Dem. candidates FIGHTING for "Heartland" voters... and winning!

The biggest sin of John Kerry's disastrous, aenemic, not to say stupid 2004 campaign wasn't Kerry's aenemic, arrogant campaign. (#1. Kerry himself brought up his Vietnam service as a campaign tactic, even made it the centerpiece of his nominating convention. By contrast, James Webb's senate campaign this year doesn't even use Webb's heroic record as a combat Marine during the Vietnam war in his campaign; and, worse, Kerry and his staff were COMPLETELY UNPREPARED for the backlash from military members of that war who resented Kerry's anti-war testimony before Congress when Kerry returned from Vietnam in 1972, i.e. the "Swift Boat Veterans Against Kerry" of the 2004 campaign. #2. Worse still, Kerry stood there, like a box of rocks in the third and final presidential debates in 2004, as President Bush sneered into national TV cameras "My opponent is a flip-flopper!" Kerry and his staff REFUSED to juxtapose Bush's own gigantic flip-flop (by using widely available video clips) of Bush saying after 9-11 "WE'RE GOING TO GET bin LADEN DEAD OR ALIVE!" and then saying, at a 2002 White House press conference (and ever since) "I'm NOT THAT CONCERNED ABOUT HIM (bin Laden) ANY MORE" !! This horrendous ommission by Kerry's campaign, this abject FAILURE to RESPOND to predictable Republican tactics, was probably the penultimate example of political incompetence of our time, eclipsing even Michael Dukakis' 1988 campaign.)

No, the true sin of Kerry's 2004 campaign was that; #3. he threw in the towel within 12 hours of the close of polls on election night, ROBBING Democratic voters and activists of the chance to CONFRONT or audit Republican disenfranchisement, voter suppression, and electronic voting fraud and other illegal shenanigans; and #4. Kerry GAVE the Republicans that map of "SOLID RED" from Michigan all the way west to the Pacific coast states... an IMAGE of SOLID REPUBLICAN SUPPORT that is, we now know, SHEER PROPAGANDA.

We here at C-dems. do not believe that President Bush won the majority or plurality of voters in Iowa, New Mexico, or in some other western states (not to mention Ohio and/or Florida) in 2004... we believe that "a familiar pattern" of VOTER SUPPRESSION, voter INTIMIDATION, the disqualification ("trashing") of legitimate votes, and (yes, indeed) electronic SWAPPING of votes from the Democratic presidential candidate to the Republican incumbent determined that election outcome. But be that as it may, the FACTS ARE that even by those suspicious totals, Bush's support in some of those states WAS VERY, CRITICALLY SLIM. Even going with Republican approved vote totals, many western states STILL had close to 49% Democratic voting... far from the "SOLID RED monolith" that Republican leaders have portrayed in electoral maps ever since that election.

TWO YEARS LATER, and no thanks to Senator Kerry's 2004 campaign or 'Mainstream Media' press/media reporting, that MISLEADING PROPAGANDA IMAGE of a "Solid, red Republican heartland" is finally losing its wheels, as Democratic candidates fight for wins in Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, and other southern and western states.