I just voted for Kerry

[DanS]

Just curious - is it normal in the US that a big newspaper openly recommends to vote for a certain candidate in the election? If I'm not totally wrong this would cause a strong reaction in most Euro countries (well, at least here in Germany). Not that I have something against voting for Kerry, it just surprises me.

Yes, all newspapers endorse candidates, but there's a catch. The editorial/comment and newsreporting/analysis functions are supposed to be separate and not to influence each other. The editorial/comment section of a newspaper are in a section clearly marked as editorial and comment. So there's an "editorial page" in all newspapers.

As you might imagine, the impact of these endorsements vary a lot. For president, I doubt they have any impact at all. For congress and state governor, they have slightly more impact. For local offices, some newspapers have a lot of influence.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Dauphin
BeBro, you think thats bad (from election '92):

Of course you can tell that some German media would rather prefer a certain candidate over another, but I can't remember that some of them openly asked the readers to support one side. Could be there were similar cases here, but I cannot remember one....

[Evil Knevil]

No, it's pretty common in the UK for a paper to endorse various candidates, but usually they stick to their original biases, like the Telegraph and the Tories, or the Mirror and Labour...

Except for the bastard Sun, which always backs the winning candidate, or if it's close like in 1992, the most Right-wing one. Don't get me started on the Sun
Day after 1992 election:
"It wos the Sun what swung it"
Arrogant ******.

[kronic]

@BeBro
Some of our (German) newspapers endorse candidates as well. IIRC the Financial Times Deutschland endorsed Stoiber in 2002.

[Harovan]

Endorse maybe, in form of biased articles, but I doubt they would meddle into elections like this, openly demanding their readers to vote for their candidate.

[kronic]

Well, unfortunately the article isn't free anymore, but you can go to http://www.ftd.de/wahlempfehlung. The article's title is: "FTD-Wahlempfehlung: Zeit für einen Wechsel" (our recommendation: time for a change). I remember that article, because it was really a big issue in the newspapers two years ago. You can find some comments on their site about the reactions. Certainly not usual, but these recommendations exist...

The article was published on 16-09-2002, the election was on 22-09-2002 IIRC.

[Harovan]

That's what we call "Probeballon" (test balloon). You see from the reactions (you wrote yourself that it's been a big issue) that things like this probably have no chance here. Besides, I doubt that many Financial Times abonnents vote SPD anyway .

[Imran Siddiqui]

Imran: How many offices did you have to vote for? Were there any tax issues or referendums?

Um... President, Congressman (3rd District NJ), Freeholder (2), Freeholder (1). I'm not sure why the Freeholders were broken up, though. Oh, Freeholders are our Country representatives (NJ is the only state to still call them Freeholders, IIRC).

I'm not sure why I didn't get a sheet to vote for the local campaigns... maybe that's in the odd years (when our Governor elections are). *shrug*

Btw, I voted for Kerry and then Republicans straight down.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Btw, I voted for Kerry and then Republicans straight down.

Oh well, no one is perfect.

[Imran Siddiqui]

it probably has never endorsed a Republican in its entire existence

Um... it backed Guiliani for reelection, IIRC.

Oh, and as for Tennessee . Beautiful state... especially by the Smokies.

Oh, and Pekka will definetly feel a culture shock. During campaign season there will be signs on many lawns, people taking openly about the campaign at workplaces, restaurants, etc, and people going door to door to explain a candidate position (he may even see the candidate for local office, himself at his doorway).

[Ramo]

It also endorsed Pataki.

Interesting Suskind article on Bush BTW:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?oref=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

[Ned]

Why I cannot vote for John Kerry

Dennis Prager


October 19, 2004

For reasons that are more psychological than political, George W. Bush has been the most hated president in memory. The Left has hated him from the beginning because they regarded his election as illegitimate: for the Left, the Florida Supreme Court's decisions on behalf of Al Gore were appropriate, while the U.S. Supreme Court's reversals of the Florida Supreme Court's decisions were inappropriate.

But there are many other reasons for what can fairly be described as a hatred bordering on the hysterical: President Bush claims to make his decisions based on the values informed by his Christian faith; he is a Texas -- read "cowboy" -- Republican; he has no regard for the gods of the Left -- in particular the news media and academia; and most important, he believes the United States is morally superior to the United Nations and therefore fully justified in acting alone at times.

While the Right is not as predisposed to hating fellow Americans as is the Left, many non-Left Americans, while not harboring the hatred for Sen. John Kerry that the Left harbors for George W. Bush, hold John Kerry in low regard and believe that bad things would accompany a John Kerry presidency.

Here is one voter's list:

1. John Kerry was described by Lynne Cheney as "not a good man" after Kerry used the Cheney daughter's sexual orientation to score political points. She may be right. As William Safire writes, "The sleazier purpose of the Kerry-Edwards spotlight on Mary Cheney is to confuse and dismay Bush supporters who believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, to suggest that Bush is as 'soft on same-sex' as Kerry is, and thereby to reduce a Bush core constituency's eagerness to go to the polls." Even the press, Safire notes, has respected Mary Cheney's right to privacy.

2. John Edwards, Kerry's choice as his running mate, is a trial lawyer who has made a fortune suing hospitals. Like many in his profession, he has made America a worse country. However, even more of his character was revealed when he said after the death of Christopher Reeve, "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

As Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer, himself wheelchair-bound from paralysis, wrote, "In my 25 years in Washington,
I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery.
Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable. . . . There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected."

3. Normally even partisan observers of elections say nothing about the wives of presidential candidates. Aside from propriety -- the families of candidates should remain off-limits to political attacks -- every wife of every presidential candidate and of every president in living memory has been an asset to the country. It brings me no joy to say that Teresa Heinz Kerry is not worthy of being the first lady of the United States of America. From her public utterances -- such as young American men and women dying in Iraq because of American "greed for oil" -- and her many years of financial support for radical groups, it is clear to me and many others that this woman does not particularly care for this country. Her primary identity is that of world citizen, and her values are those of France and anti-American Europe.

4. John Kerry represents the Party of Michael Moore. This America-hating Marxist was given a place of honor at the Democratic Party Convention in Boston, seated next to Jimmy Carter, a former Democratic president who said that Moore's Goebbels-like propaganda film "Fahrenheit 9/11" was one of his two favorite films.

5. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for Michael Moore, the ACLU, Ted Kennedy, trial lawyers, George Soros, the leftist academics who morally confuse generations of young Americans, and for Dan Rather, CBS News, and nearly the entire news complex that daily presents a proctologist's view of America. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for Jesse Jackson, whom Kerry has named a top adviser; and for Al Sharpton, with whom Kerry campaigns; for Sean Penn and his Hollywood world; and for the passionately pro-Kerry MTV, the greatest destroyer of young people's minds and souls in American history. And a vote for John Kerry is a vote for the countries that have abandoned us and against the countries that are helping us.

Two unimpressive men have been nominated by the Democratic Party to be president and vice president of the world's greatest country. If they win, this country will, for the first time, begin relinquishing that greatness.

[Ned]

Gore plays class warfare card like a true Marxist:

"He painted the Bush administration and its "right-wing" supporters as pursuing policies for the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the rest of the country.

"The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans ... who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world," Gore said.

"And in the process, he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities," he said.

"Truly, President Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the American people and give as much of it as possible to the already wealthy and privileged," he said.

Gore also criticized Bush for not holding anyone in his administration accountable for problems.

He said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had not been held accountable for "the most shameful and humiliating violation of American principles in recent memory" in the interrogations of prisoners in Iraq."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041018/pl_nm/campaign_gore_dc_1

That bit about Rumsfeld is just another example of Gore's far-left extremism.

[SlowwHand]

WTG, Imran.

Now you can volunteer for a relief group to help when terrorists blow up next building.

[SlowwHand]

BTW, both the American Legion and VFW support Bush.
If you want veteran's perspective.