Dr. Frank's What's-it

I choose bachelorette #5

Just to pull something out of the comments to this item, Ben had a great answer to Dave Bug's question about how the Democratic contestants each stack up against Bush in the election for "swing voters":

To put it in dating terms:

Bush v. Clark: She's new to the dating game and doesn't know the rules. Likely to ask you to take care of her dog for the weekend after one date, or show up at your apt. with her suitcase at three a.m. after her roommate kicks her out for being annoying. Move to the third party, quick.

Bush v. Lieberman: Like dating a girl who will only do it with the lights out. She hates your friends and wishes you wouldn't drink so much. You find another girl (third party).

Bush vs. Kucinich or Sharpton: She looks crazy, she talks crazy, she acts crazy, and being too old to think that Crazy equals Interesting, you run (don't walk) to the comforting, relatively sane arms of any available third party and leave Crazy Girl to the men with the butterfly nets.

Bush v. Dean: She has no friends and hates yours. She wants your relationship to be you and her against the world, sitting in the apartment every night drunk on misanthropy. Insanely jealous and subject to bouts of suicidal depression. She's so full of cynicism that you know it's only a matter of time before she starts hating you; the murder/suicide plot is a distinct possiblity. You vote Bush just to avoid a potentially lethal catastrophe.

Bush v. Edwards - She's not perfect, but she's close. Knowing a good thing when you see one, you pull the Edwards lever and live happily ever after.

Bush v. Kerry - You need some action and you're too horny to concern yourself with maintaining dignity and self-respect. Turn the lights down low and pretend she's beautiful and doesn't have a halitosis problem and a botched botox boobjob. You'll feel bad in the morning, but hell, you were desperate.

I'm more positively disposed towards Miss Connecticut than he is, apparently, and I'm not likely to turn to a third party; but the analogy works as well as any, and I think the underlying analysis is pretty much spot on. It's way better than my hungover, driveling, hemming and hawing, hand-wringing attempt at an answer, I can tell you that.

By the way, either there's something wrong with the test, or something wrong with me, or there's something wrong with both me and the test: but I answered these questions (via Andrew Sullivan) to see which candidate best suits me based on my opinions on "issues" and came up with these results: Lieberman 100%; Sharpton 97%; Kerry 97%; Edwards 95%; Dean 95%; Clark 90%; Kucinich 90%; Bush 61%. Sharpton? Maybe I don't know Al, or myself, as well as I think I do.

As Sullivan says, one flaw is that it doesn't ask "do you think a race-baiting demagogue would be a good president?" I don't know the other criteria of the test, but it seems like "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" answers (as mine pretty much were) knock Bush out of the running, but fail to distinguish meaningfully between the Democratic candidates. Maybe it's true that Bush's own fiscal profligacy has effectively removed that as a meaningful category in this election; but what good is that? Also, strong support for the Iraq campaign and continued US presence doesn't swing things much towards the incumbent, nor does it take more than 10% away from Dean or Kucinich, and it still leaves Sharpton near the top. I'd say some tweaking is in order.

I'm sticking with Ben's analysis for now.

Posted by Dr. Frank at February 2, 2004 04:17 PM | TrackBack