Ralph Reed, the Bush-Cheney campaign's southeast chairman, said Bush's strong performance shows there is not a trade-off between pursuing swing voters and the conservative base. "You don't win by the margins we did and not do much better than in 2000 among seniors, women, Hispanics and a lot of other swing voters," he said.
For both Bush and Kerry, last night's results were a culmination of journeys that weave back decades in American political history. In Kerry's case, there rarely has been a political figure whose date with the presidency was such a jarring combination of inevitable and implausible.
| U.S. President | | Updated 2:09 AM ET | Precincts:0% |
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Four decades ago, the young man who worshiped John F. Kennedy and plainly styled himself after his hero was identified by friends and teachers as a man who would someday run for president. One year ago this week, Kerry was running 14 points behind former Vermont governor Howard Dean in New Hampshire polling, and was facing calls that he pull the plug on his ailing campaign.
His spectacular comeback in January in the Iowa caucus -- after which his grasp on the Democratic nomination was never seriously in doubt -- seemed to put him in a strong position to challenge Bush. But in the end, the same problems that were plaguing his candidacy a year ago were still haunting him this fall, Democrats said -- an inability to connect at a personal level with many voters and articulate a clear message.
By unifying his party on an anti-Bush message, Kerry was never forced to clarify sharply such questions of what he would do in Iraq -- if there continues to be violence there and he is unable to persuade more allies to join the American-led intervention -- or what his priorities would be in the tension between deficit reduction and expensive proposals on health care and other domestic policies.
The examples of the past influenced Bush's strategy as well. His aides made clear from the beginning of his presidency he was determined to avoid the fate of President George H.W. Bush, who lost his bid for a second term in part because he lost the allegiance of party conservatives. President Bush certainly succeeded in keeping the GOP unified.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said that however the election turns out, Bush made a choice that he did not have to make: "He could have chosen a 55 percent strategy, yet instead he went for a strategy that at best gets him to 50.001."
But early this morning, Bush had every reason to be satisfied with his calculations, which seemed on the cusp of bringing him a second term.
