AH Challenge: President Kerry in 2004

Don your flameproof jackets...


With a PoD no earlier than the 2004 DNC, your challenge is to have John Kerry elected as President of the United States. Bonus points for the largest margin of victory possible. Nothing drastic like nukes are allowed.

Begin!
 
All of the votes in Ohio are properly counted in the 2004 election. Kerrey wins. Ohio was in 2004 like Florida was in 2000. But Kerrey did not push it like Gore did
 
I'm not convinced. Kerry was over 100,000 votes behind Bush in Ohio according to Wikipedia. That's a lot of wrong counts.

Plus, worse, even if we switched 50,000 votes from Bush to Kerry, this would mean Kerry wins whilst it is VERY clear that Bush has massively more of the popular vote (62m to 59m). Obviously, rules are rules, but I can see another 2000 'court challenge' going on in a lot of close states.

Is this really what the US wants? Another contested election? Another election were the clear popular winner is ousted by the 'rules' (Winners in any election who win despite being less popular than someone else always leave a bad taste in my mouth - and probably others as well).
 
In Whistling Past Dixie, it is suggested the Democrats should have spent monies spent in Southern states they would not have won regardless in Ohio, where they could have turned the tide.

The author gave the example of South Carolina specifically as a state that was a lost cause from the get-go.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If Kerry had hammered home on the message that the U.S. shouldn't have invaded Iraq because Osama bin Laden was still at large and the war in Afghanistan was still going on, he would likely have made up some ground. He made this point during one of the debates, and focus groups reported that it was the most powerful argument. However, Kerry's worthless campaign team advised him not to pursue such a message.

And while the switch of 100,000 voters in Ohio gets all the attention in this scenario, it's worth pointing out that if a fewer number of voters (less than 60,000) had changed their votes in Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado, Kerry would have won.

Bottom line, though: John Kerry may be a good senator, but he's simply not presidential material and he is not a good candidate on the campaign trail.
 
It comes down to a party cannot win on "Bush sucks" or "throw the bums out" or "Anyone BUT Bush" (please substitute Clinton, Obama, Reagan etc...) the point is ones candidate needs to be better than the incumbent. Every dem I knew only voted AGAINST Bush, they did not vote FOR Kerry. The reps learned the same in 1996 with Dole against Clinton.
 
CBS checks the Killian Documents. Ben Barnes's testimony alone could swing the onus onto Bush- and with collaborating evidence reported by the BBC in 1999, it would be hard to dismiss.
(For an earlier PoD, I'd have John Kerry listening to Scott Ritter in 2000, and remembering his evidence in 2002.)
 
Kerry would need lose the Frankenstein look about himself... his lack of charisma and sex appeal was very damaging... also his vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution made him look incredably two faced

I don't think he could win in a scenario that doesn't involve human sacrifice
 
Orville, please, not that fraud again.:rolleyes:

Also, since no evidence exists that Killian ever wrote or saw those forgeries it might be polite not to tie an innocent man's name to the story.
 
I think that if Kerry had said that he voted for the Iraq war because he was lied to it might have energized enough of his base to make the difference.
 
Orville, please, not that fraud again.:rolleyes:

Also, since no evidence exists that Killian ever wrote or saw those forgeries it might be polite not to tie an innocent man's name to the story.
Indeed it was a fraud- which is why I just focused on Ben Barnes. He went on the record in 2004 to say that he had used his influence to get Bush into the Guard in the 1970's. (He was also on the record as saying the same thing under oath in the 90's- but he was too close to George W. Bush at the time- and only the BBC noticed it. Bush's own publicly released National Guard files contained enough damaging information to sink him. One wonders why CBS needed anything else.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I think that if Kerry had said that he voted for the Iraq war because he was lied to it might have energized enough of his base to make the difference.

I agree. The Republicans won bcause they focused on getting out the base vote, while the Democrats focused on avoiding alienating the middle. This made Bush look like a decisive leader, and Kerry look like a cautious tip-toer.
 
If they were serious about capturing independent voters, they would have nominated a more moderate candidate than Kerry. Swing voters are not going to vote in sufficient numbers in favor of a Mass liberal, Dukakis 2.0. Kerry's problem can be summed up here: "I actually voted for it before I voted against it." The strange thing about 2004 was that Kerry was the most moderate of the viable candidates (Lieberman would be the strongest among indies + liberal GOP), since Dean was, well, Dean, and Edwards had his faux-populist script. If John Kerry was the most moderate candidate you can find in a highly polarized election where every Indie voter can possibly nab 270 for either side, it doesn't speak well of the Democrats' ideological direction. There was no rapid-response team like Bill Clinton had, no copying the most successful methods pioneered by Bush and McCain in 2000 with the 'Net, etc. Lastly: an image problem, as we saw with the yacht this week. Yellow spandex doesn't fly in Scranton.
 
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If they were serious about capturing independent voters, they would have nominated a more moderate candidate than Kerry. No swing voter is going to vote for a Mass liberal, Dukakis 2.0. Kerry's problem can be summed up here: "I actually voted for it before I voted against it." The strange thing about 2004 was that Kerry was the most moderate of the viable candidates (Lieberman would be the strongest among indies + liberal GOP), since Dean was, well, Dean, and Edwards had his faux-populist script. If John Kerry was the most moderate candidate you can find in a highly polarized election where every Indie voter can possibly nab 270 for either side, it doesn't speak well of the Democrats' ideological direction. There was no rapid-response team like Bill Clinton had, no copying the most successful methods pioneered by Bush and McCain in 2000 with the 'Net, etc. Lastly: an image problem, as we saw with the yacht this week. Yellow spandex doesn't fly in Scranton.

You're a great pol-stud and an inventive writer but sometimes you let your ideology blind you.

Kerry won 49 million votes. Are you seriously attempting to argue that no one who voted for Kerry was a swing voter?
 
Oops. :eek: I meant to argue that GOP-leaning undecideds would not support Kerry, and certainly no Republican would cross party lines to support Kerry. Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, yes. Not John Kerry. Also: Bush won the election because he won more swing voters than Kerry. There aren't enough base voters in either party for a party-line victory.
 
Kerry would need lose the Frankenstein look about himself... his lack of charisma and sex appeal was very damaging... also his vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution made him look incredably two faced

I don't think he could win in a scenario that doesn't involve human sacrifice

Bush had sex appeal?
 
I think he was leading at one point, but even then when I was much younger watching the debates it was fairly easy to see he was flip flopping. I think one of the problems was that he flip flopped too much for people to trust him.
 

Thande

Donor
He was leading in every poll I remember from 2004. When I was writing an FH timeline at the time, I took it as pretty much guaranteed that he would win - and I was a Bush supporter.
 
The lead was exchanged multiple times, but Bush opened up a lead in the last few days. The Republicans had the GOTV effort, for both base voters and Indies. I know, because I have Rove's book right next to me as I write.
 
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