2008 Woodie Awards
Lessons of the 2004 Vote
The people have spoken, and they had a lot of things to say.
John Ferreira
Issue date: 11/12/04 Section: Opinions
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The beauty of democracy is that in the end the will of the people is enforced. All the rhetoric, name-calling, and distortions do not matter in the end because it is the people who decide. On November 2, the people came to the polls in record numbers. The people delivered a historic and decisive victory for President Bush. Voters gave 51 percent of their vote, a feat not accomplished since 1988 (yes, not even the poster boy of the left Mr. Bill Clinton managed to get a majority). President Bush won with 59 million votes, the most any President received in history. The funny thing is that exit polls had the election going to the Democrats (again) and it turned out differently (again). Throughout the day, most Democrats were gleaming, but they were in utter shock when the results started to come in. They learned many lessons, and here are just a few:
America has a strong, vibrant, moral majority. All of those who say that religion is dead and no longer matters to America were shocked to find that 20 percent of people said that the most important issue was moral values. It was ethics and morality that decided many people's votes, not terrorism or the economy. America's religious roots are still strong, and getting stronger. Americans rejected the complacent morality of John Kerry, who tried to sell himself as devout. Most Americans saw right through him when he said he supported abortion and gay marriage but claimed to be a devout Catholic. It now seems that for anyone to get to the White House he or she must have the blessing (pardon the pun) of the religious right. Religious voters were the great surprise of the 2004 election because no one expected them to be so strong. Democrats were hoping that a mythical "young vote" would save them, but it turned out not to make any difference.
Along the same lines, another lesson of this election was that most Americans do not like the idea of gay-marriage. Liberals love to frame the debate in the terms of the oppressed gay against a small minority of oppressive religious nuts. The reality was shown on November 2, when it turned out that the solid majority of people disagree with the idea of gays getting married. Its actually gays and their pundits that are the minority, which comes as no shock to me, but to many it was a rude wake up call. The left fails to realize that not all people who are against gay marriage are bigots. In the same light, the Democrats need to realize that not all who are pro-life are misogynists, and not all who oppose affirmative action and quotas are racists.
America has a strong, vibrant, moral majority. All of those who say that religion is dead and no longer matters to America were shocked to find that 20 percent of people said that the most important issue was moral values. It was ethics and morality that decided many people's votes, not terrorism or the economy. America's religious roots are still strong, and getting stronger. Americans rejected the complacent morality of John Kerry, who tried to sell himself as devout. Most Americans saw right through him when he said he supported abortion and gay marriage but claimed to be a devout Catholic. It now seems that for anyone to get to the White House he or she must have the blessing (pardon the pun) of the religious right. Religious voters were the great surprise of the 2004 election because no one expected them to be so strong. Democrats were hoping that a mythical "young vote" would save them, but it turned out not to make any difference.
Along the same lines, another lesson of this election was that most Americans do not like the idea of gay-marriage. Liberals love to frame the debate in the terms of the oppressed gay against a small minority of oppressive religious nuts. The reality was shown on November 2, when it turned out that the solid majority of people disagree with the idea of gays getting married. Its actually gays and their pundits that are the minority, which comes as no shock to me, but to many it was a rude wake up call. The left fails to realize that not all people who are against gay marriage are bigots. In the same light, the Democrats need to realize that not all who are pro-life are misogynists, and not all who oppose affirmative action and quotas are racists.