This is Why Bush Won

[Scriptor Ignotus]

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/political-blunders-of-the-year/20061226104609990001

Which do you find most egregious?
Foley's messages 25%
Kerry's joke 21%
Cheney's delay 12%
Allen's "macaca" 10%
Nagin's "chocolate" city 10%
McKinney's scuffle 9%
Burns' terrorist comment 4%
Kennedy's DUI 4%
Reyes' knowledge 4%
Total Votes: 114,752

...because Americans are idiots. To compare Kerry's botched joke in the same league as Foley's IMs, Cheney's near-miss with involuntary homicide charges or Allen's racism is insane. I assume this poll was freeped, but still...

According to page 2 of the article:

A Botched Joke Goes From Bad to Worse

A week before the November midterms, the man who would have been president, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) told a California audience, "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The president called Kerry's remarks "insulting and shameful".

Kerry stood his ground and insisted his comments were a "botched joke" and that the president's attempt to use it politically was "a shameful effort to distract from a botched war," until members of his own party -- following the tune of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and Sen. Hillary Clinton -- turned against him as well, disagreeing with his comments and calling them "inappropriate."

Kerry -- who wasn't running for anything this year -- eventually apologized and spent the days leading into the election running away from his comments.

Of course, the article doesn't mention what the joke was supposed to be. Perhaps Kerry's handling of his remarks' criticism or his explanation of what happened could be considered a major gaffe, but my god, to consider it worse than what Foley did?! I still refuse to believe that any intelligent person would think that a U.S. Senator is going to deliberately make a speech about how dumb our troops are.

[maxsolomon]

1. PEOPLE are idiots

and the planet is crawling with them.

over 49% of americans are below average.

[NashVegas]

15. What % of the Survey-Takers Even Know the Definition of "egregious"?

Just this morning, one of my (college graduate) co-workers said to me, "why Crisco, that's an egregious mistake you made ..."

And if you believe that ...

[SteppingRazor]

2. I don't think it was necessarily freeped. It doesn't have to be...

look at all the Republican idiocy on there, then look at the Democratic "idiocy." Less Democrats than Republicans in the poll. So, the Republicans split the Democratic vote between several options, while all the Republican voters go for the Kerry thing.


If anything, I'm surprised the Kerry joke didn't score higher, simply by nature of the options available.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

16. maybe it wasn't freeped, but...

Foley's messages 25% (R)
Kerry's joke 21% (D)
Cheney's delay 12% (R)
Allen's "macaca" 10% (R)
Nagin's "chocolate" city 10% (D)
McKinney's scuffle 9% (D)
Burns' terrorist comment 4% (R)
Kennedy's DUI 4% (D)
Reyes' knowledge 4% (D)

There are actually more Dems than Repubs.

[onehandle]

3. His joke must have traveled back in time two years...

...to make him "lose" in 2004.

[Clark2008]

27. I think the point the OP was making is that Kerry lost because

so many people are stupid and this idiotic poll suggests the OP is correct, after the fact.

[Hoosier Dem]

4. Maybe the poll wasn't Freeped...

I have a lot of friends who are strong Democrats and Veterans who were really offended by Kerry's "joke". Many of these folks supported Kerry in 2004, but will not do it again. No matter what his intenet, a lot of folks were offended by it. This should serve as a lesson to any politician: don't try stand-up comedy.

While I don't think its anywhere as offensive as Foley's IM's or the Macaca incident, I think we have to look beyond DU and see how the public percieves things. Too often, DU becomes just an Echo Chamber.

[blm]

14. They were offended by the LIE created by the WH and their spin machine, because

they couldn't have HONESTLY been offended by Kerry's words.

So their offended stance came from something that DIDN'T happen, but the media said it did. Because Bush's WH and the corpmedia believe your friends are so stupid that they can convince them of something that NEVER happened.


Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence, by Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times, November 3, 2006

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry -- a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service -- and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men -- to launch an invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger insult than that?

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld's response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you've got -- get over it.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S. military has had to assume not only security responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a veritable library of military histories -- from "Cobra II" to "Fiasco" to "State of Denial" -- all of which contain the same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: This administration never had a plan for the morning after, and we've been making it up -- and paying the price -- ever since.

And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance the very people they're fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we're addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing -- demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to drive conservation -- to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases.

Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century -- to bring out the best in us. His "genius" is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.
>>>>>>>

[Hoosier Dem]

26. I agree with you...

This incident was spun way out of control by the WH, but the damage has still been done.

I've tried to explain to many people that Kerry only made a stupid joke that got botched. Unfortunatley, the media have created an "alternate reality" of the situation.

Kerry's toast for 2008.

[blm]

29. Olbermann and Friedman are the media and they put up GREAT COMMENTARY.

Keep giving in to the media spin and ANY truthtelling Dem will become extinct and the party will be filled with lying Coverup wing of the Democratic party - and the march to fascism will continue.

[enough already]

32. He said what he said

It's easy to call everyone "idiots" and to try and explain to them "What Kerry REALLY meant to say was...." (which by the way sounds exactly like Reagan's spinmeisters of 8 years), but in the end he said what he said. And without the context/explanations/spin, it is understandable why some people were very offended. I second the poster who suggested that politicians not attempt stand-up comedy.

[blm]

34. No - the MEDIA told them something that the media all KNEW was untrue.

And THAT was the point. And it was the point of Friedman's article, too - that Bushies knew they could get the media to spin it for them and that the Bushies COUNTED on people being stupid enough to believe that lie.

Every newsperson in the business(even at small papers) knows that speeches like this are handed to the press before the speech or, in this case, a rally. So accepting the WH spin and exaggerating it when they all knew damn well he dropped a pronoun, is CONCOCTED outrage. You either FIGHT lies or you don't and keep accepting them till you hear one that bothers you enough to get you to fight.

[enough already]

35. The media didn't have to tell people anything

It's all on film. He said it. The only one who had to "spin" anything was Kerry, and all because he decided to be a stand up comedian. At some point Kerry has to accept some responsibility for fucking up.

[blm]

36. Hear what you want - MEDIA LIED and they KNEW they were lying.

.

[blm]

5. The report is lying - Kerry never ran away from his comments, but Bush's LIE about it

prompted MANY commentaries against Bush, his WH and all the mediawhores who pushed the WH storyline on it.

Keith Olbermann and Tom Friedman and other widely read columnists put up SCATHING commentaries against Bush that week going into the election.

[PresidentObama]

6. Bush won?

News to me. I just thought he was given the position instead of earning it.

Anyway....

America seems to believe anything the media plays in 30 second sound bytes, and after weeks of replaying and replaying that Kerry botched joke...It really got under my skin.

A lot of people are using this as the last 'nail' in the 'coffin' of Kerry's 2008 run, but if you want to be honest about it...The GOP will do this to each and every candidate running. They will take something they say, twist it, and the media will feed it to us in 30 second sound bytes. It's damaging that in the most powerful country in the world that so many people can and are fooled.

God bless John Kerry for fighting back, and standing up for himself.

[wisteria]

11. Oh, and only HILLARY CAME OUT with something nasty to say. Dean didn't. n/t

[Nederland]

7. No, this is why Bush won

...Americans are idiots.

When the most active members of a party go around insulting voters, there is a tendency for those very same voters to offer up a great big "fuck you" when they enter the voting booth.

THAT'S why Bush won.

[patrice]

12. Right, people should not insult people, but what about people who

have figured out that being "insulted" or "offended" or "_________" is the news story/political tool of the day-week-year?

We ignore such rhetoric at our own peril.

[Psephos]

13. A simple lesson that escapes many.

Condescension = failure with voters. Politics 101.

Peace.

[Township75]

24. Well someone gets it.....

insults, blanketly criticizing someone's religion or geographic location, then of course, ask why people don't vote Dem after an election.

Some people would rather vote for a group that is incompetent than one that is always ridiculing them.

[blue cat]

8. Piss me off

I'm sick of stupid Americans.

[wisteria]

9. It's AOL and freepers/Republicans overrun that sight.

They have an agenda to silence a major critic of the war, so they will find any excuse. Why does Foley come in so high? Well consider his sexual preferences and that out ways him being Republican.
The "joke" or actual missing word, will mean nothing months from now.

AND, GOV. DEAN NEVER CAME OUT AGAINST SENATOR KERRY, ONLY HILLARY DID.

[patrice]

10. Understand that responses are not predicated upon what the responder

knows IS true or real, but what people THINK, i.e. what their opinion is.

Especially at this point in our political environment, lots and lots of people care more about their opinions than they feel responsibility for what is in fact more objectively true or real.

Fighting them makes them more and more obdurate, but that doesn't mean this topic "War Slaves" should not be talked up publicly, loudly, and often. It should just be done without referring to people's opinions of anyone or anything.

[ClassWarrior]

17. Bush** didn't win.

And Americans aren't idiots. They're conned by criminals.

NGU.

[Jack Rabbit]

18. Surprise, surprise

I take no stock in that "poll". Most of the high-profile cases are things Democrats will name as offensive, so the response was diluted.

The two leading vote getters are Foley's messages (a GOP target, but most likely nonpartisan outrage) and Kerry's botched jpke (for which the expressed outrage is most likely heavily GOP).

[Conscious Confucius]

19. It's nowhere nearly as insulting as Bush's Hamas comment.

Or Cheney's F Off on the senate floor. What is wrong with America?

[Sparkly]

20. What is "Cheney's delay?"

:dunce:

[Tactical Progressive]

21. I think it's probably after he buckshot that guy in the face

and then waited a day until his blood alcohol cleared to report it.

[Sparkly]

22. ohhh.... Thanks! nt

[andykef]

23. Joke was just tip of Iceberg

Kerry's Joke is not what upset many people, although it was in bad taste and not even a good joke, it is the fact that it confirmed so many negatives about Kerry. It came across as elitist, it proved that Kerry was a poor communicator, and in his defense of it Kerry both showed how easy it was to re-butt an attack (something he famously did not do when he needed to in 2004!) and also how useless he was at doing so.
In summary the JOKE was just a symptom and unfortunately confirmed all the reasons why the electorate did not trust him enough to dessert even a clown like W in '04.
I supported Kerry and thought he was a great candidate in '04 during the GOP's politics of fear. However I think he would be very unwise to run again. The Joke is on him I am afraid.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

25. agreed - nt

[joeprogressive]

28. It can all be looked at as a blessing in disguise

The way I look at it, if it keeps Kerry from running or winning the primary; all the better. Don't get me wrong, I love Kerry but I am tired of losing. We have people such as Gore, Edwards, Clark and Obama that are serious contenders.

The irony is the botched joke didn't keep us from winning back the House and Senate and it could have improved our presidential chances in '08. Hey Republicans, you punk'd yourselves.

[PresidentObama]

30. Your kidding me?

You call the media burying John Kerry a blessing from the sky? He's a good honest man, and you think him getting beat up by the media is alright?

I'm sorry, but thats no blessing from the sky. And I doubt it'll stop Kerry from running. Nice try though.

[joeprogressive]

38. try looking at it from an unbiased point of view

The swiftboaters aren't going away. Kerry couldn't beat Bush although Kerry was the better candidate and we had already seen 4 miserable years of Bush. It is pretty simple: Gore beat Bush, Kerry didn't. Kerry would have a hard time against McCain or Romney. I love Kerry but he is not the guy for '08 considering we have much better alternatives.

[lojasmo]

31. Well, given that people are idiots

Perhaps people who can't tell a friggin' joke....shouldn't.

[PresidentObama]

33. Kerry isn't a comedian.

But he has a sense of humor. And I must say leaving out one word doesn't mean he can't tell a joke.

Maybe he should be more careful, yes. But all Democrats should, because we all know the bounds of the GOP's slime machine are endless. I commend Kerry for standing up, and not backing down. That shows strength, and heart.

[lojasmo]

37. actually, you're wrong.

One word can make or break a joke....as demonstrated by Kerry's disasterous flop.

He has a fine sense of humor, but he absolutely blew it on that joke...to the detriment of the entire party.

[PresidentObama]

39. So because he missed one word....

You think he should shut up, and go away?

I don't think so. John Kerry isn't one to sit down, and shut up because the GOP spins one little joke. Even with letting out 'us' in the joke, it made sense in the same context when you piece it in the same round of jokes Kerry was telling at that rally. The joke before that was about Bush being from the state of denial instead of the state of Texas. So it was clear it was an attack on Bush. The media and the GOP spinned and replayed it over and over with 30 second sound bytes.