WI: John Kerry votes against the Iraq War

spiderduck1997

In 2002, Then-Massachusetts Senator John Kerry(D) voted for the Iraq War. He later changed his mind on the war after the US failed to find WMD's. He became the Democratic Nominee for POTUS in the 2004 US Presidential Election. Because of Kerry voting in favor of the war and later coming out against it, The Bush-Cheney Campaign painted Kerry as a Flip Flopper, and Kerry narrowly lost the election to Bush 286-251.
What if John Kerry had opposed the Iraq War from the very beginning and voted against it? What changes? Does he end up winning the election? Why or Why Not?
 

oreocruncher

spiderduck1985 said:
In 2002, Then-Massachusetts Senator John Kerry(D) voted for the Iraq War. He later changed his mind on the war after the US failed to find WMD's. He became the Democratic Nominee for POTUS in the 2004 US Presidential Election. Because of Kerry voting in favor of the war and later coming out against it, The Bush-Cheney Campaign painted Kerry as a Flip Flopper, and Kerry narrowly lost the election to Bush 286-251.
What if John Kerry had opposed the Iraq War from the very beginning and voted against it? What changes? Does he end up winning the election? Why or Why Not?
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I think he would get more credibility as a Democratic Party candidate if he was opposed to it from the start, especially as the war started to end up souring in 2004...
 

Amadeus

He probably becomes President in 2005. What killed Kerry's campaign was his early support for the war and his "I voted for it before I voted against it" gaffe. Had he opposed the war from the beginning, Bush wouldn't have been able to portray Kerry as a dishonest, indecisive flip-flopper. So Kerry probably wins Ohio and therefore the election.
 

Raferty

Well, he was a flip flopper on a lot of things, so maybe he would have later voted for funding of the military effort or something like that and seen it used against him.

I think he might have had his best chance in the election had he decided to shift right on cultural issues to try to win back some of the '96 Clinton states that flipped against Gore in 2000 (like Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, or Tennessee). In 2004, all of those states went against him by more than they did for Gore, and that was mostly because Kerry really didn't take them all that seriously and pumped a lot of resources into swing states. Those states in 2004 were still excessively Democrat in terms of voter registration, and were likely more winnable than some may have thought. The voting margins in those states were volatile for most of the 2nd half of the 20th century, after all.

For Bush's part, I think Bush would have done a lot better in 2004 had he ran a more Midwest focused campaign. His campaign was essentially a Sunbelt project, based around ginning up suburban turnout in the South and Southwest. On cultural issues I think he could have competed a lot more strongly in the Upper Midwest and probably could have taken Wisconsin. I think Minnesota and Michigan were also winnable. If one compares Bush's 2004 figures with McCain's in 2008, there were areas in Pennsylvania actually that swung to McCain, believe it or not, and I think that Bush could have won PA as well had he anticipated some of the issues that brought this about (for example, taking a harder line on the side of coal production).
 
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darklordoftech

Raferty said:
I think he might have had his best chance in the election had he decided to shift right on cultural issues to try to win back some of the '96 Clinton states that flipped against Gore in 2000 (like Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, or Tennessee). In 2004, all of those states went against him by more than they did for Gore, and that was mostly because Kerry really didn't take them all that seriously and pumped a lot of resources into swing states. Those states in 2004 were still excessively Democrat in terms of voter registration, and were likely more winnable than some may have thought. The voting margins in those states were volatile for most of the 2nd half of the 20th century, after all.
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What cultural issues do you have in mind that Kerry could have shifted right on?
 

overoceans

My recollection might be incorrect, but I seem to remember that, in 2004, the Iraq War wasn't quite yet being viewed, in popular opinion, as the absolute cluster**** that it was viewed as by 2008. So, if Kerry had been against the war from the start(rather than flip-flopping), he might be viewed as more decisive, yes, but decisive on the wrong side. And on an issue viewed, at the time, as important to national security.

(My analysis of public opinion is based reading a number of different writers from numerous venues, who were pretty triumphalist when it looked like the war had been won in 2003 and 2004, and that WMDs would soon be found, but had swung over to the antiwar camp by 2008. Slate.com exhibited this general tendency, and George Parker admits to a similar shift in opinion in his book The Assassin's Gate.)
 

Raferty

overoceans said:
My recollection might be incorrect, but I seem to remember that, in 2004, the Iraq War wasn't quite yet being viewed, in popular opinion, as the absolute cluster**** that it was viewed as by 2008. So, if Kerry had been against the war from the start(rather than flip-flopping), he might be viewed as more decisive, yes, but decisive on the wrong side. And on an issue viewed, at the time, as important to national security.

(My analysis of public opinion is based reading a number of different writers from numerous venues, who were pretty triumphalist when it looked like the war had been won in 2003 and 2004, and that WMDs would soon be found, but had swung over to the antiwar camp by 2008. Slate.com exhibited this general tendency, and George Parker admits to a similar shift in opinion in his book The Assassin's Gate.)
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The Iraq War was actually not quite such an issue in 2008 because the Surge was largely successful and all the attention was on the economy. The 2006 elections were a different story, however. Remember that McCain largely won the primary because he was the only one to have supported the surge from the beginning, while Obama was largely non-committal on Iraq and did not necessarily come out against the Surge after mid 2008, but rather did come out against a longer term withdrawal timetable.

As for Kerry, there wasn't really much that he could do about the issue of the war because even if he did vote against it, he still spent a substantial part of his time in the Senate urging action against Saddam.
 

Raferty

darklordoftech said:
What cultural issues do you have in mind that Kerry could have shifted right on?
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Green issues, for one. They were the beginning of the end for the Democratic Party in resource production states. He could have echoed Bush on two things: civil unions, and making sure to balance any call for Kyoto type action with an equal call for developing nations to shoulder their share of the burden. By eliminating the difference on values questions, he would make himself a lot more appealing in many of the Clinton '96 states, just as Clinton did.

Now, I'll admit though that Medicare Part D pretty much brought the senior vote to Bush as things stood. In 2000, he and Gore split that vote, but it broke for Bush in 2004. Kerry would find it difficult to do the classic Democratic tactic of accusing their opponent of wishing to kick grandma off the cliff anyways.

But with a more hawkish stance on trade, combined with eliminating the gap on values questions, he might have been able to take back Clinton's states form '96.
 
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