Blumenthal: Bush has fallen victim to his own hubris

[kskiska]

In the end, US voters will not be frightened into becoming a nation that disdains decency

(snip)

Suddenly, the Democrats came to life, providing a forum and focus for outrage against Bush's policies. At first, the movement gathered around Howard Dean, but with his stumbles he was not the man for the mission. Bush had counted on the Democrats once again picking an earnest but easily defeated candidate, but they turned instead to John Kerry.

From March and through the early summer, Bush's campaign spent more than $100m in negative commercials trying to disqualify Kerry. Yet Kerry remained even, and with the Democratic convention pulled slightly ahead.

In a typical Bush operation, he outsourced the smears to a group that filled the airwaves with lies about Kerry's genuine record of war heroism in Vietnam. The media, mostly cable TV, acted as conduit for Bush's falsehoods, and Kerry was tarnished. At the Republican convention, speaker after speaker stressed the Democrats' effeminacy - "girly men" - and hailed Bush as all-wise commander-in-chief. Once again, Bush believed he was impregnable.

All he had to do was finesse the debates. But he was humiliated in all three. Kerry, however, possessed clarity, intelligence and maturity. Bush's response was a new ad, featuring wolves about to leap through the TV screen. But the projection of fear only exposed his vulnerability.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1337742,00.html

[UCLA Dem]

1. This was my favorite part!

"Meanwhile, the people's own mobilisation has produced new voter registrations in the millions, and hundreds of thousands of activists have spread in the last week throughout the battleground states. The Republicans desperately cast out ploys to suppress these voters, many of them African-American. In the end, the American people refuse to be frightened into becoming an unrecognisable nation that disdains, as the Declaration of Independence said, 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'".