ChemicalKinetics, in your criticisms of dynamaso, once again you demonstrate your inability to understand hyperbole. It is a problem faced by most of Moore's critics (except people like me of course because I am brilliant).

A lot of people on the extreme Right got very upset by Moore and those of them who are part of JU have thus attributed Bush's victory to the idea that everybody doesn't like Moore. It is true that some of the lies spread by his extreme critics had an effect on an uninformed public who then decided that everything Moore said was obviously a lie. But I think the main determining factor was abortion, stem cells and gay marriage. It was this that mobilised religious Democrats to vote for Bush. There were many factors, but this was the main thing imo.

Now to clarify, I disagree with some of what Moore says and I don't think he's a beacon of truth. But many of his criticis are as ridiculous as they claim Moore to be.

The Howard situation was very different because Australia has compulsory voting. It was the lies about the economy that won the day.

dynamaso

Look you may say you don't hate Bush, but there is no doubt that you strongly dislike him because you ask the question of "why didn't Americans burn Bush". If only really understand the true meaning of "burning" someone.... Give me one reason why you hate Bush. Are you truely hate Bush because he ran up a deflicit? Is that it?

Dynamaso -

It's a difficult task for any of us, with our limited perspective and inevitable bias, to give you a definitive answer. And I would be suspicious of anyone who claims to have it.

Since all any of us can do is offer our opinion, informed or otherwise, here goes.

I believe Michael Moore's Hatefest played great to the liberal elite choir, which happened to include the majority of the old media, gaining it a lot of exposure domestically and abroad, perhaps giving foreigners a distorted impression of its impact, but played very poorly to the majority of ordinary voters, who were unable to reconcile the caricature of Bush painted by Moore with the man they had observed with their own eyes. The pervasive disdain for our sitting President evident in much of the media and among those who consider themselves the intellectual elites angered many people, not just Republicans, though it surely did that, but also many neutral or independent voters. And it must have angered at least some Democrats, or Bush would not have won, if you believe the often-cited statistic that there are more registered Democrats than registered Republicans in the US, by a significant percentage (can't remember the number). I also think there was a significant percentage of the electorate which could not abide the relentless, often baseless & sometimes wholly invented, parade of attack stories and the eagerness of much of the press to focus entirely on the negative with barely a mention of what was going well in Iraq. I don't know this for sure, but I wonder how much the stories in the press failing to jive with what people were hearing from their family members, friends and acquaintances actually serving in Iraq, might have influenced people.

No, the voting was not rigged. Because of the heat focused on election boards following the silliness in Florida in 2000, the election was conducted almost flawlessly thanks to very aggressive planning throughout the country - no election board wanted to be under the microscope the way Palm Beach County was in 2000.

As I said, the "reasons" Bush won are far more complex than what any of us could possibly express in a post, but at least you have a little more information and perspective.

To turn the tables a bit, it seemed that Howard was in potential trouble before your election with polls being reported here that showed the race pretty much a dead heat, yet he won with a very comfortable margin, so impressions formed from distant sources can obviously be very distorted.

Cheers,
Daiwa

I dont see what it is that you hate about Bush, unless you really beleive the lies that Mikey tells you. In which case, you are just deluded.

Bush is very much the centrist that everyone wants, yet the left cant get over the fact that he won by a very slim margin in 02. So they just set out to trash him, not work with him. They were simply destined to lose.

Instead of listening to the rantings of the rabid, research what Bush has done, and promised to do. You will find that he is socially more left than right, but in Foreign policy, he takes a stand and follows through. One of the biggest reasons that OBL hit us on 9/11 was he thought that we were a paper tiger. And with Clinton and Kerry (if god forbig he would have won), we were. With Bush, he found out we are not.

shows that politics involves much more than what meets the eye...