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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
Then come up with another candidate for the Dems besides Kerry.
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Kerry won the nomination largely because of perceptions that he was the best positioned against Bush due to his relative strength (compared to the field) on foreign policy ("credentials" rather than policy positions) and his military background. Without Bush's perceived intrinsic, 9/11-derived strength in 2004, Kerry wouldn't have won the nomination. He wouldn't have even come close; it's also quite likely that that some candidates that didn't run because of Bush's perceived strength, choosing to wait, would have run in 2008 (Hillary Clinton is particularly likely.)
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I don't think Kerry could have beaten a jaywalking ticket.
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Possibly not, but without 9/11 Bush would have been easier to beat than a jaywalking ticket; the real challenge would have been the Democratic primary unless Bush faced a primary challenge (given the way his popularity trended throughout his term
except for the two points where he got big one-time "rally-around-the-flag" boosts, that may well have been a real threat if 9/11 hadn't happened to give him the first and biggest of those, and to set up the national mindset which allowed the initiation of the Iraq war to provide the second.)
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It's quite possible that in a lower security environment (and this does mean no Iraq war) the Dems wouldn't even have tried to use Kerry's ambiguous war record as an "asset". The 04 field was weak by any reasonable definition though.
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The 04 field was a product of the political environment, which was itself a product of 9/11 (and the Iraq War in the context of the post-9/11 environment.) Further, some of the candidates in the 04 field were weak only in the context of the conventional wisdom shaped by 9/11.
06-09-2009, 06:24 PM
Re: Non 9/11 Parallel Earth?
Linear Mode
