U.S. Election of 2004

U.S. Election of 2004
▪ 2005
by David C. Beckwith
      When a U.S. president seeks reelection, the outcome is usually decisive. A consensus emerges on whether the incumbent deserves to be kept on, and the sitting president is either dismissed or, more often, reelected—and by a substantial margin. Incumbent George W. Bush (see Biographies (Bush, George W. )), however, won a second term in 2004 over Sen. John F. Kerry (see Biographies (Kerry, John )) of Massachusetts by 3.3 million votes, with the narrowest popular-ballot percentage of any incumbent since 1916, in an election that was remarkable for an extremely polarized electorate, unprecedented spending, and high voter turnout.

      As the year began, former Vermont governor Howard Dean was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, but he faded rapidly, in part because some party leaders thought he was too liberal to defeat a wartime president. Dean was knocked out in the first major event, the January 19 Iowa caucuses. Dean fielded thousands of volunteer workers nationwide but finished with only 18% of the caucus vote, compared with 32% for first-term Sen. John Edwards (see Biographies (Edwards, John )) of North Carolina and 38% for Kerry. Dean sealed his fate that evening, capping a defiant address to a raucous crowd of supporters with a primal yell in what became known as the “I Have a Scream” speech.

      Kerry went on to win all but three Democratic primaries, sewing up the nomination by mid-March. He eventually selected as his running mate rival Edwards, a former trial lawyer who had gained good reviews for his populist “two Americas” message. Early on, independent candidate Ralph Nader appeared poised again to be a spoiler, but Democrats successfully kept him off the general-election ballot in 16 states.

      The president's reelection strategy was overseen by Karl Rove, a canny longtime Bush aide from Texas. Bush pointed to significant domestic accomplishments during his first term: a major tax reduction, prescription-drug assistance for seniors, an expansion of federal assistance to public schools, and a real if less-than-robust recovery from the 2001 recession. In contrast to Kerry, Bush also endorsed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which energized religious and conservative voters.

      Kerry faulted the administration's health and education spending records as puny, vowed to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to finance a more muscular expansion, and taunted Bush repeatedly as the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs during his term.

      The central campaign issue was Bush's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an aggressive approach that split the country virtually down the middle. Bush claimed the strategy was working and promised continuity. Kerry's position was critical of Bush and more nuanced.

      Kerry had been launched into politics by his opposition to the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. As a U.S. senator, he had voted against the 1991 Gulf War, for the resolution authorizing the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but against an appropriation bill funding Iraq's occupation and rebuilding. At one point, attempting to explain, he noted that he had voted both for and against that funding bill—playing into Bush campaign charges that Kerry was an inveterate “flip-flopper.”

      Many of his supporters opposed the Iraq incursion, but a majority of Americans favoured tough antiterrorism policies, so Kerry walked a narrow ledge. His campaign settled on a strategy: Kerry would underscore his decorated 1968–69 service as a navy lieutenant in Vietnam, background that contrasted favourably with President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, to demonstrate that Kerry had superior qualifications to be in charge during perilous times.

      The late July Democratic convention in Boston became a paean to Kerry's role in Vietnam. Kerry traveled accompanied by his “band of brothers,” shipmates from his Vietnam experience. As he strode on stage to accept the nomination, Kerry saluted and said, “I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty.”

      In early August, as Kerry nursed a small lead in public opinion polls, a new ad-hoc group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, composed of navy officers who had also served in Vietnam, produced anti-Kerry television ads in three states. The commercials challenged Kerry's account of his medal-winning experiences and blasted his later antiwar activism as disloyalty to his comrades in arms. Many major news outlets were slow to cover the Swift Boaters, but conservative Internet “ bloggers,” writers of so-called Web logs, helped whip up attention to their claims.

      This was the first election contested under the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform legislation designed to reduce the role of money in politics. The law made “soft-money” contributions from corporations and unions to party organizations illegal but opened the door to “527” groups such as the Swift Boaters operating independently of the campaign. By one estimate total election spending increased by nearly a third, to $3.9 billion, since 2000. Democratic-oriented groups were far quicker to organize under the new rules, and 527s poured about $400 million into the race, helping Democrats overcome a marked Republican-funding advantage.

      By late August, when Republicans gathered in New York City for their convention, Bush had regained a significant polling lead. Moderate Republican stars, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and disaffected Democrats such as U.S. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, extolled Bush's conduct of the war on terrorism and attacked Kerry's leadership ability.

      Kerry's campaign floundered under the assault, and Bush seemed headed to a comfortable victory—until the two candidates met on September 30 in Miami, Fla., for the first of three debates. Bush's aides had insisted that the first debate cover foreign policy, thought to be Bush's strong suit. The strategy backfired when Bush appeared on the defensive, finding it difficult to explain his positions and often repeating himself. Of the war on terrorism, Bush said some version of “It's hard work” on 11 occasions. Kerry, by contrast, spoke smoothly and authoritatively and, for the first time, emerged as a plausible alternative.

      Within days Bush's lead had almost entirely evaporated. The two candidates spent the final campaign weeks fighting in 14 “battleground” states, with imperceptible movement in the polls. Bush stepped up his game markedly in the second and third debates and thereby halted his slide in the polls and stabilized the race. Potential voters in the 14 battlegrounds were bombarded with repeated candidate visits, saturation media advertising, and multiple phone calls and mail from both campaigns and allied groups.

      To all indications the country was heading toward a second consecutive 50–50 election, and both sides moved in the final days to turn out their voters. Kerry's operation, aided significantly by 527s such as America Coming Together, used a small army of paid staffers to register new voters, identify sympathizers, and get them to the polls. Bush's campaign was more centralized, relying heavily on volunteers who worked their own neighbourhoods to identify and turn out Republican voters.

      Of the most closely watched battlegrounds, Pennsylvania went to Kerry by a small but comfortable margin. Florida, well organized by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, went clearly for the incumbent. That left Ohio, ordinarily GOP-leaning but hard hit by manufacturing job losses, as the decisive major swing state. Shortly after midnight it appeared that Ohio belonged to Bush by about 135,000 votes—but tens of thousands of “provisional ballots” cast by voters whose registration was in question made the results “within the margin of litigation.” As most voters went to bed, it appeared possible the election would again be decided only after court battles. By Wednesday morning, however, the Bush advantage appeared insurmountable, and Kerry delivered a gracious concession speech.

 Political maps again popularized the terms “red states” for Republicans and “blue states” for Democrats. (See Map—>.) Only three states switched colour from 2000 to 2004: New Hampshire went from red to blue, and Iowa and New Mexico shifted from blue to red. Bush won 8 of the 14 battleground states. Nader, whose 2.9 million votes in 2000 might have cost Democrat Al Gore the race, was not a factor in 2004.

      In the end Kerry and allies were wildly successful in turning out voters to oppose Bush. The Democrat won 57.3 million votes, nearly 7 million more than Gore in 2000 and significantly more than any previous presidential candidate of either party in U.S. history. Nonetheless, Kerry received only 48% of the vote; it was the seventh consecutive presidential election in which the Democratic candidate had failed to top 50%.

      The GOP turnout effort was even better. Targeting infrequent voters in suburban, exurban, and rural areas, Bush attracted 60.6 million votes, some 10.2 million more than he had earned in 2000, a 51% share of the electorate. The 120.3 million total votes was nearly 15 million more than in 2000. Bush's margin of victory, while narrow in a reelection contest, was larger than predicted by public opinion polls.

      In another unusual result, the incumbent's party added seats in both houses of Congress, increasing the number of Republican U.S. senators from 51 to 55. Bush had surprised many analysts by pursuing an aggressive agenda following his narrow 2000 win. At year's end Bush reshuffled his cabinet, replacing 9 of its 15 members, and again claimed a mandate for an activist agenda, including self-sustaining private accounts in social security, reform of the income-tax system, and staying the course in Iraq.

David C. Beckwith is Vice President of the National Cable Television Association.

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Universalium. 2010.

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