Kerry almost won the election

[Plankton5165]

How?

Did he actually deserve that many electoral votes or did the voters just decide to make sure both parties were close?

Gore almost won in 2000, but, so did Kerry. Kerry was the second closest person to becoming President by electoral vote in 88 years!

[All Along The Watchtower]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_insurgency_(2003%E2%80%932011)

[Skill and Chance]

It is surprising to me how close 2004 was.  A "wartime" incumbent probably should have won by double digits by 20th century standards.

[dw93]

The economic recovery from the "dotcom" recession was weak, thus Bush only narrowly winning Ohio and losing Wisconsin. It also became clear that there were no WMDs in Iraq by the time of the election, which likely had an impact on the closeness of the election. Bush also, in contrast to his 2000 campaign, ran a weak, grievance ridden campaign in 2004 while Kerry ran a decent campaign.

[President Johnson]

Is this my personal impression that's just wrong, or has the conversation around 2004 really shifted within "political circles" over the last few years?

I feel like 2004 was often seen as a missed opportunity and race that Kerry blew by appearing too technocratic and allowing the Bush campaign to be defined as out-of-touch elitist too liberal for Middle America and weak on national security. Or was that just a perception by liberals who always saw W. Bush as a failed president?

There's also a critical article on Kerry from right after the election that says he blew it: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/11/why-kerry-lost.html

[OSR stands with Israel]

Is this my personal impression that's just wrong, or has the conversation around 2004 really shifted within "political circles" over the last few years?

I feel like 2004 was often seen as a missed opportunity and race that Kerry blew by appearing too technocratic and allowing the Bush campaign to be defined as out-of-touch elitist too liberal for Middle America and weak on national security. Or was that just a perception by liberals who always saw W. Bush as a failed president?

There's also a critical article on Kerry from right after the election that says he blew it: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/11/why-kerry-lost.html

Ehh its a myth if you look at the county by county data though as well as the electoral map. If you gave Bush all the states he won by 5 or more , Bush started out with this map



Now add in the fact that CO was unexpectedly within 5 then really Bush started with 249 meaning Kerry had to pull basically an inside straight if he wanted to win the White House. Now the belief is Kerry lost Ohio due to being out of touch but the fact is if you look at county by county data you will see that Kerry was :

- First Democrat since LBJ to get over 60% in Trumbull County, Lucas County, and Athens County

- First Democrat since LBJ to get over 55% in Lorain County

- Won Cuyahoga by the largest margin than any Democrat had since LBJ

- Won Franklin by the largest margin than any Democrat had since FDR

- Closest any Dem had come in Hamilton than any Democrat had since LBJ


The reason Kerry lost Ohio was because Appalachia/Rural Areas had been trending massively Republican since 2000 , and the Cincinnati/Columbus Burbs still provided Republicans with large enough margins to offset the things I mentioned above.

In 2008/2012 those areas trended massively D and the GOP no longer had the numbers to win Ohio if the above remained true.

[dw93]

Is this my personal impression that's just wrong, or has the conversation around 2004 really shifted within "political circles" over the last few years?

I feel like 2004 was often seen as a missed opportunity and race that Kerry blew by appearing too technocratic and allowing the Bush campaign to be defined as out-of-touch elitist too liberal for Middle America and weak on national security. Or was that just a perception by liberals who always saw W. Bush as a failed president?

There's also a critical article on Kerry from right after the election that says he blew it: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/11/why-kerry-lost.html

I don't think it really shifted, Kerry very well could've won that election but it was never gonna be an easy thing. Could hammering home the fact that the recovery from the 2001 recession was historically weak and hammering home the fact that Bush was the first President to preside over a net job loss since Hoover make the difference in NM, IA, and a state hit very hard economically, OH? Absolutely, and the failure to do so was on the Kerry campaign. Having said that, while there were obvious failures in the Bush administration in the lead up to 9/11 and afterwards with regard to National Security and foreign policy, it could've just as easily backfired on the Democrats to attack him on that during War time than it could've benefited them.

Had 9/11 not happened and the economy performed the same way it did, I think the Democrats losing in 2004 would've likely been a clear case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. That said, 9/11 happened and Bush became a wartime President overnight and being a wartime president historically gives the President a huge advantage and Bush might've been able to ride that advantage to a larger win, even against a stronger opponent, had he not been such a weak and flawed incumbent otherwise.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Bush might have suffered from having control of Congress, in an electoral sense. No GOP president since Eisenhower had done so, and none since Coolidge for most of an entire presidential term. When it comes to a presidential election, people, at least in modern times, tend to indicate their opinion of how the country is going on the top of the ballot, and the general domestic and foreign policy agendas were far from popular. Reagan's was popular (although perhaps wouldn't have been without the watering down of a Democratic Congress), hence he was able to win a landslide even as the GOP wasn't sweeping downballot. Clinton and Nixon are other examples.

[RRusso1982]

The biggest mistake I think Kerry and the Democrats made was taking it too far in their criticism of Bush over Iraq.  By 2004, it was clear that the rationale for going into Iraq was based on bad intelligence.  Kerry could have used that mistake against Bush.  Instead, the Democrats accused Bush of knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction and of deliberately falsifying the intelligence.  Kerry himself would dial it back a bit and say, "He misled us into war," and let other Democrats take it farther. 

The problem with that argument was that it ran contrary to all the intelligence that had been presented to date, including when Bill Clinton was President.  So John Kerry was put into a position of dishonestly undermining a war he voted for based on information that was consistent with what was provided long before Bush was President.

[Redban]

In 2004, I wasn't "into" politics yet, as I was still pretty young. But I was pretty surprised that Bush won. He hadn't yet reached 2007-2008 level of disapproval (and Katrina didn't happen yet), but a lot of people hated Bush, especially those mainstream celebrities.

I wasn't surprised at all by Kerry's performance

[Jim Crow]

It is surprising to me how close 2004 was.  A "wartime" incumbent probably should have won by double digits by 20th century standards.

That was in the 21st century though.