John L. Perry
Monday, Mar. 08, 2004

The truth is, the entire Democratic campaign to date has been a colossal plop. It has failed because its overriding message has from the outset been one of vicious hatred for President Bush.

Aimed at energizing the party’s radical core, that has simply not sold among most Democrats.

Results of all the 2004 primaries and caucuses, from Iowa through Super Tuesday, show overwhelming rejection of the Democratic hate crusade, led first by Howard Dean and then Kerry, with lesser candidates repeating the refrain.

Who Needs Elections?

Yet, by clicking on the television news or picking up the paper, you’d think a ticker-tape parade was forming for Kerry along Fifth Avenue.

Leftist news media are determined to declare the winner. After all, America has spoken, through incessant polling of the latest opinions of – wow! – 500 to 1,000 “likely” voters and in – golly gee! – 20 primaries and 10 caucuses, coast to coast, border to border. It’s all over but the swearing in.

Whoa! Let’s take a factual look at what really did – and did not – happen in the primaries and caucuses.

Inside the Returns

In those 29 states plus the District of Columbia, 10,046,612 votes were cast this year for Democratic presidential candidates. Sounds like a lot? It’s not, compared with the 104,744,258 votes cast nationwide in the 2000 presidential election.

Concentrate, though, on the 30 primaries and caucuses so far this year where the 10,046,612 votes were recorded. In those same jurisdictions, the total cast in the 2000 presidential election was 60,692,349.

Thus, only 16.6 percent of the number of voters who went to the polls there in the 2000 presidential election bothered to show up for the primaries and caucuses this year.

Ignored by the Press

The remaining 83.4 percent voted with their seats and sat home, conveniently not mentioned by the leftist news media.

No one expects primary turnouts to equal general-election votes, but 16.6 percent is something pitiful. And 83.4 percent has enormous meaning.

It means neither Kerry nor any of the other Democratic contenders was able to light a fire under more than a relative handful of voters, despite all the news-media hoopla and spinning.

Slim Pickings

The true picture was even more bleak for Kerry, himself. In only 12 Democratic primaries and five caucuses out of the 30 did he receive more than half the votes.

However, in those primaries and caucuses he did poll 5,390,647 votes – 53.7 percent of the 10,046,612 cast. Sounds impressive, until you realize that is but 8.9 percent of the 2000 presidential-election turnout in those same jurisdictions.

And on the basis of that the news media have practically inaugurated him president?

Much Ado About Iowa

If you’re up to a little humor, take a look at the Iowa caucuses of 2004. All of 3,000 humans took part – and not all of those were actually from Iowa. That’s a pitiful two-tenths of 1 percent of the presidential-election voters in that state four years ago.

How many in the Iowa caucuses opted for Kerry? A smashing 1,128, or only 37.6 percent (to John Edwards’ 31.9 percent and Howard Dean’s 18 percent).

Think of all the money, time and effort Kerry spent convincing those 1,128 to vote for him – not to mention the cost, confusion and caterwauling the TV news industry invested in Iowa.

Wait till this sinks in on the bean-counters back at the networks. One of these years, Iowa is going to throw a caucus and nobody will come to cover it.

Some Tidal Wave

Granted, caucuses are by their nature confined to a few hardy activists. (What does that say about how representative they are of the general voting population nearly a year away?) So, extract caucuses from these calculations.

Doesn’t help much. In the 2000 presidential election, 47,749,509 votes were cast in the 20 states that have held their non-caucus primaries so far this year. In these primaries, a total of 9,671,399 people, or 20.3 percent of that number, voted. The other four out of five were so energized, inspired and motivated by the candidates they couldn’t be bothered.

This is a surge? Sluggish tidal bores in Nova Scotia send up bigger ripples than this.

Where They Know Him

In Kerry’s very own Massachusetts, the best he and fellow Democratic candidates together could scare up was 613,636 votes – 22.9 percent of the 2,679,702 who went to the polls in the Bay State in the 2000 presidential election.

Wouldn’t you think Massachusetts liberals would turn out in droves to show the world their enthusiasm for their most left-lurching son? But all Kerry got were 440,929 votes. Uncle Teddy and the Rat Pack remnants will have to do a lot better by him than that 16.5 percent of the state’s 2000 presidential vote come next November. Red Sox, move over.

Neither did Howard Dean nor John Edwards set his native woods on fire. Nearly three voters in four of the number voting in the 2000 presidential election in Vermont declined to emerged from the maples to vote for Democrats in this year’s primary. Dean, himself, polled a less than awe-inspiring 44,313 votes.

A Silly Souvenir

In South Carolina, where Edwards was born and is supposedly just loved to pieces, the best he could scare up was 44.9 percent of the votes cast in the primary, although that plurality let him claim victory (his only).

Home, sweet home wasn’t the only place Democratic candidates failed to enchant voters. The best that Democrats could do in Hillary Clinton’s adopted New York was 9.9 percent of the number of voters in the 2000 presidential election. Where were the other 90.1 percent? Caught in traffic? This is the same state the news-media keep saying is all locked up for the Democratic Party.

Maine was bored out of its gourd – a yawning 2.4 percent of the last presidential turnout there.

Surprise!

The winner of the not-quite-asleep award was New Hampshire, which has made quadrennial primaries a cottage industry and hedge against state taxes. It had the highest turnout – 219,246, or 38.8 percent, compared with the 2000 presidential election.

All that trudging through the snow by shivering TV prophets with runny noses chasing 219,246 votes that were supposed to identify the president-to-come. Their revelation: John Kerry, beloved neighbor from next-door tax-burdened Massachusetts, with 84,229 votes – a paltry plurality of 38.4 percent.

Wisconsin was runner-up: 31.9 percent of the number of its votes cast in the prior presidential election. And of those 825,855 primary votes, Kerry got only 327,672 – a measly 39.7 percent plurality.

California was going anything but wild for Democrats. Three-fourths of the number of its voters in the 2000 presidential election were too unimpressed to be troubled to vote.

So stop already with this news-media flummery about a firestorm of support raging for Kerry. It simply isn’t there.

What It Really Means

How to explain this lackadaisical support for Kerry or any of those Democratic hopefuls this time around? Their common denominator was hatred.

Every last one of them, even Edwards with his frozen courtroom smile, spent months whipping up anti-Bush sentiment. It was far worse than the usual partisan hostility.

It was pure, unadulterated hatred for the president of the United States. And it worked like a charm when it came to bringing out the hard-core, far-left revenge-seekers. But that was the high-water mark of this tide of hatred.

Rejection of Hatred

The good news for all who love this nation and want no part of vilification campaigns is that in state after state the overwhelming majority of potential November voters wasn’t buying hatred.

When the best (or worst) John Kerry can do is gin up 16.6 percent with a hate-Bush campaign, it means the other 83.4 percent wasn’t interested.

There’s enough room in there for George W. Bush to win handily in November with the opposite kind of campaign.

Standing Up to Hatred

Does this mean the president should not run a vigorous campaign. Of course not. He must, for the antidote to hatred is engagement, never indifference.

Nor does that mean he should resort to a counter-campaign of hatred. There’s no market among mainstream Americans for that, either. They understand, and respect, the difference between vigor and hatred.

The Democratic primaries and caucuses from Iowa through Super Tuesday tell one dramatic and powerful story, for Democrats and Republicans alike: Even hatred has its limits.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

Other Columns by John L. Perry

Editor's note:
Get the 2004 Bush vs. Kerry Poll Numbers before the White House! Click Here

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
2004 Elections
John Kerry On the Record
NewsMax.com/Zogby Poll
Sen John Kerry