when two state senators switched parties to join the Republicans.

Democrats still enjoy a comfortable majority, 65 to 35, in the state House. But with help from their new governor, Republicans are confident they can chip away at that margin.

At the federal level, the picture looks bleak for Kentucky Democrats. The state's two senators and five of its six congressmen are Republicans.

Rep. Ken Lucas, the sole Democrat, recently decided not to run for reelection. If they lose that seat next year, Kentucky Democrats will have no voice whatsoever in the nation's capital — ending an era that has seen the state elect at least one Democrat every year since 1828.

Running for Lucas' seat is Democrat Nick Clooney, a newspaper columnist and father of actor George Clooney. The elder Clooney is already being skewered for his family's leftist politics. Carped one state Republican voter in an Internet political chat room: "Given how far left George Looney is, I'm betting Daddy is also a kooky liberal."

On the national front, Kentucky Republicans claim Dean is so far out of line with voters here that he'd lose a "whisper campaign" on just his support of civil unions for gay couples.

"The Democrats' Hollywood left-wing party isn't registering a geehaw with our voters," said Ellen Williams, chairwoman of the Kentucky Republican Party. "The only way a Howard Dean could win votes here is not to speak — to just smile and shake hands. The moment he opens his mouth, he loses voters."

One voter Dean himself says the Democrats have lost is the middle-class Southern white male, a defection party loyalists acknowledge could loom large in next year's presidential race.

"Howard Dean was right — we need that good ol' boy in the pickup truck. Especially in Kentucky," Shaughnessy said. "Because that guy lives in every county across this state. The Democratic Party used to be his party, but not anymore. And we've got to find a way to get him back."

The Democrats haven't lost John Black — not yet. Since leaving office, he's tried selling real estate. But he's not happy. "I want to stay in public service, but it seems the only way to do that is to change parties," he said.

"People tell me to move to another county, but the way I see it there is no place to go. They're all turning Republican."
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #281 on: December 30, 2003, 10:54:50 AM »

I wasn't talking about polls here, but real polls.  In recent weeks PA, FL, MO, NH and many others have come out with Bush in a huge lead over Dean or Clark or whomever.


I've warned you about this before: Do NOT look at leads! The key number is BUSH's number, not Deans, not Clarks.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #282 on: December 30, 2003, 10:58:37 AM »

Yes last re-elected was in 1999, and I guess that is if you don't count FL being in the deep south.

However the GOP did just elect governors in SC, MS, AL, AR (Hey this was a reelection in 2002) so to just say reelection is a bit misleading.


Neither FL or AR is in the Deep South.
Whoever they actually voted for is immaterial.
The point is that within two years every state in the Deep South has elected a governer from a different party than the incumbents.
Facts are Facts.
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #283 on: December 30, 2003, 11:01:00 AM »

I would definately consider Arkansas int eh deep south.

What do you define as the deep south?
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #284 on: December 30, 2003, 11:05:08 AM »


It is what it is.  I' ve said on this board that i'd love to believe that Bush is going to surprise in Massachusetts or Maryland or Rhode Island.  However, I'm a realist, and there just is no evidence in past voting statistics that this will happen.  I'd rather Rove run his campaign based on what is doable and not what he'd like to happen.  I'm afraid the Dean people are engaging in wishful thinking.  In fact, I know they are.

Not comparing like with like are you?(except possibly Maryland)
The GOP do not dominate any Southern state in the way that the Democrats dominate MA or RI.
They do dominate places like UT or WY in that way though.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #285 on: December 30, 2003, 11:20:57 AM »

That article you posted is terrible.
No sound analysis, plenty of guesswork, lot's of bad witnesses(using a Republican on a chatroom?Huh) bad facts, out of date(a special election in KY-6 could go either way, the Dems are going after KY-3 again... oh and note that what gains the GOP made in the east in 1999 was REVERSED in 2003), badly written, generalises things...

Oh and does not mention that Bush is polling worse in KY than average(can't let those annoying facts get in the way of yet another "ohh... the Democratic Party is dead..." article can we?)

And I don't care who wrote it: bad is bad.

[turns off rant mode]
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« Reply #286 on: December 30, 2003, 11:26:06 AM »

Btw, shouldn't tossups always be equally distributed between the parties? I notice a lot of people mark states as tossups on their confidence maps, and then hand all or most of them to one party in the prediction map. That isn't really intelectually honest, is it?  
Tossups should not sbe equally distributed between the parties.  If the popular vote of the rest of the nation is 60-40%, why would you give 50% of hte tossups to each side?  Distribute the tossups like this:

If there are 250 Dem Ev's and 200 Republican Ev's, give 20% more of the remaining states to the Dems.

Please tell me if this is heard to understand.
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #287 on: December 30, 2003, 11:36:12 AM »

 
 
Hardly a Republican chat room, it comes from the LA TIMES today.  And the times which went after Arnold and others and is HARDLY A conservative newspaper.  I can get the link if you want proof.


   




That article you posted is terrible.
No sound analysis, plenty of guesswork, lot's of bad witnesses(using a Republican on a chatroom?Huh) bad facts, out of date(a special election in KY-6 could go either way, the Dems are going after KY-3 again... oh and note that what gains the GOP made in the east in 1999 was REVERSED in 2003), badly written, generalises things...

Oh and does not mention that Bush is polling worse in KY than average(can't let those annoying facts get in the way of yet another "ohh... the Democratic Party is dead..." article can we?)

And I don't care who wrote it: bad is bad.

[turns off rant mode]
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #288 on: December 30, 2003, 11:38:39 AM »

I would definately consider Arkansas int eh deep south.

What do you define as the deep south?

SC, GA, AL, MS, LA; the coastal plain basically.
Much of Arkansas is hilly so is geographically "Upper South", it also has a relatively(ie: for the South) low population of African-Americans and the race card is rarely played(in comparison to the rest of the South)
It also sits "on top" of Lousiana Wink
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #289 on: December 30, 2003, 11:41:45 AM »

Well i think most americans would consider it part of the deep south. But I guess then that wouldn't fit your theory.

I would definately consider Arkansas int eh deep south.

What do you define as the deep south?

SC, GA, AL, MS, LA; the coastal plain basically.
Much of Arkansas is hilly so is geographically "Upper South", it also has a relatively(ie: for the South) low population of African-Americans and the race card is rarely played(in comparison to the rest of the South)
It also sits "on top" of Lousiana Wink
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agcatter
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« Reply #290 on: December 30, 2003, 11:42:51 AM »

<The point is that within two years every state in the Deep South has elected a governor from a different party than the incumbents.  Facts are facts>

They sure are.  Quit ignoring them.   Citing a Dem elected here and there in local or statewide racea means absolutely nothing with regard to how whites vote at the PRESIDENTIAL level in the SOUTH.  

Even if the Dems somehow captured Kentucky 6th, it would mean absolutely nothing for Howard Dean in the PRESIDENTIAL general election.  Those white voters will not swallow Dean.  Bush carried the district by 13 points in 2000.  I'll wager anything you want (a meal of Texas BBQ vs. a platter of fish & chips or something) that Bush carries that district by more than 13pts against Howard Dean.

I think you are very knowlegable about American electoral politics in general and I respect your opinions.  You certainly are 100 times more well informed about politics here than I am about British politics.  However, with regard to the South, you are simply wrong.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #291 on: December 30, 2003, 11:48:04 AM »

Ah... but the article was about Kentucky in general not a specific presidential election(I would guess that W would carry KY-6 even if he loses KY. Balance of probabilities again)
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #292 on: December 30, 2003, 11:50:17 AM »

I've never really thought of Arkansas as part of the Deep South anyway(it's part in part out), so whatever theory I might have I've not twisted geography.
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #293 on: December 30, 2003, 11:56:12 AM »

But as has been happening, KY has been trending to GOP with 2 GOP senators now.  pending the special election all congressional seats are gOP except 1 and he and the dem is retiring.  The Governorship which has been in dem hands for a LONG time has now switched and KY voted for Bush in 2000.


Ah... but the article was about Kentucky in general not a specific presidential election(I would guess that W would carry KY-6 even if he loses KY. Balance of probabilities again)
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #294 on: December 30, 2003, 11:56:57 AM »

But deep south is not just about geography but cultural and values and way of life.


I've never really thought of Arkansas as part of the Deep South anyway(it's part in part out), so whatever theory I might have I've not twisted geography.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #295 on: December 30, 2003, 12:03:39 PM »

But deep south is not just about geography but cultural and values and way of life.

Even if you use that Arkansas is not in the Deep South(parts are, most are not)
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agcatter
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« Reply #296 on: December 30, 2003, 12:10:51 PM »

I suspect that our friend from across the pond continues to underestimate the cultural and social conservative nature of the South and it's effect on southern voting patterns for one very understandable reason.  He has never been exposed to anything like that kind of conservativism in Britain and can't begin to identify with it.  This is understandable.  I doubt anything like it even exists among the tories.  There's nothing like it in Great Britain and it's hard to give a lot of credense to something you can't identify with.
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jravnsbo
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« Reply #297 on: December 30, 2003, 12:24:39 PM »

Yes I agree.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #298 on: December 30, 2003, 12:38:17 PM »

I suspect that our friend from across the pond continues to underestimate the cultural and social conservative nature of the South and it's effect on southern voting patterns for one very understandable reason.  He has never been exposed to anything like that kind of conservativism in Britain and can't begin to identify with it.  This is understandable.  I doubt anything like it even exists among the tories.  There's nothing like it in Great Britain and it's hard to give a lot of credense to something you can't identify with.

Nope.
I'm perfectly well aware that the GOP has been able to manipulate Southern voters with "wedge issues", and unless the Democrats campaign on economic issues they don't have a prayer in the Deep South.
Also we DO have race-baiters and gay-bashers over here.
Heard of Norman Tebbit(aka: "The Chingford Skinhead") or Enoch Powell("Rivers of Blood") before?
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #299 on: December 30, 2003, 12:45:45 PM »

I suspect that our friend from across the pond continues to underestimate the cultural and social conservative nature of the South and it's effect on southern voting patterns for one very understandable reason.  He has never been exposed to anything like that kind of conservativism in Britain and can't begin to identify with it.  This is understandable.  I doubt anything like it even exists among the tories.  There's nothing like it in Great Britain and it's hard to give a lot of credense to something you can't identify with.
I don't think he has.
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