The Perfect Political S
I’m reminded of the first entry I read over at Anonymous Liberal (anonymousliberal.com) which discussed how we Democrats were likely better off with John Kerry losing the 2004 election. At first I was dumbstruck, thinking about Bush being in power for another 4 years. However, upon reflection,
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The rest of the post: (I don't know why it decided to cut off. Cosmic conditions?)
. . . Anonymous Liberal was probably right.
Had Kerry been President, he would have been a perfect scapegoat at whom the Republican Congress could point their finger. ("See! If only we had a Republican President, none of this would have happened.") Had that scapegoat existed, the mood of the country may not have completely soured on the Republican brand by 2006, making our achieving majorities of both the House of Representatives and the Senate possible.
In fact, it feels like the pendulum has been slowly heading to the left over the past 4 years. If Kerry had been our president, forced to fight with a Republican Congress, would that magnifying glass of public opinion have been so firmly focused over the GOP, thereby presenting opportunities for building sizeable, workable majorities in Congress?
In reflecting, it may have been best for the country that Kerry fell on his sword in 2004. His loss may have resulted in the perfect political storm that is brewing for November.
June 5, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
You and anonymousliberal may be right about mid-term effects of Kerry losing, but I can guarandamntee you that the folks in the gulf coast wish Kerry had been Pres and in charge of the Federal Gov after Aug 2005. And I know the family of the 3,000 or so killed during that storm wish JFK had been Pres. And the family members of the 2,000+ additional American soldiers dead in Iraq, and the additional 15,000+ injuries and the 500,000+ additional Iraqi civilian deaths and the additional 1,000,000 Iraqi displaced souls wish John Kerry were President right now.
Right after the 2004 election, the late great Molly Ivins wrote a prophetic piece about how GWB would be hung forever around every Republican's neck, everytime anyone dared run as a Rep. It was a brilliant column and made me feel good at the time, about how one "learns" a chicken killing dog how not to kill chickens.
Katrina; the continuing Iraqi fiasco and the doubling down of the surge; the DoJ scandals and the Plame leak and a million other things made me realize how wrong my beloved Molly was.
For the last 20 or so years, the last 10 at least, this country has been moving more to the left. All the polls which ask about policies show that. And yet we continue voting for the far right. I can't understand or explain the dichotomy, or the national schizophrenia. But I do know we would have gotten to this point eventually. And that a great big re-alignment would have taken place without Herr Bush and his handlers. And I think every person who lost someone from lack of insurance or from bad insurance would have gotten here as well. And there are some 2,000,000 peoples of this country and the world who would have been much better off with a Kerry presidency.
So, it seems to me, finding the bright side in the Kerry loss totally discounts the several millions who have actually felt his loss in their actual lives. Yes, abstractly, we liberal,progressive Dems are better off that everything we saw awful about the first GWB presidency has made itself manifest and unignorable in the second four years.
And I am not intending to attack yo, I'm only hoping you can see that Kerry's loss had some actual effects on real people.
June 6, 2008 2:52 AM | Reply | Permalink