Ceefax, page 125 3/4 says (emphasis added):
The Senate seat in Connecticut went to Joe Lieberman who stood as an independent on an anti-war platform after losing the Democratic primary.
Wrong. Ned Lamont won in the Democratic primary because Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war was unpopular with the committed Democratic voters who make up the constituency for a Democratic primary. However with voters as a whole, the pro-war Lieberman was much more popular which is why even running as an independent he was able to defeat the official Democratic Party candidate, Lamont.
UPDATE: Ah, I see the equivalent story on the website has half a clue:
The Senate seat in Connecticut has gone to Joe Lieberman, who stood as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont amid strong anti-war feeling. He has said he will align himself with the Democrats.
“Amid strong anti-war feeling”: what a masterpiece of ambiguity. This does better than the Ceefax story in that it is not flat-out wrong. However a reader who did not already know the story would have to work very hard to deduce that Lamont was the anti-war one and Lieberman the pro-war one.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ceefax now has a longer and more accurate explanation. However commenter “pounce” preserved an image of the original.
Did the BBC go bonkers last night on the US results. Naughtie was in a studio in DC and the Democratic woman said “I am going to be scandalous” so Naughtie responded “Be as scandalous as you want”
So she made claims on BBC World Service that the Republican candidate for Governor of Florida was homosexual and had a long-term sexual relationship with a convict………………..
Naughtie panicked and the Republican woman protested that these were unfounded rumours
I thought the BBC ran the risk of a major libel suit as the Republican woman pointed out the Blogs would relay this tomorrow as coming from the BBC
Amazing how the Democrats/lefties are happy to slag off people for being gay to excite the ‘evangelical’ vote yet always seem to claim to be the party that supports gays….
I note that the Beeb didn’t point out that Keith Ellison the first Muslim Congressman is a former member of the Nation of Islam and an alleged anti Semitic…now had he been say a former Nazi I am confident that the headline would have been ‘former Nazi elected…’
I also expect them to scream ‘lame duck’ for the next two years which is pointless since Bush can’t stand again anyway….indeed all Bush has to do is keep bringing forward popular laws and getting them rejected by the House and he’ll ensure Republican domination for the Presidency race and the next set of mid terms….personally I think the Dems have got themselves a poisoned chalice here.
Mid term elections.
What are they? Have we had wall-to-wall coverage by the BBC before?
Not that I can remember.
But then again when have the BBC been so desperate to prove that they were right all along, and George Bush was wrong, about Iraq. And as the BBC tell us, it is all about Iraq, as Beeboid loop coverage of Nancy “stop the war” Pellosi just goes to show.
Dave T – When lefties mention a Republican’s homosexuality it is not to “slag off” them off for being gay – they mention their homosexuality to highlight the hypocrisy of the evangelical right.
Though I do realise that not all republicans are homophobic – Dick “shotgun” Chenney has a gay daughter and constantly refuses to support homophobic policies.
The Today Programme really has its tail up today, as the opening to the sports section amply demonstrates:-
“It was a bad night for George Bush, and a bad one for Alex Fergusson…”
Naughtie goes wild. It looks like “we” have won.
Amazing. The Democrats have had such a landslide in Virginia, that it is…..very close. Some landslide.
I seem to remember that previous very close votes, where the Republicans eventually won, were approached in a slightly different way:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6114108.stm
I don’t reckon the Beeb’s skills in geography – their interactive map of the US seems to have lost NY.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/americas/06/vote_usa/html/48.stm
Natalie wrote;
“Rebels are always anti-war, right? Ceefax, page 125 3/4 says “(emphasis added):
The Senate seat in Connecticut went to Joe Liebermann who stood as an independent on an anti-war platform after losing the Democratic primary.
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/2759/image1ud7.jpg
http://www.ceefax.tv/
Yes but the Dem smear Naughtie let through onto the BBC World Service is an untruth apparently which spells LIBEL
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/gay/
Isn’t this linked to the BBC too ? What point does it try to make ? Should British politics copy this >?
Dave T:
Firstly get another name please or are you really John Reith…?
The point and it applies to race and religion as well is that the Dems ALWAYS scream loudest yet whenever any of their chaps/chappesses do the same they seem (as does the Beeb) very quiet. Funny how so many Dems issued ads that were at best misleading at worst downright lies. Funny how flinging Oreo (black/white) biscuits at black Republican candidates warrants nary a mention yet you only to have to look at the likes of Robert (ex KKK) Byrd (Dem-West Virginia)to wonder how they manage to get away with things the Republicans don’t.
Wonder how Beeb et al will spin the various Dems awaiting charges/trial on fraud/theft charges etc when they do eventually get to trial. I mean, Clinton still gets a pass as did JF Kennedy for their abuse of power in exchange for ‘sex’. I still think that once the US sees what the Dems really get up to now they have the balance of power in the lower house then it will undermine their next efforts. The Dems have gone very quiet about all the electoral fraud they were screaming about yesterday to cover their backsides in case they lost. Then again there are several investigations going on and they mostly involve Dems and allied organisations such as ACORN. Perhaps this is all part of the Rove master plan….give them enough rope….
Is there even one heterosexual Republican?
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/charlie-crist/is-there-even-one-heterosexual-republican-211964.php
Dave T,
Given that “dave t” above has long been a regular commenter, it would indeed be helpful if you could pick another nickname than “Dave T” in order to avoid confusion.
Last night the Beeb were reporting on CNN’s exit poll which asked what voters what were the major issues affecting their votes.
In order of importance the survey ranked corruption at the top, followed by terrorism, the economy and the war in Iraq.
No surprise, then, to find the BBC spinning the opinion poll to suit their own prejudices…
“Correspondents say the Democrat gains reflect voter discontent with the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.”
“A national exit poll for the Associated Press indicated that about two-thirds of people felt Iraq was very important to their vote.”
“Yet even more voters – about 80% – said the economy, government corruption and scandal were very important to their votes, the survey of 8,344 voters said.”
So ‘correspondents’ make the assumption that Iraq was the most important issue, then decline to mention terrorism at all.
No wonder no ‘correspondent’ wanted to put his or her name to this piece of mendacious spin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6127216.
“perhaps this is all part of the Rove master plan….give them enough rope….”
“personally I think the Dems have got themselves a poisoned chalice here.”
you american dave? you seem to have taken this quite personally. maybe the democrats let bush in deliberately knowing that his presidency would damage the republicans?
Steve E,
I noticed that as well. It was truly bizarre. I didn’t expect Al-Beebya to so blatantely ignore things that didn’t fit their world view.
It seems they have an agenda, and when the facts don’t fit it, they just ignore or omit the facts!
Steve E. | 08.11.06 – 11:00 am
Before you have a go at BBC correspondents and accuse them of fitting the facts to their supposed worldview, maybe you should learn how to read exit polls.
First – terrorism. AP’s exit poll showed 7 out of 10 voters cited terrorism as one of their main concerns. (More than CNN’s)
But what matters is not so much the numbers citing an issue as which way their votes split.
On terrorism AP found that they divided roughly 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans.
That means that if only those citing terrorism had voted – the result would have been a dead heat.
So terrorism turned out to be neutral in electoral terms.
If you want to EXPLAIN Democrat gains (which is what BBC corrs were called on to do) you have to find those significant hot-button issues where the votes split in the Dems favour.
Two clear ones were corruption and Iraq.
According to AP 4 out of 10 voters cited corruption. (CNN had this a bit higher). These voters voted overwhelmingly Democrat.
Nevertheless, corruption wasn’t the clincher. 4 out 10 is still a minority. And most of those citing corruption were die-hard Dems. Not so many swing voters.
So what issues were cited by a clear majority and whose citers split in the Dems’ favour?
Iraq and Bush’s leadership style.
According to the AP poll:
Six in 10 voters said the war hasn’t improved the nation’s long-term security, and they voted for Democrats by 3-1.
Fifty-seven percent of voters disapproved of Bush’s presidency.
{BBC} “Correspondents say the Democrat gains reflect voter discontent with the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.”
They were right.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/08/AR2006110800465.html
The ABC poll showed nearly six in 10 voters disapprove of the Iraq war, about the same number who disapprove of Bush’s job performance.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061107-063537-1965r
John Reith
Thank you very much for that insight into the methadology of US opinion polls.
However, if 70% of American voters have told pollsters that terrorism remains one of their highest concerns (even allowing for that fact that in in voting terms • being split 50/50 amongst Democrats and Republicans the issue is electorally “neutral” as you put it), why did the unknown BBC “correspondent” completely ignore the views of that 70% of US voters when he came to “report” the results of last night’s election results to the UK public?
Again… “A national exit poll for the Associated Press indicated that about two-thirds of people felt Iraq was very important to their vote.”
“Yet even more voters – about 80% – said the economy, government corruption and scandal were very important to their votes, the survey of 8,344 voters said.”
70% is obviously too low a figure to factor into the equation…
Go figure.
CEEFAX : it now says, by way of explanation, that Lieberman got in because of “Republican votes”.
Which appears to be a valid explanation for his success as an ‘independent’ – but maybe, just maybe, the guy was a good senator?
Yes, I just saw that too.
John Reith…
70% is obviously too low a figure to factor into the equation…
(unlike the 66% of voters who “felt Iraq was very important to their vote.”)
Steve E. | 08.11.06 – 12:33 pm
Goodness Steve E you are being slow on the uptake this morning.
You quote the BBC as saying:
“Correspondents say the Democrat gains reflect voter discontent with the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.”
The correspondents were EXPLAINING GAINS.
Since neutral factors have no explanatory value, they cannot be part of an explanation of gains and shouldn’t be ‘factored into’ what you (falsely) characterize as an ‘equation’.
If you researched the matter thoroughly you’d probably find that even more than 70% drank Coca Cola at some point in their lives. But if you then found – as seems likely – that drinking Coke was equally widespread among Republicans as among Democrats, you wouldn’t ‘factor in’ Coca Cola drinking as part of your explanation as to why the Democrats won more seats – would you?
I hope that clarifies why the BBC correspondents were right to ‘ignore’
an irrelevant factor.
If it still isn’t clear, think of it like this:
We don’t yet know what the share of the vote will be. Let’s ignore regional variation and independents and, for the sake of argument, imagine that the Dems will turn out to have won 51% of the popular vote. The Republicans 49%.
Now, let’s switch taxonomy and talk about points rather than percentages (for reasons which I hope I don’t have to explain).
Of the 51 points the Dems scored in our hypothetical model, 45 can be attributed to people who said that:
“the war hasn’t improved the nation’s long-term security”
How do we know that? Because 6 out of 10 made that statement – and their votes split
4.5 Democrat, 1.5 Republican ( in a ratio of 3:1) which gives us 4.5 out of ten or 45% of the total vote, or 45 out of the 51 points.
That leaves 6 Democrat points to be accounted for among Democrat voters who are not unhappy with the war – Dems who support Joe Lieberman or just Dems who don’t make a big deal of Iraq. Their points can be explained by: dislike of Bush/the economy/corruption/local issues.
Geddit?
John Reith,
While your long and passioned defence in response in response to Steve E may have some merit, you are still strangely silent on the “lies” told by Ceefax detailed on the preamble to this thread. I assume that your silence on this issue is a tacit admission that this information, at the very best, was “false and misleading”?
Heron
I can’t get Ceefax where I am at the mo but if it said:
“Joe Liebermann who stood as an independent on an anti-war platform”
it is clearly wrong.
The most likely explanation is that the person who keys stuff into Ceefax typed ‘anti-war’ when he/she meant to write ‘pro-war’.
The least likely explanation is that a cabal of Ceefax staff are engaged in a vast left-wing conspiracy with Terry McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton to smear Joe Lieberman as a cheese-eating surrender monkey.
I dare say – like most typos – it will be/has been corrected.
John Reith,
While I agree with you that there would have been a good number of votes against Bush because of Iraq, I believe the BBC are exaggerating the mistakes that they make during every single local election campaign over here. That “Politics is Local”. A friend of mine in Wandsworth is about as apolitical as you can get, yet he passionately votes Conservative every time because it keeps his council tax down. This sort of mentality is equally appropriate in America, and while many Americans are ant-Iraq, there will only be a small minority who will go so far as to use this vote as a demonstration against Iraq. Economics, running of services, specific local issues, education are far more likely to influence voting patterns. As we saw in the 1990s with Major and now with Blair, trustworthiness is also a big issue. The recent scandals have shown the Republicans as untrustworthy. Your point about Iraq being a concern is valid, but the suggestion that this is one giant protest vote over the war is absolutely absurd. I am sure that you and many at the Beeb would rather have overbearing, nannying centralised state government, but the reality is that Politics is Local. Even more so in the States than over here.
“The least likely explanation is that a cabal of Ceefax staff are engaged in a vast left-wing conspiracy with Terry McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton to smear Joe Lieberman as a cheese-eating surrender monkey.”
Thanks Mr Reith, you are right on that one. I’m less convinced that it wasn’t put in deliberately to fit in with an anti-war agenda. Such big errors that remain uncorrected for so long only add to such suspicions.
yes and yet another success for B-BBC!
Although it would have been more refreshing to have seen something like “Joe Leiberman, a well-known supporter of the Iraq war was relected to the Senate as an Independent with support from both Democrat and Republican voters”. That wouldn’t fit the usual agenda, however…
Heron 1.39pm
Heron
Usually local is important. This time, most US analysts seem to be saying it’s different.
CNN
“defying the traditional political maxim that “all politics is local,” 62 percent of voters said national issues mattered more than local issues when deciding which House candidate to pick. ”
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/07/election.exitpolls/
Washington Post
The electorate also appears to have been more strongly swayed by national issues rather than local ones.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2006/11/national_exit_polls_2nd_wave.html
My bet – when everything comes out in the wash – is that corruption will be a bigger factor than people currently suppose and that ‘unhappy with the war’ will need some unpicking.
Lots of people supported the war, still support the war but think it is being run incompetently.
Part of this ‘competence/incompetence’ shows up in the general attitude to Bush question but it’s hard to identify the swing voters who back the war in principle and who voted for Bush in the Presidential race against Kerry but went with the Dems this time perhaps because they don’t care for Rummie.
Aha…I see Natalie has posted:
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ceefax now has a longer and more accurate explanation. However commenter “pounce” preserved an image of the original.
What for I wonder? Onanistic purposes?
It’s really not that exciting.
John Reith
So let me get this right…
80% of US voters said the economy, government corruption and scandal were very important to their votes…
66% of US voters said that Iraq was very important to their vote…
And yet the BBC failed to mention the 70% of US voters who said that terrorism was very important to their votes because…”the correspondents were right to ‘ignore’ an irrelevant factor.”
jr
You’ve got your big spade out again.
By the way, you can’t get Ceefax where you are, or is it that it’s all in Welsh west of Offa’s dyke.
“A CNN exit poll of swing issues put Iraq, terrorism, the economy and corruption of equal concern to voters, with the Republicans scoring badly on them all.”
If even Simon Jenkins states things this clearly, why can’t the BBC?
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_jenkins/2006/11/post_593.html
Steve E. | 08.11.06 – 2:00 pm |
I can’t believe you still don’t understand the difference between what information is relevant when EXPLAINING a GAIN and what is not.
Going back to my points system:
terrorism scores 35 out of the Dems notional 51.
But terrorism also accounts for 35 of the Republicans’ 49.
So terrorism didn’t swing it either way.
The war scores 45 of the Dems 51.
So, for democrat voters, unhappiness about the war is a bigger factor than terrorism.
No other factor so far identified scores more than 45. (Though I have a personal hunch that corruption will turn out to be bigger than currently thought).
If you’re still having problems ask yourself this question:
‘Did the democrats make gains in the House of Representatives because of their stand on the terrorism issue, or does it seem more likely that some people switched from Republican to Democrat because they were unhappy with the conduct of the war in Iraq?’
John Reith,
Some truth in your answer; however CNN and Washington Post are virulently anti-Iraq. That’s not to say they’re wrong, but it is certainly to say they can’t be trusted as objective analysts without an agenda.
I actually believe the BBC is less to blame on this because the Iraq war is more relevant to us than most other electoral issues over there. I still don’t agree with its analysis though, nor do I agree with its scarcely-contained joy at the result.
RE: your (rather smug) response to Natalie. Maybe not getting it diametrically wrong in the first place would be better than correcting it later – later even than it was exposed on here, I might add. But thanks for the correction, anyway!
John, I really don’t care whether terrorism as an issue helped to swing votes in any particular State. What I care about is the BBC • deliberately • refusing to accurately report the exit polls that were carried out in the US.
“Correspondents say the Democrat gains reflect voter discontent with the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.” 11.00am this morning.
“Correspondents say Democratic gains reflect voter discontent over Iraq, government corruption and the economy.” 14.50pm this afternoon.
Obviously, voter discontent over terrorism remains “neutral”.
Steve E. | 08.11.06 – 3:16 pm
Steve, this is how Fox reported it:
National Exit Poll: Midterms Come Down to Iraq, Bush
The Congressional elections came down to the war in Iraq, the president who took the country there and an electorate looking for change.
Voters across the nation said they disapprove of the job President Bush is doing and many said their vote for Congress was to express opposition to him. A clear majority said they disapprove of the war in Iraq, and most said they do not believe it has improved the long-term security of the country.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,228104,00.html
Now, are you going to accuse Fox journalists of being ‘mendacious’ or of putting an anti-war or anti-Bush ‘spin’ on the story?
No, thought not.
Fox also says that in its poll:
A 59-percent majority thinks the war in Iraq has not made the country safer from terrorism, and those voters strongly favored the Democrats.
Similarly, 56 percent disapprove of the war in Iraq, and those voters overwhelmingly favored the Democratic candidate.
Although Republicans tried to focus their campaigns on local issues, voters today said national issues mattered more to deciding their vote
Knock me down with a feather. Most anti-war people are Democrat. That’s rather different than saying that huge numbers of people CHANGED their vote because of dissatisfaction with the war, as the MSM seems to imply. I would wager that a very large proportion of those 56% (only 56%, listening to the BBC you’d think it was more like 96%!) have never voted Republican in their lives. A wholly misleading non-point there from Mr Reith.
John, since you obviously have influence at the Corporation, let’s agree on the following…
If at 11.00am the BBC website reported the following “Correspondents say the Democrat gains reflect voter discontent with the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.”
And at 14.50 they corrected this to say “Correspondents say Democratic gains reflect voter discontent over Iraq, government corruption and the economy.”
If by 17.00pm, the report states “Correspondents say Democratic gains reflect voter discontent over Iraq, terrorism, government corruption and the economy” I shall stop criticising their reports. OK?
JR
Well I can’t believe that you can’t see the difference between explaining the gain and listing important issues. If you look at what was actually said, rather than what you think you can get away with pretending was said:
“Correspondents say the Democrat gains reflect voter discontent with the war in Iraq and the Bush administration.”
“A national exit poll for the Associated Press indicated that about two-thirds of people felt Iraq was very important to their vote.”
“Yet even more voters – about 80% – said the economy, government corruption and scandal were very important to their votes, the survey of 8,344 voters said.”
So they give unnamed correspondents’ guess as to what the deciding issue was (first piece of bias). Considering the general hue of US media, and the company most BBC correspondents keep this is not an objective piece of reporting.
Then they report that certain other issues were more commonly cited as influencing votes (no mention of the overall influence of those issues on the poll result as you are trying desperately to imply, just that they were more commonly put as important issues to the individual voter), leaving out the one major factor the BBC typically likes to under-report (second piece of bias).
Steve E
This is how ABC News reported their poll:
Fifty-seven percent in the national exit poll disapproved of the way President George W. Bush is handling his job, 56 percent disapproved of the war in Iraq….It mattered: Each of these groups voted overwhelmingly for Democrats running for the U.S. House, giving the Democrats a 53-45 percent advantage in national House vote in the exit poll, their best since 1990.
The president and the war were the lightning rods of the election.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2006/story?id=2637650&page=1
Forbes Magazine:
Washington, D.C. – Democrats captured the House and seemed within a hair’s breadth of seizing the Senate Wednesday morning, amid a groundswell of dissatisfaction with President George W. Bush and his handling of the Iraq War.
http://www.forbes.com/home/businessinthebeltway/2006/11/08/elections-vote-counting-biz-wash-cx_jh_1108vote.html
And closer examination of the AP poll (see my earlier comment) suggests what the ‘swing’ issue – the one on which voters changed their minds – was:
In the National Exit poll of 2004 46% agreed that ‘the war has improved the long-term security of the United States’. Last night that was reduced from 46 to just over 30%. That’s where the Dems got their edge.
Speaking as an American and a registered Republican I am depressed.
No, I am scared.
I would be neither depressed nor scared if I believed that the Democrates were committed to wining in Iraq, however misguided I thought their strategy. Unfortunately as we all know the Democrates have desired defeat in Iraq from the beginning of the war and now they are in a position to achieve that aim.
Democrates *want* another Vietnam, they want an ignominous retreat from a country collapsing into chaos. They didn’t care about handing Communism a victory and they surely don’t care about handing the Jihadists one too.
God help Iraq. And God save the United States, how long before I’m not allowed to say that any more??
“I also expect them to scream ‘lame duck’ for the next two years which is pointless since Bush can’t stand again anyway….indeed all Bush has to do is keep bringing forward popular laws and getting them rejected by the House and he’ll ensure Republican domination for the Presidency race and the next set of mid terms….personally I think the Dems have got themselves a poisoned chalice here.”
Thank you for that Dave t. I must hang on to my American optimism – and remember, as our envoy is at this moment reminding the anxious Iraqis – that the President still controlls foreign affairs.
One of the ODD things about the election is that AMericans were worried about the economy when the economy has
a) very low unemployment figures.
b) the Dow etc reaching record highs.
Could it be the lying MSM spin about the US economy that worried Americans?
Abandon ship!
Mid term elections. What are they? Have we had wall-to-wall coverage by the BBC before?
Hah. Exactly what I thought. I suspect they became the most important elections in American history at about the time the Democrats were forecast to make gains.
Steve E. | 08.11.06 – 3:37 pm |
“If by 17.00pm, the report states “Correspondents say Democratic gains reflect voter discontent over Iraq, terrorism, government corruption and the economy” I shall stop criticising their reports. OK?”
If it does say that, it will be wrong according to all the figures I’ve seen so far.
You clearly believe that ‘Democrat gains reflect voter discontent over……terrorism’
I see no evidence that voters are ‘discontented’ over terrorism.
Quite the opposite according to some polls.
AP says voters who cite terrorism as a key issue divide 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.
Fox, however, says that the Republicans got a majority of those citing terrorism in its poll.
If Fox is more accurate than AP – then no way on Earth can you say “Democratic gains reflect voter discontent over terrorism”.
If Fox is right, then a majority of those who care a lot about terrorism were ‘satisfied’ and not ‘discontent’.
If AP is right – it was a draw – the majority neither satisfied nor discontented on this issue.
Lieberman may be pro-Iraq war, but he also wants Rumsfeld sacked.
How anyone can defend an incompetent cretin like Rumsfeld is a mystery to me. Rummy had no post-war strategy whatsoever.
“Stay the course” is not a policy, its the kind of denial you see in alcoholics, funnily enough.
The American public do not want to be stuck in Iraq for years on end.
John, thank you for the abc site which you quote extensively from.
However, you fail to mention the following…
“The Republicans’ pushback to concerns about the war in Iraq has been the broader U.S. campaign against terrorism, the issue that won Bush re-election in 2004. This year, it didn’t work: Just 29 percent of voters said they trusted only the Republicans to make the country safer, far down from the 49 percent who only trusted Bush to handle terrorism in 2004.
Moreover, among voters who said terrorism is “extremely important” to their vote the Republicans held only a 53-46 percent advantage. By contrast, the Democrats won by 60-38 percent among people who called the war in Iraq extremely important, and by a nearly identical 59-39 percent who said the same of the economy.”
Which actually makes my point about the bias inherent in the BBC (and obviously, yourself) because the quote “among voters who said terrorism is “extremely important” to their vote the Republicans held only a 53-46 percent advantage” appears nowhere.
I don’t think Bush should ever be forgiven for mocking the sacrifices of troops by joking about the lack of WMD in Iraq.
People here seem to have forgotten that sick joke by Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner a couple of years ago.
cockney
Nae mate, I is a true blue Brit but what happens over the pond affects us in many ways.
The point I have seen being made in lots of blogs over the water is that the Dems have spent a long time trying to undermine the Repubs and Bush etc; now they have to deliver or they will really suffer in two years time. So the economy for example has been doing well on a number of fronts yet was not reported very much by the media. I am eagerly awaiting the likes of the Washington Post, LA Times and New York Times (all quoted by Gavin Easler in his BBC article – way to go for impartiality of sources there!) to finally start giving daily announcements of how well things really are to try and make it look like the Dems were the cause!
As another example, my Dem voting buddy in Seattle (no not Bill Gates!) thinks they were also concentrating on the wrong things such as the Iraq War. If they really DO start pushing for early withdrawal or cut and run as it has been termed then they will discover just how many Dems and floating voters actually do think that the US needs to stay the course and will vote accordingly. Indeed may of the Dems elected are what they call ‘Blue Dog’ Dems in that they support some Republican/bipartisan policies so Bush might actually find it easier to get some policies through!
All in all an interesting campaign but not helped by the BBC’s lack of balance in so many reports.
Oh, and my line saying
If by 17.00pm, the report states “Correspondents say Democratic gains reflect voter discontent over Iraq, terrorism, government corruption and the economy” I shall stop criticising their reports. OK?
was a joke