Estrich chitchats about Demos
Most of the 100 students in the audience raised their hand, indicating they thought George W. Bush would win the 2004 Presidential Election.
University of Southern California Law Professor Susan Estrich, and a few others in attendance, said they thought otherwise.
Estrich visited Utah State University Wednesday to speak about the chances of anybody defeating Bush in November. She treated the small number of students in attendance to her opinion on that issue along with the latest in Washington gossip.
“Overwhelmingly we think Bush wins here and I disagree,” Estrich said.
Estrich spoke as if Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry would receive the Democratic Presidential nomination and face off against Bush later this year. She said he was being supported by most Democrats because of his electability.
“If Howard Dean were the nominee of the Democratic Party, I would be spinning like a top right now,” she said. “I was so depressed when he was the candidate.”
Estrich, who has worked on three presidential campaigns and was the head of the 1988 Michael Dukakis campaign, said she knows what a losing campaign looks like.
“I can see them, smell them, sniff them, I know,” she said.
Ever since Dean said he would presume Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein innocent until proven guilty, Estrich said, she knew he would be a losing candidate.
“You know what that says to me?” she asked. “Loser!”
Estrich said the Democratic Party is showing something she has never seen before in its support of Kerry.
“I’ve never seen Democrats so excited about war veterans in my life,” she said. “Democrats have picked a
candidate based on his
electability.”
She said Democrats are united, selecting a candidate who has the best shot at winning the election, even if they don’t like Kerry as an individual.
“When you look at the Democratic base right now, I have never seen a more united Democratic Party, united by the desire to win,” she said. “Democrats are going to go after George Bush like
whodathunkit.”
Even without the official campaign starting, Estrich said, the political scene is vicious.
“What you’re going to see in this race is a vicious, no-holds-barred contest,” she said. “If it were about dollars, Bush wins, but it’s not, and that’s one of the problems Republicans have.”
Estrich said she thinks the election will be decided in large part by the debates, and the opinion of Americans may not be clear until late October.
In a presidential election, Estrich said, each political party has a 41- to 42-percent base of voters who will vote for their party “come hell or highwater.”
“In the middle, and this is a distinctly small group these days, are what we call swing voters,” she said.
The swing voters don’t know which party they will vote for, and ultimately decide an election.
“Nobody in the middle is voting on abortion, the people in the middle are voting on the economy, jobs, bread and butter issues,” Estrich said. Candidates spend a great deal of time discussing issues like abortion that swing voters don’t care about.
The one thing that is clear about Democrats this year, Estrich said, is that they are tired of losing, and will win at all costs. She said she had a friend that was asked why Democrats are acting mature like grown-ups this year. Her friend replied, “four years of Bush will do it.”
While Estrich did discuss the chances of a Democrat winning the 2004 election, the majority of time during the speech was spent discussing controversy surrounding Kerry, and her friendship and acquaintance with former president Bill Clinton.
“I think it was completely un-educational but very entertaining,” said Scott Dewey, a sophomore majority in law and constitutional studies. “I was expecting to hear more of the strategy of the Democratic Party.”
Dewey said there was more gossip about Kerry and allegations that he was involved in an intern scandal than discussion about strategy and technicalities of the upcoming election.
“It was great entertainment but it added nothing to the intellectual environment of USU,” he said. “Was it worth as much money as they spent? No. Was she worth the time? I don’t know.”
-str@cc.usu.edu