What accounts for President George W. Bush’s recent and durable
rise in the polls? Some argue the president is doing exceptionally
well among female voters. Still others notice he’s doing better
among blacks than he did in 2000. Of course, the simplest answer is
that the war on terror — whether or not one includes the Iraq War
in that family of issues — is the dominant theme of the campaign,
and in no physical model of the universe is that a formula for
victory for a career peacenik like John Kerry.
Regardless of your school of thought, the trend is indisputable.
States that once “leaned Democrat” (like Minnesota) are now
“toss-ups” and states that were “toss-ups” (like Ohio and New
Hampshire) just a few weeks ago now “lean Republican.”
I believe I have stumbled upon one underpinning phenomenon
driving this trend. I call it “Hate Fatigue.” The theory is this:
the Democrats wasted their hate for George W. Bush on movies,
books, blogs, meet-ups, commission hearings, and protests over the
last three years and they have just about run out of steam. And now
that the election is upon us, their potent venom has run dry. Some
have just given up.
One of the aforementioned Democrat states, New Jersey, provides
a good example. Not even the most enthusiastic partisan should
expect the Garden State to be in play this year. And yet a recent
poll by Farleigh Dickinson University shows the race to be
remarkably close there, 45%-44%. This is a reasonably strong figure
for Bush (who received 40% of the N.J. vote in 2000), but the real
story is closeness of the ballot and the exceptionally low figure
for John Kerry (Al Gore received 56% of the N.J. vote in 2000.) To
make matters worse for Kerry, 66% of Garden State Democrats “wish
they had different choices” for president. And while President Bush
is pulling down 85% of the state’s Republican vote, John Kerry is
receiving only 76% of its Democrat votes.
Lest we conclude this simply amounts to a lack of enthusiasm for
Kerry personally, consider this datum: while two-third of Democrats
believe Kerry will win New Jersey in November, only one-third of
all Democrats think it will ultimately result in a Kerry
presidency.
These people are demoralized.
BUT LET’S BE HONEST, this is New Jersey and the bulk of undecideds
will swing to Kerry on Election Day, especially if they are
undecided Democrats. Or they may not vote at all. Such a
cocktail of Democratic frustrations and apathy often results in a
suppressed Democratic turnout. That’s how Ronald Wilson Reagan —
who was nowhere near as universally beloved in life as he is in
death — won Democrat states like New Jersey in 1984.
I have spoken to several Republican and politically unaffiliated
pollsters in recent weeks and they confirm this trend is consistent
throughout the country. In places where many voters are still
furious about the Iraq War, President Bush is nonetheless on the
move.
Again, I attribute these trends to a “Hate Fatigue” that hangs
over the Democrat Party. I first encountered it in New Hampshire
during the primary campaign. On a night when Howard Dean still rode
high in the polls, I strolled into a bar and was shocked to see the
place filled with young people clad in Dean for President grab,
drinking imported beer, bee-bopping to alt rock, and cruising for
hook-ups. That night I decided Dean would lose because his campaign
mistook a visceral hatred for George W. Bush, expressed with
fervency at meet-ups and chat rooms, with actual electioneering.
Dean fell to earth almost as swiftly as he ascended to
prominence.
Kerry, who benefited from the Deaniacs’ childish hatred in the
primary, has now fallen victim to a corollary phenomenon in this
General Election. If some voters are still undecided after learning
that George W. Bush is actually Adolf Hitler, knew about 911 before
it happened, and alternately has Osama bin Laden in secret custody
and has no interest in apprehending him at all, what more
information could John Kerry possibly give them to push them over
the edge? Jacques Chirac’s home phone number?
And so many haters have turned to other venues to gratify their
political urges. They purchased entries in the Bush Haters
Book-of-the-Month Club by the hundreds of thousands. They were
glued to their small screen during the so-called 9/11 Commission
hearings. They flocked to obese, low-budget filmmaker Michael
Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 to suspend their disbelief and see
what the world would be like if all their conspiratorial dreams
came true.
But the movie is over. The credits have rolled. The lights are
back on. And the radicals are out of their seats, stretching and
yawning. They are tired and emotionally spent. It’s time to go
home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bush is still Hitler. But hey, they bought
some books. They saw the movie. They even blogged. What more could
the Democrat Party want from them?
