"It's About Coalitions, Not Purity" Part Forty
"The 2004 Election" Part One
The Democratic Party drew a number of candidates into the nominating process to oppose incumbent Republican George W. Bush in the 2004 election: Howard Dean, John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich, as well as some others. Polls showed former Vermont governor, Howard Dean, to be leading the pack prior to the Iowa Caucus, where he then finished well behind both Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. Still, Dean's third place showing did him far less damage than the repeated showing of what became his famous "scream" during his speech to supporters that night. To show that he intended to press on, Dean shouted out how his campaign was going to go on to the various upcoming primary and caucus states. He ended that listing of the states with a big "Yeeeeaaaahhhhh!" Television cameras and microphones clearly picked up the whole speech, and over the next few days these last few seconds of his rallying call was played what seemed like seven million times, or maybe it was ten million times, on cable, on broadcast news programs and on local television stations. Dean's poor results in Iowa became secondary to his "scream," as the nation's comedians each took their jabs at the now diminished candidate.*
Kerry won the high profile New Hampshire Primary and John Edwards won in South Carolina, but Kerry's mounting momentum prompted Dean, Clark and Lieberman to drop out, and Kerry won several states in a row. Early March brought the so called "Super Tuesday" votes of several states, with John Edwards as Kerry's only real major opposition. Kerry's big win in most of the states that day brought Edwards to give up the race. Kerry chose John Edwards as his running mate and the nomination was made official at the Democratic National Convention in late July in Boston.**
Next, Bush is renominated and the campaign for the White House ....
* First, "the media" is an industry. Second, the television networks and the individual television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and in more recent times, Websites, are for profit businesses within the media industry. They all run various stories, some of which catch the public's attention far more than others. Once a story catches on, rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly (by our individual views), they are going to run with it; as I like to say, "They are going to climb onto that pony and ride it until it drops dead."
** That convention featured a keynote address by a then Illinois state senator who was running for a U.S. Senate seat, Barack Obama. The speech was so well received, it led to Obama's own entry into the presidential campaign just four years later.
WORD HISTORY:
Tool-The ultimate origins of this word are uncertain, but Old Germanic had "tawijan," which had the notion of "to prepare or make something into something, make ready." This then produced "towla(n)," a noun meaning "implement used to make or prepare something, a tool." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tol," with the same meaning. This then became "tool" where it has remained for many centuries. Some of the other Germanic languages had forms of the word, meaning "work implement," but most have died out or continued more toward the idea of making fabric or fabric products of some kind, which I'll cover soon in the closely related English word "taw," which is now obsolete. English "tool" may have survived because of reinforcement by Old Norse, as Danes and Norwegians settled in the north and eastern parts of England, bringing along their related word to keep the word and meaning alive. Some more direct Germanic relatives of "tool," with that general meaning, survive, however: Danish "værktøj" (the first part of this compound is closely related to English "work"), Icelandic "tól;" Norwegian "verktøy" (see the Danish entry). Just a thought here, but "tool" is so understood to be a general word for a work implement in English, that people in England may never have felt the need to make it into a compound, like "worktool," to distinguish it from other words using "tool." But as I noted, other Germanic languages had words using or derived from "tool" that applied to making fabric and such and they, therefore, may have felt a need to distinguish between meanings?
The Democratic Party drew a number of candidates into the nominating process to oppose incumbent Republican George W. Bush in the 2004 election: Howard Dean, John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich, as well as some others. Polls showed former Vermont governor, Howard Dean, to be leading the pack prior to the Iowa Caucus, where he then finished well behind both Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. Still, Dean's third place showing did him far less damage than the repeated showing of what became his famous "scream" during his speech to supporters that night. To show that he intended to press on, Dean shouted out how his campaign was going to go on to the various upcoming primary and caucus states. He ended that listing of the states with a big "Yeeeeaaaahhhhh!" Television cameras and microphones clearly picked up the whole speech, and over the next few days these last few seconds of his rallying call was played what seemed like seven million times, or maybe it was ten million times, on cable, on broadcast news programs and on local television stations. Dean's poor results in Iowa became secondary to his "scream," as the nation's comedians each took their jabs at the now diminished candidate.*
Kerry won the high profile New Hampshire Primary and John Edwards won in South Carolina, but Kerry's mounting momentum prompted Dean, Clark and Lieberman to drop out, and Kerry won several states in a row. Early March brought the so called "Super Tuesday" votes of several states, with John Edwards as Kerry's only real major opposition. Kerry's big win in most of the states that day brought Edwards to give up the race. Kerry chose John Edwards as his running mate and the nomination was made official at the Democratic National Convention in late July in Boston.**
Next, Bush is renominated and the campaign for the White House ....
* First, "the media" is an industry. Second, the television networks and the individual television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and in more recent times, Websites, are for profit businesses within the media industry. They all run various stories, some of which catch the public's attention far more than others. Once a story catches on, rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly (by our individual views), they are going to run with it; as I like to say, "They are going to climb onto that pony and ride it until it drops dead."
** That convention featured a keynote address by a then Illinois state senator who was running for a U.S. Senate seat, Barack Obama. The speech was so well received, it led to Obama's own entry into the presidential campaign just four years later.
WORD HISTORY:
Tool-The ultimate origins of this word are uncertain, but Old Germanic had "tawijan," which had the notion of "to prepare or make something into something, make ready." This then produced "towla(n)," a noun meaning "implement used to make or prepare something, a tool." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tol," with the same meaning. This then became "tool" where it has remained for many centuries. Some of the other Germanic languages had forms of the word, meaning "work implement," but most have died out or continued more toward the idea of making fabric or fabric products of some kind, which I'll cover soon in the closely related English word "taw," which is now obsolete. English "tool" may have survived because of reinforcement by Old Norse, as Danes and Norwegians settled in the north and eastern parts of England, bringing along their related word to keep the word and meaning alive. Some more direct Germanic relatives of "tool," with that general meaning, survive, however: Danish "værktøj" (the first part of this compound is closely related to English "work"), Icelandic "tól;" Norwegian "verktøy" (see the Danish entry). Just a thought here, but "tool" is so understood to be a general word for a work implement in English, that people in England may never have felt the need to make it into a compound, like "worktool," to distinguish it from other words using "tool." But as I noted, other Germanic languages had words using or derived from "tool" that applied to making fabric and such and they, therefore, may have felt a need to distinguish between meanings?
Labels: Barack Obama, Dean scream, Democrats, election 2004, English, etymology, Germanic languages, Howard Dean, John Edwards, John Kerry, media focus
posted by Randy at 3:01 PM
1 Comments:
Obama gave a great speech to propel him upward in national politics. Kerry was the far better choice than Bush.
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