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Originally Posted by Dagney
As an aside, and a completely unrelated topic, I find it interesting that it's being said that the majority of voters leaning towards the Democratic side of the ticket this November are not voting that way because Kerry's there.....they phrase their choice "I'm voting 'against' Bush", not "I'm voting FOR Kerry".
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If it's true, so what? By definition (except in really unusual circumstances) the presidential challenger is always less well-known on the national level than the incumbent. How many Republicans were sitting home pining for George W. Bush to get into the White House in, say, December of 1999? Most voters probably hadn't really heard of any of the candidates... W probably had more name recognition than the rest just because of his dad. In 1992 people thought Bush Sr. had screwed up and they wanted him out. In 1980 they wanted Carter out. If George H. "voodoo economics" W. Bush had won the Republican nomination in 1980, would Republican partisans have sat home because their hero Reagan was not in the race? The most flaming liberal voters supported Dean and Kucinich (sorry, I probably spelled that wrong) in this primary cycle. Are they supposed to vote for Bush because Kerry won the nomination instead?
Republicans are famous for loyalty to their party. How come that's all of a sudden a bad thing when Democrats start doing it?