Delayed gratification is good for the soul. This year, after 8 grueling years, we could get exactly what we want on November 4.
Personally, as much as I like John Kerry and think he would have made a solid President (especially juxtaposed to what we’ve had since ’04), I think Barack Obama is head and shoulders above Kerry or any Dem, will ultimately be better for the country in the long run, and is poised to put a big stamp on US history. Ultimately, I’m glad Kerry lost and set in motion the circumstances at which we arrive today. It’s a blessing in disguise, if you will.
Perhaps it’s just me talking myself into a position that justifies having to endure 8 years of Bush/Cheney malfeasance, the same way Christians like to say that all suffering is righteous and part of God’s plan. But I wonder what others think.
We’ll never know what a Kerry presidency would look like or what the benefits/consequences of such would have been. Nor can we predict the outcome on November 4 or how the next president will transform the nation. Regardless, do people feel the same way I do? Is the excitement of the Obama campaign, the spectacle of the 2008 electoral free-for-all, the 2006 elections, and this year’s big congressional gains worth the price of a soul-crushing Kerry defeat? Is it something that you try not to think about? Is it perhaps that nothing was worth the last 4 years of Bush II?
What do you think?
Kerry would have made us a better country and re-focused our priorities to the right places, domestically and with foreign policy. I don’t think that we could of headed off some of these problems, but we would have been in a lot better position than we are now.
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p>Hey, who did Kerry pick for his keynote speaker at the ’04 convention? I think no matter, Obama would have been a presidential candidate, while maybe not in ’08, it would have happened.
And if Kerry won, at best we just would have delayed Obama’s candidacy by 4 years. But it’s also possible he might not have won the nomination or might have been in a very week position ifor the general election.
John Roberts
Samuel Alito
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p>It’ll be years before the full effect of these two appointments is fully known.
The Constitution in Exile folks think that the Commerce Clause — you know the one that enables the Federal Government to do all sorts of useful regulation — should return to being interpreted the way it was in the Glorious McKinley Administration. Gone would be the power of the federal government to regulate much of anything.
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p>The social consequences are unimaginable but make a certain kind of conservative gleeful. That would be the ideologically insane kind of conservative.
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p>Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts would be more than happy to roll this one back. That means that the Supreme Court is going to be on a hair trigger for years and years until one of them retires from the Court.
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p>Most of us who are not social conservatives are also afraid of the Supreme Court ceasing to discover a right to privacy in the big shady penumbra cast by the Bill of Rights. Throw that out and, with Griswald in the crapper, you can throw out the right to contraception. Not good because there are crazy state legislatures who will protect the missionary position and fertilized eggs ferociously.
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p>Even so, I think the danger to the Commerce Clause is greater.
In Iraq. In Afghanistan. In New Orleans. In Georgia. In Palestine. Our global reputation on life support.
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p>Too much pain, too much blood, too much loss.
If Obama is truly trascendental, he’d have been ready to run in 2012.
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p>The price of Bush remains too high.
…correct
Isn’t that kinda like putting the cart before the horse, covering ’em both up with gravel and then laying down train tracks atop a that??
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p>There is no possible way that Barack Obama can take make up for Iraq, Katrina and the economic mess we’re in. I know that John Kerry would have dealt with those issues alone so very differently. Frankly, I’m offended that you even posted this.
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p>I think Obama himself would disagree with you, seeing as how he decided not to run until Kerry made known his ’08 intentions.
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p>I think John Kerry is Barack Obama with 25 years experience. I think he’s one of the better people to run for office since, like, forever… But, since Obama is the NEW JESUS… it’s all good,right?
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p>blech. I’m so disappointed in you…
I still remember being almost physically sick on Wednesday when Kerry finally conceded, and it was an accurate omen. We’d be in much better shape had Kerry won.
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p>This same logic tells HRC primary supporters that it’s OK to vote for McCain to set her up for 2012. I’m not fond of that idea either.
Have you been reading your Leibniz, Dr Pangloss tblade?
I’m a pretty harsh critic of the Bushies, but really, what has been the tribulation that you have had to endure these past eight years, other than being in the terrible position of being in fundamental disagreement with most of the policies of the administration?
Did you see those pictures of Abu Ghraib? Do you remember Katrina? Enron? Rapacious cronyism? Eviscerated environmental policy? An EPA that actual works for the FUCKING POLLUTERS!?!?! Purple heart bandaids?
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p>These aren’t ‘policies’, they are psychotic disconnects. And I don’t simply ‘disagree’ with them: I feel a solid moral revulsion to them that makes me want to shake and vomit and to scream.
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p>ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?
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p>I’ve endured a loud over-amped weave of consistent lies, deceit and thoroughgoing moral rot. Now YOU have the balls to ask me what it is I’ve endured as though I’m the childish one: I’ve endured the slow rape of the country I love. So fuck you.
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p>I remember actually feeling proud to be an American. Long time gone. I have endured 8 years of burning shame, restless helplessness and a deep abiding sadness at the low low state to which we’ve been brought. That is so much more incisive than simple disagreement, however fundamental… It’s a corrupt ideology that has tried to fuck with everything that is right and sound about America. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln might just leave heaven to follow George Bush and Dick Cheney into hell for the sole purpose of eternally kicking the shit outta them.
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p>If the very idea of America has any juice left you’ll go find yourself a dark corner and hang your head and cry for a good long week. Then you’ll come back and apologize.
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Plenty of people have endured the Bush administration. Your embarassment, acute as it might have been, doesn’t qualify for such florid melodrama.
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p>You have had the privilege of living an affluent lifestyle in an affluent country during a period in which said country has had a crappy president with damaging, harmful policies.
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p>Let us all salute your gallant suffering.
Sound advice. You ought to take it yourself.
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p>To pretend that America in 2008 is not all that much different from, say, American in 1998 is, not to put too fine a point on it, insane. I’ll gladly give up whatever it is I may have gained to have that America back…
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p>To pretend that George W. Bush is a mere blip of disagreement amidst a privileged sea of affluence is, to likewise not too closely hone that argument, blind, deaf and dumb.
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p>To excuse complete moral failings on the grounds that you or I may not have not physically suffered is, frankly, immoral. To dismiss the countless who decidedly have suffered is, clearly, amoral. From the Enron pensioners to the New Orleans neglected… countless have suffered. From the innocent and the guilty who’ve been tortured in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib (as well as who knows where else) to those pensioners who are, fer real, looking at a dog-food retirement right now the Bush administration has wrought dramatic suffering. To place your comfort ahead of their suffering, in service to ameliorative contextualism, is rank evil.
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p>And this affluence, to which you ascribe such anodyne privilege, is on the way out… Or did you think ‘damaging, harmful policies’ were, somehow, not damaging and/or harmful?
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p>We started the decade with the best military in the world, surpluses as far as they eye can see, a working political system, a sound economy and an entire world looking up to us for guidance both moral and economic.
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p>Tell me, O wise and privileged one, what part of the above list is not damaged greatly??
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p>Lessee…. army broken? Yup.
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p>Surplus in the budget? Um… nope.
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p>Political system working? Um… Sarah Palin? Fer real?
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p>Sound economy? You have been paying attention, no? Nationalized banks? A global crisis?
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p>The rest of the world looking to us for leadership? Um… not after Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and mortgage backed securities. Bill Clinton walked out of office known worldwide as ‘The President of Peace.’
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p>But I guess, since you and I might might be fat and dumb and happy… it’s all good.
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it sounds like your epic suffering is to come under the next administration. And the rest of your suffering over the past eight years is dramatic license, due to the late October date.
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p>Yes, I probably over-reacted, but I’m getting fed up with stupid political melodrama on both sides– the country will be destroyed, destroyed, I tell you, if the guy that I support loses!– this election is the most important in the history of the Republic!– this election will effect a realignment that will change the course of the culture of the nation.
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p>It is almost as if, come late October every 4 years, politicians and political activists start to believe the BS that they have been spewing for months, and turn into fricking crazy people.
You know, I understand and sympathize with your allergy to the melodrama. I have to say that one of the things I detest about this administration is that just stating the facts, as plainly and simply as possible, makes one sound nutty. They couldn’t possibly be that bad, could they?
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p>But I think your dismissal of the consequences of the last eight years’ misrule is, well, obtuse. I seriously think you’re letting your feelings get in the way — the desire to believe that things really couldn’t possibly be that bad. Really?
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p>But we’re in a serious hole, on a lot of things, and on a lot of things that are going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fix. We’ve got a financial crisis, and likely a deep and serious recession. Does that matter to you? New Orleans will never be the same; matters to them. Here’s another: Iraq => de-emphasizing Afghanistan => Taliban rising => Taliban in Pakistan => Pakistan politically destabilized. Pakistan, btw, has nukes.
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p>And I could go on. Being angry at all of these things is a sign of sanity, not “crazy”-ness — although I can’t condone the potty-mouth.
… and I apologize for that.
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p>I did take a brief (chilly) walk after firing off that email and regretted the language. I considered writing an apology then, but CentralMassDad didn’t seem to take it to heart or make a big deal about it, so I let it go. But it has weighed on me.
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p>I regret letting my anger get the better of me. I’ve been doing that far too often, here and elsewhere.
Tuesday is coming, and then everyone can ratchet down a notch.
The country was much richer eight years ago, and in a much stronger position to tackle many problems, than it is now.
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p>As tough as the last eight years have been for America, the consequences of the lost opportunities in areas as diverse as the economy, the environment, energy, and national security, not to mention national prestige, are likely to become clear only in future decades.
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p>I think you are being too complacent CMD, with respect.
As if it is a late inning playoff game, with runners on and Timlin is pitching. Too much energy required. And neither politicians nor politics is worth that amount of mental energy. My life isn’t going to be great if Obama wins, and isn’t going to be terrible if McCain wins.
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p>I donated my money to Obama, and will vote for him on Tuesday. And if he wins, I’ll have say “yippee”, have coffee on Wednesday morning and go to work, and will spend next weekend raking leaves and taking cub scouts on a hike. If he loses, I’ll say “crap,” have coffee on Wednesday morning, and will spend next weekend raking leaves and taking cub scouts on a hike.
Do we have to personally endure something to condemn it? Looking out for one’s brother and sister is a fundamental value of most any religion and philosophy conceived by humankind. It wasn’t me who was killed in a needless war and bumbling occupation of a foreign country, it wasn’t my home that was part of a lost city, it wasn’t my rights that were shredded by domestic spying and dismissal of habeas corpus.
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p>But it could have been, there but the grace of all. Do we have any less right to be angry because it was New Orleans that suffered a hurricane, rather than Boston? Do we remain silent until it is our burden to carry?
Are you kidding me! You think it is better that the world security and world economy has been essentially destroyed by Bush policy? You think it will be easy for whoever wins on Tuesday to recover all that has been lost?
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p>You kind of sound like my stupid friend John who is actually voting for McCain on Tuesday because he wants Hillary to run again in four years and win.
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p>No No No.
While there is so much to criticize about the last 8 years, I guess the 2 questions I have are…
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p>1 – How do we know things would not have been worse?
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p>2 – While it’s so easy to blame a President, do we ever consider how much fault lies with Congress, the state’s politicians or mostly…WE the people. With all our “over-consumption”, our over spending, our energy wastes, our greed on Wall St (the people not the brokers)? Don’t “WE” deserve any blame for being led like sheep by all our politicians collectively? Are there any smart people on this site that could profess that a single person, even the President could single handedly bring on so many bad things without a gang of politicians, political supporters and common people’s greed wanting the new house, the new car, huge returns from investements, Ipods, plastic surgery and taking care of the rest of the world’s needs?
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p>We are heralded by ourselves and around the world as the “richest nation in the world”. We criticize fellow Americans for spending beyond their needs, living a paycheck away from bankruptsy, borrowing instead of saving, spending money we don’t have and sometimes even giving money to our friends/kids which we don’t have. I just described a typical person in the US AND the government of the US at the same time.
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p>If you had a neighbor who had a giant 5,000 sq ft house (jumbo ARM mortgage) with a gardener, a BMW and a Mercedes in the driveway (leased), in ground pool and membership at the country club who was mortgaged to the hilt, paying an interest-only mortgage and carried a huge debt (countless credit cards maxed out)… and another neighbor who lived in a modest home, works 2 jobs, with a Chevy and an old Toyota in the driveway, cuts his own grass, paid cash not credit cards… WHO would be the wealthier neighbor? But which neighbor do Americans want to be? And yet as we sink further and further into debt, especially now, we will continue to give away BILLIONS of dollars to foreign countries and mismanaged government programs. We will continue to borrow money from China so we can pay for oil to Saudi Arabia. We will continue to build new schools and hire more teachers to educate kids who’s parents don’t give a shit while that “giving a shit” is the ONLY thing that will help educate their kids. Sorry for the rant…
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p>WE get what WE deserve.
It’s easy to forget what went wrong with the Bush Presidency. Here’s a
short list:
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Some of the above was from the first term, but it is a huge stretch to imagine that Kerry would be anywhere near is incurious and reckless as Bush was.
However, I just brought up the issue of we don’t know how things would have gone. That’s all. You say it is hard to imagine Kerry would be anywhere near as incurious and reckless and I am simply saying it could have been worse. Luckily we will never know if it would be worse since Kerry lost.
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p>We could try to go back in time. I remember a story of a farmer who had a tractor accident and lost his arm. They went back in time to stop the accident from happening but what they didn’t know was he had melanoma on that arm and the loss of his arm (and the cancer) saved his life. Certainly an extreme stretch but yet a valid example of you don’t know what could have happened in this “dangerous” world with Kerry at the helm.
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p>If Obama wins and he ruins this country then we will never know if McCain would have done better but my guess is you will say McCain would probably have been worse… and vice versa. If that happens the answer again will be we will never really know.
Bush has been an unimaginably bad President. During the 2000 election, there was ample evidence that he would be bad. I’ve heard no evidence that Kerry or Gore would have repeated the incuriosity and subordination of policy to politics that have riddled the Bush Administration top to bottom with scandal, incompetence, and deceit.
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p>I’m sure you can scoff at the above list. (See John scoff. Scoff! Scoff! Scoff!)
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p>Further there is evidence that McCain would an even worse President than Bush. Bush subordinates policy to politics. McCain doesn’t even go that far. His decisions are impetuous and ill-informed, e.g., Palin and the recent financial crisis. Whether party before country or country before party, no matter which way you slice it, his VP pick and his response to the financial crisis were dismal.
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p>You want more of that?
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p>Really?
I think many of your points are valid (Not providing armor for our troops), some Bush cannot be blamed for (Ignoring regulatory problems in the mortgage market) and other issues I agree with (Holding innocents at Guantanamo and elsewhere without applying due process – although I would not call them “innocents”). I don’t want to debate these since many are differences of opinion.
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p>As for McCain, let me also say he was not my first choice since I disagree with HIM on many issues too. He has not run a very good campaign and he has done things which make me wonder. I have never voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate, never. If I believed Obama would do a better job than McCain then I would vote for him. I just don’t think he would.
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p>I could be wrong and the conventional wisdom seems we will find out what kind of President Obama will be.
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p>BTW, Can you clarify if Obama lowered the new proposed $250,000 income tax increase threshold to $200,000 in his infomercial last night for a family?
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p>Lastly, no I don’t want more of George Bush. I liked him and many of his decisions. But I also had/have problems with him and many more of his decisions. But, I am not making the leap that McCain = Bush but many of the sheep in the flock have bought into that correlation.
Obama said he would not raise taxes on those above $250K; he didn’t indicate whose taxes he would lower. With a gradual curve of tax rate over income we’d expect some interval where there’d be no change between the regions where taxes go up and taxes go down. That range is $200K-250K by his plan.
As for your ovine comments about the equation: Obama has made the case the McCain’s policies will be very similar to Bush’s. If anything, McCain tends to be more belligerent than Bush. His response to the issue with Russia and Georgia turned out to be a bit ill-informed and a whole lot reckless. Likewise, he’s been extremely bellicose toward Iran. If you want to destabilize the Iraqi government, the fastest route is to bomb Iran. Early in his Administration, Bush gave the North Koreans and the Iranians an incentive to develop nuclear weapons. In Bush land, that is all justified in ringing calls to moral purity. (Resist Evil!) McCain doesn’t do that but he shows no signs of being willing to talk North Korea and Iran off the ledge. Finally, McCain’s insistence until Lieberman corrected him that Iran would sponsor Al Qaeda represents a profound, frightening, and (to my mind) disqualifying ignorance of the Islamic world. It would be like Britain funding the Irish Republican Army in its more militant days. Given all that, the foreign policy we hear about from McCain sounds very similar to George Bush’s.
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p>McCain – like Bush – has a long history against regulation. Wise regulation is what this country cries for in the financial sector. Unlike you, I would have expected a President to draft legislation and be pro-active about the subprime situation. Unlike you, I fail to see any difference between Bush and McCain on economic policy: They both seem uninterested in it; their instincts are close; McCain is just a little more fond of firing people.
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p>McCain’s health care proposals are frankly hair-brained. Maybe they’re intentionally DOA. So that makes him functionally the same as the no-policy Bush Administration.
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p>So my take is that he’d pursue roughly the same policies without Bush’s messianic spin but he probably execute them worse as he is a less disciplined executive than Bush.
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p>Short version: the sheep are right.
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I appreciate that you all indulged my curiosity. Man, I guess I have talked myself into this position to justify Bush’s last 4 years, lol. I didn’t know what voting total to expect, but I did think it would have been closer.
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p>You all make salient and sober points, many of which I’ve considered before asking this question. I think this would make an interesting debate in print, a sort of point-counterpoint where two articles/posts are put forth in parallel, with one essay making my case and the other outlining the case 87% of people voted for.
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p>Even if you disagree, I think a writer more informed and more talented than me and with enough time and energy could lay out a compelling case that Obama ’08 might be better for America in the long run.
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p>For instance, one thing I wonder is that if Kerry won in 2004, how much of the really seedy and divisive side of GOP politics and policies – the Roves, the DOJ stuff, the wiretapping, the torture, the Siegelman, the Pentagon plants in the press, Habeas, etc, etc, etcx100 – would have been pushed out of the sunlight and returned to the background to metastasize, only to be retooled and redeployed another day? Perhaps that is what is going to happen under Obama anyway, but I think there is the chance that because all of that has bubbled to the surface, been recorded and documented, has been repudiated, and is now in the forefront of the minds of people who care about responsive and functional government, that the new government and we the people have the chance for scrubbing much of it away and preventing it from happening again.
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p>There’s an old saying that things get worse before they get better. I think for all of those things above that need correcting had to come out into the sunlight before they were to get corrected. If these things went unnoticed, they would have been ignored and remained dormant or even fester and mutate into something stronger. But Bush & Co. pushed all of these malfeasances into the sunlight and even many Republicans soundly reject him and his administration for it. And the result of that might be that the last 4 years of Bush has quickened the death of much of the Rove/Cheney political and policy agendas, has weakened the influence of the nutty wing of the GOP, and given us the opportunity now to fight those cancers in these earlier stages, rather than fighting a more malignant version down the road.
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p>Yeah, it’s all hypothetical and I don’t expect this quick comment to persuade anyone to change the vote from “no” to yes”. I am saying that I think a smart political journalist or scholar could make a compelling argument that the last 4 years of Bush could (could!) mean a purging of so much that was destructive and poisonous in out government and politics, and that 20 years down the road America will ultimately be better off.
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p>I have no disagreement that in the short-term, yes, ABSOLUTELY Kerry would have been far, far, better. How about 10, 20, 30, 40 & 50 years down the road? Maybe Bush did do far too much damage to America. But maybe he damaged his cancerous ideology even more, and that ultimately makes America healthy? I don’t know, but I’d love to read well-fleshed out arguments for both sides.
As someone who wouldn’t mind the existence of a conservative party that is worth voting for, I suspect that it is going to take awhile. The first reaction will probably be that the GOP failed by nominating a moderate like McCain, and the result will be a further alienation of moderates. So I would expect the 2010 and 2012 elections to be dominated by the far right on the GOP side.
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p>If the Democrats govern from the center left rather than overreaching ideologically during the next 2-4 years, it is possible that the repeated drubbings that will be administered to an extremist GOP will ultimately be an improved conservative party, as has happened with the Tories in the UK.
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p>If the Democrats fall flat, either because of intramural bickering (reasonably likely) or because they go too far left for the comfort of most voters (much less likely, IMO) I think the GOP returns to the status quo ante W.
So yes, I want a quality conservative party as well.
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p>If I were a young GOPer, I’d want my party to get trounced this year and maybe even as you suggest, the next one or two cycles so that the party can lay a new foundation and start almost from scratch.