Generalizations of your opponents

I was looking at my (very few) refers and saw that one had come from a comment I left to a post by Joe Kelley in his blog, The Sake of Argument. The post addressed speculation on how meny people on either side were motivated to vote by the antics of Michael Moore. In my comment I wrote:

While it was not a necessary nor sufficient condition for me to cast my vote for Bush, the fact that people like Moore, Striesand, Baldwin, and all the other moonbats were pulling for Kerry certainly made my decision easier. I would have voted that way anyway but it's just so much sweeter to watch them all wallow in denial and despair over the fact that over half the voters disagreed with them. How the cognitive dissonance they are all experiencing is manifesting itself is fascinating to watch.

Nothing new here for anyone who has been reading my posts since the election. The reason I'm writing this, however, is actually brought up by the next comment which states, in part:

Your premise is that the election was a matter of haters on both sides. Sorry, but I don't buy it. I talked to people, went out and voted, and said hi to people coming into the polling place to vote. There was no atmosphere of hatred. Same goes for people seen on TV.

Some were fired up, sure. There was resolve, there was vehemence, but I just did not see or hear the hatred. That's not to say there weren't any hate-driven people opposed to Bush. It's just that they were not and are not the majority, not anywhere near typical of, those opposed to Bush.

The commenter is right about that. While there really are people who hate Bush with religious fervor, they are only a minority of those that voted for Kerry or another candidate. However, they are a very vocal minority and a big problem, as I see it, is that they seem to exert disproportionate influence on the Democratic Party. In particular, we have certain celebrities such as Moore et al. who are under the impression, justified or not, that their opinions are somehow worth more than those of others such as your humble blogger. In my opinion, this engendered a certain amount of backlash and, while it probably didn't change many people's votes from Kerry to Bush, if any, it certainly provided an extra incentive for those inclined to vote for Bush to get up and actually do so. In my case, it made it somewhat easier to vote for the man despite what I perceive to be his shortcomings. The subsequent reactions from these people likewise serve to make me feel better about my choice. When people who are this out of touch with reality are so upset about how the election went down, it reinforces my belief that I made the best choice from among what was available.