Abstract
What accounts for the reelection of George W. Bush, a man who by nearly every objective measure has had one of the most spectacularly unsuccessful presidencies of modern times?
A look at exit poll data on what was uppermost in the minds of 13,660 voters–and whether John Kerry's campaign was correctly crafted to meet or neutralize their concerns–must be disheartening to the progressive movement.
The gender gap that historically favored Democrats narrowed nationally and almost disappeared in Ohio. It would have closed completely had Kerry not received strong support among “non-white women” (75 percent nationally and 82 percent in Ohio). Barely half of all female voters opted for Kerry, and white women went 55 percent for Bush, giving him 48 percent of the overall female vote, an increase of 5 percent over 2000. Even 48 percent of self-described “working women” voted for Bush. The feminist movement has been losing political traction, and may, for all practical purposes, be at an end as a political force.
Bush won 57 percent of married voters, who accounted for 63 percent of the electorate. Support for Bush also correlated strongly with church attendance. He received 58 percent of the vote of those who attend church weekly and 64 percent of those who attend “more than weekly.” Twenty-three percent of voters identified themselves as “white evangelical/born again,” and they voted overwhelmingly (78 percent) for Bush.
The poll data suggests that enacting even irresponsible tax cuts wins reelection. Forty-one percent of voters thought the president's tax cuts were “good for the economy.” A smaller share (32 percent) thought tax cuts were bad; 92 percent of their votes went to Kerry.
Perceptions of economic self-interest clearly influenced the outcome. The tax-cutting calculus worked for Republicans in part because of the bias in the electorate toward the upper-income brackets: Only 43 percent of American households have incomes of more than $50,000 a year, but 55 percent of voters do, and this group favored Bush by a 56 percent margin.
Guns, gays, and God
The standard cultural components of the right-wing Republican electoral coalition do not appear to have been particularly decisive. For example, the 41 percent of voters who said there was a gun owner in the house voted strongly (63 percent) for Bush, but Kerry got 57 percent of the larger (59 percent) share of voters who said their household did not have a gun, making the gun issue a wash.
On abortion, the 55 percent of voters who said abortion should be “always” or “mostly” legal went 67 percent for Kerry, while the 42 percent of voters who favored making it “mostly” or “always” illegal voted 75 percent for Bush. This stalemate suggests abortion remains a polarizing issue, but not one that wins elections.
Not so with gay marriage. Some 37 percent of voters said they wanted “no legal recognition,” while 35 percent could support some form of “civil union” in place of legally recognized same-sex marriages. Late in the campaign, Bush opportunistically suggested that he could support the “civil union” alternative. Thus, an overwhelming 72 percent of voters could agree with some form of the president's “saving the sanctity of marriage” policy. Only 25 percent of voters favored same-sex marriages.
This issue undoubtedly is reflected in the significant fraction (22 percent) of voters who cited so-called “moral values” as the “most important issue” at stake in the election, followed by “terrorism” (19 percent), and “taxes” (5 percent). These were Bush's strongest issues, and the 46 percent of voters who cited them supported him by margins ranging from 57 to 86 percent nationally, and 62 to 90 percent in Ohio. Fifty-five percent of voters fell for the president's Iraq fairy tale, answering affirmatively when asked, “Is the Iraq war part of the war on terrorism?”–and 81 percent of them voted for Bush.
Kerry, on the other hand, did well among the 47 percent of voters who cared most about “economy/jobs,” “Iraq,” “health care,” and “education,” but the intensity of support generally lagged behind Bush's. More importantly, Kerry was thumped on his already meager share of Bush's issues in Ohio, while Bush held his own on Kerry's issues.
What happened in Ohio?
As I write in early December, it appears there may well be a statewide recount in Ohio, as well as investigations and litigation into mounting accounts of election irregularities. Complaints include providing inner-city and Democratic-majority precincts with too few or faulty voting machines and failing to redirect likely Democratic voters who cast their ballots in the wrong precinct, thereby invalidating them (according to the decree of Ohio's Republican secretary of state and Bush campaign co-chair).
But assuming that Kerry really did lose Ohio–what political factors explain the loss?
Ohio is demographically and culturally well-suited to Bush's pitch. Some 85 percent of its residents are white, compared to 75 percent nationally, and based on exit poll data, 7 percent fewer non-white voters turned out. How often Ohio voters attend church correlated even more strongly with support for Bush. The equilibrium point between the candidates was monthly church attendance: The 40 percent of voters attending “weekly” or “more than weekly” voted 65 and 69 percent in favor of Bush. Harder to fathom is that despite Bush's clear pursuit of policies designed to undermine organized labor, he still pulled in nearly 40 percent of voters claiming to be union members–must-win voters for Democrats. Kerry also failed to connect with college graduates and even those with advanced degrees, a category he won nationally.
These seemingly anomalous results are explained by Bush's success in making his own–and Kerry's–alleged character traits for waging war against terror the campaign's gut issue. If the essence of propaganda is repetition, then all the millions Bush poured into simpleminded–not to mention demagogic and false–television advertising in Ohio clearly paid off.
Fifty-three percent of Ohio voters cited one of the following as the most important quality in a president: “strong leader”(19 percent); “clear stand on issue” (13 percent); “honest/trustworthy” (11 percent); and “religious faith” (10 percent). And those voters went for Bush by margins of 70 to 91 percent. Kerry earned high marks from the 42 percent of voters seeking someone who “will bring change” (24 percent); “cares about people” (12 percent); and is “intelligent” (7 percent). In an Orwellian inversion of reality, 74 percent of those seeking an “honest/trustworthy” leader preferred the inveterate misleader Bush.
Fifty-four percent of Ohio voters agreed with the Bush line that “compared to four years ago, the United States is safer from terrorism,” and 79 percent of them voted for Bush.
When asked “How are things going for the United States in Iraq?” 47 percent of Ohio voters responded “very well” or “somewhat well,” but 51 percent said “somewhat badly” or “very badly.” Clearly, this was the president's toughest sell. Given his personal responsibility for the misadventure in Iraq, his ability to contain the domestic political fallout must be considered a propaganda triumph of the first order.
The Bush campaign's attacks on Kerry found their mark in Ohio. Only 40 percent of voters responded positively when asked if Kerry could be “trusted to handle terrorism.”
Where did Kerry go wrong?
Bush and his strategist Karl Rove were out of the gate early and often, with a highly condensed, partly subliminal message shaped around threats to the debt-soaked, white middle-class prosperity posed by terrorists, gays, abortionists, and higher taxes. Kerry's character was sliced and diced and reassembled into some kind of Francophile Benedict Arnold. Meanwhile, Kerry continued to duck the touchstone issues–Iraq, terrorism, and security–and tried to drum up voter interest in various “plans” to address the nation's ills. His ideas for stemming job loss, extending health insurance, and reducing energy prices and imports were at once too narrow to capture the public imagination and too broad to arouse much excitement. They failed to get the attention of most Democrats, much less independent voters or disenchanted moderate Republicans.
Kerry's energy plans never added up. Changing tax incentives to stem outsourcing of jobs was a good but limited idea. Voters understood that Kerry had no solution to the problems of globalization, and he never found a way to talk about the issue in commonsense terms.
Iraq should have been a millstone around Bush's neck, but somehow it got wound around Kerry's. Hamstrung by his own ambivalence, Kerry waited too long to directly attack Bush on integrity and unlawful conduct in waging aggressive war against Iraq and an inept war on Al Qaeda. He barely mentioned Bush's shredding of the Geneva Conventions.
Kerry failed to attack the president's environmental policies that protect polluters instead of protecting citizens from asthma-inducing particulates or the high levels of mercury contamination that strike directly at infants and children. He largely ignored industrial hazard reduction issues, an area where the president's emphasis is on protecting his oil, chemical, and nuclear industry buddies rather than improving homeland security.
Finally, the Democrats could have enunciated their own values more explicitly. After all, it's not hard to open any of the great religious or philosophical texts of the Western and Eastern traditions and find therein the moral basis for a progressive agenda that favors reverence for life, generosity, cooperation, nonviolence, fairness, tolerance, and peace.