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October 19, 2004
More unlikely Bush voters
After ABC's The Note said they knew of no former Gore voters switching to Bush this year, they were deluged with email, and I collected many personal testimonials. Since then I have met and read many more. Now the story about "9-11 Democrats" is finally breaking to the surface.We've all met lifelong Democrats who quietly admit they support Mr. Bush this year, and the polls now appear to be opening up in the president's favor. . . . The president is looking for voters like Carol Del Tufo, a middle-aged teacher and lifelong Democrat. "Look, I'm voting for Bush," she told Washington Post reporter Michael Powell in Holmdel, N.J., last week. "He's very strong, and there's no 'maybe' in his voice." Her neighbor's husband was one of the 700 New Jersey residents murdered in the Sept. 11 attacks. "It was so scary," she said. "I've got kids. I don't want another attack."Frida Ghitis also explores this seeming paradox in a survey of prominent liberal and leftist hawks, who she flatly claimsThe same sentiment can be found in other swing states. Sue Crawley, a social worker who works in Florida placing foster children for adoption, told the Associated Press that she's supporting Mr. Bush because of the threat of another terrorist attack. "I think he's doing the best he can with what he walked into and what he needs to accomplish here. You know sometimes you just can't do it in four years."
will find it impossible to vote for Bush. They likely will stand with Kerry, praying that as president he will take the right action; that the words of the candidate on the campaign trail were aimed at gaining the vote of a sharply divided nation, concealing what they hope is Kerry�s knowledge that the liberal hawks were right all along.She cites Christopher Hitchens (who has declared for Bush), Paul Berman, Michael Ignatieff, and Kenneth Pollack, all of whom support Bush's ideals of democracy-promotion, all of whom have severely criticized Bush's handling of postwar Iraq. But her assertion that they will vote for Kerry rests on thin air.
A few months ago, on his excellent radio program "This American Life," Ira Glass explored the idea that it is now the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are the party of the Big Tent.
Since this is a Jewish blog I've been noting increasing numbers of my tribe declaring their vote for Bush. But Jews are not the only identity group that is wandering off the Democratic plantation. Although Kerry will take most of the African-American vote, Bush has peeled away enough votes (up to 20%) to scare Kerry into stumping in Florida with Al Sharpton. (Let's ignore for now that Bush reaching out to voters through churches is considered evidence of fundamentalist designs on the 1st Amendment, but Kerry's stumping in evangelical churches is not.)
The [Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies] poll found Kerry receiving as much or more support than Gore among those age 18 to 25, those with less than a high school diploma and those making $60,000 or less. But Kerry had 49 percent support from black Christian conservatives, down from the 69 percent Gore enjoyed in 2000. Bush was at 36 percent among the group this year, more than tripling the 11 percent he got four years ago.Hhere are some exit poll numbers from three weeks ago. And here's a pretty comprehensive overview of the relations between the GOP and African-Americans.
The real October surprise may be Arab-American voters. According to a month-old Zogby poll:
As recently as July, Kerry led Bush by better than a two-to-one margin � or 54 percent to 24.5 percent � among more than half a million Arab-American voters in Michigan, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in a two-man race. His lead has now fallen to 49 percent, compared to 31.5 percent for Bush.These numbers may reflect the post-RNC bounce, but they do show a community that can't be taken for granted by either party.
RELATED: More on constituencies voting for Bush in this entry, once you scroll past the bits about the trendy young urban performance artists for Kerry.
If you want to sample a variety of bloggers' explanation for "why Bush and not Kerry," Hugh Hewitt has collected over 150 of them.
Judith | 10/19/04 at 03:34 PM | Categories: - GOTV '04
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Comments
I think I need to make a t-shirt that reads "A Jewish Democrat for Bush". I'm one of those 9-11 Democrats who will be voting for George W. Bush this year. Why? Because I simply don't trust John Kerry on either the war on terror, or his stance on Israel. I have no other choice.
greengrl | October 19, 2004 08:02 PM
I've been voting in presidential elections since 1984 and this will be the first time I'm voting for a Republican for President. I voted for Mondale, Dukakis and Clinton. In 2000 I couldn't bring myself to vote for either Bush or Gore, and I voted Libertarian. This year I'm voting for Bush. There are women in my family, life-long liberal pro-choice Democrats, who will be voting a straight Republican ticket this year, because they don't have confidence in the Democrats on national security.
Stefan Sharkansky | October 20, 2004 02:38 AM
I would doubt it.
Sounds to me like 'whistling past the graveyard' i.e. to keep up one's spirits.
David Sucher | October 20, 2004 05:46 AM
While The New Republic's Paul Berman may join his colleagues in supporting Kerry in the face of all common sense, Martin Peretz (of the same magazine) has been quietly hinting that he may defect.
In the September 13/20 issue of TNR, Peretz sharply criticizes Kerry's statements on Vietnam, as well as many aspects of today's Democratic Party as a whole: its intellectual arrogance, its pretensions, and its wealthy patrons like George Soros and Theresa Heinz Kerry. By contrast, he favorably notes GWB's foreign policy approach, so radically different from that of the elder Bush. Peretz begins that column with an oblique reference to having "strayed every so often" from pulling the Democratic lever in the voting booth.
In his October 11 article, Martin Peretz reduces the election to "the evil of two lessers", first noting that "[on the issues of stem-cell research and taxation] I am with Kerry", but then observing that even on environmental issues "Kerry's promises are exuberant but vague".
On Iraq, to which he devotes the bulk of that piece, he unequivocally says "I am with Bush." To be sure, he criticizes the President's handling of the campaign, as many of even Bush's strongest supporters have done. But he refuses to "see in the defeat of Saddam anything but a quintessential good". Peretz concludes the article with a critique of TNR's editorial claim that "to win re-election, Bush is lying". True enough, he says, but he adds that his fellow editors have generally failed to condemn Kerry's utterly fanciful foreign policy ideas and his misplaced faith in the United Nations: "Kerry may want to rely on [the UN's goodwill], but I don't."
shoshanna | October 20, 2004 10:25 AM
... I just finished reading Frida Ghitis' article. Amazing how she deliberately misrepresents Hitchens' position, and glosses over any examination of the "facts on the (political) ground", preferring instead her own cozy assumptions. Typical MSM: head in the sand, always the last to know.
Whistling in the graveyard, indeed.
shoshanna | October 20, 2004 11:36 AM
