I wasn't surprised that shrub won. Disappointed, upset, angry -- yes; surprised -- no.
There are some who believe that after four more years of dubya-induced disaster, the people will wake up. It has been four more years, the people are happy to sleep-walk. What worse can they do to us? Only time will tell. But bad as it may be, those who voted for W this time are not going to say "we were wrong" next time. And the growth rate of the population of poor white Evangelical Christians keep these terrors in power. Indefinitely.
Well, what chance have the good guys then? It seems to me that the only chance we have to reestablish the Left as the proper direction for our country to travel rests in re-asserting who we have been historically and we still are prepared to be. We are LIBERALS! L I B E R A L S !
Liberals are the single-parent of Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, Medicare, the Minimum Wage,
They are the sole godparent of Environmentalism, Anti-Trust actions,
If Liberals were Tax and Spend, Conservative Republicans (Reagan - Bush certainly) have been Tax Cuts (for the well-to-do) and Spend. The difference is that spending monies not collected by taxes is like putting your purchases on a credit card; you can forget what you owe, the interest and your debt keeps growing, and the longer you put off paying it in full, the less chance you'll have for your own economic survival. For example, if you keep paying your mortgage with a credit card and you don't pay off your credit card, you will eventually lose your credit AND your home. Bankruptcy will not hold off foreclosure. Or perhaps it will be your children who will have to pay the piper. Make you feel any better?
Shrub mentions his 2004 victory as a mandate, "we earned political capital and we intend to spend it." Why, never in Presidential history has a President acted so completely unconstrained by a lack of mandate putting forth a very partisan agenda as did W in his first term. One can only wonder what little tricks that he dared not do in his first term, the one without a mandate, he is prepared to unleash on us, now that he has a mandate. As for the reality of his so-called mandate, the only Presidential elections since 1900 (27 elections) that have been decided by less than shrub's 3% points advantage over Kerry were: Jimmy Carter in 1976, Richard Nixon in 1968, and John Kennedy in 1960. Oh yeah, W's election in 2000. So, in the last 104 years, in 28 presidential elections, 24 out of 28 Presidents had "mandates" greater than the one W crows about this time.
The American people are the problem. You ain't seen nothing yet! The more palpably horrible a job shrub does this time, the more his people will line up behind him. He is one of them, a real man of the people, a REAL democrat! Except for the fact that his real friends are only a small % of those who voted him his power. Will he, like Andrew Jackson, throw open the doors to the White House? No President has spent so little time at his place of work, no President has had so few Press Conferences, no President has appeared before the cameras so often without a free Press to question Him.
In the Western civilized world, we are the laughing stock. In the third world, we are becoming, for more and more peoples, the enemy.
But I am preaching to the choir! None of you reading this will find anything new. And you know what: if this hasn't been hammered at the people, why hasn't it? Maybe the pols know full well it'd fall on deaf (dumb) ears? When you say "wait till next year," aren't you imagining that the people's reason will prevail? Why think that? When has voting of the masses been about reasoned decisions?
November 10th
Who voted STRONGLY for whom?
88% of African Americans voted for Kerry
74% of Jewish Americans voted for Kerry
74% of "other religions" voted for Kerry
78% of White Born-Again Christians voted for Bush
The more regularly you attended religious services, the more likely you voted for Bush (& vv)
The higher your income, the more likely you voted for Bush (& vv)
The bigger community (big city, small city, towns/suburbs, rural) you lived in, the more likely you were to vote for Kerry (and vv)
77% of gays voted for Kerry
Those whose Most Important Issue was:
Terrorism (19%) voted 86% for Bush
Economy (20%) voted 8?% for Kerry
Moral Values (22%) voted 80% for Bush (yes, Born-Agains do not pay much attention to unnecessary diversions like news. But gay takeover is important.)
Health Care (8%) voted 77% for Kerry
Education (4% - sic) voted 73% for Kerry
Iraq (15%) voted 73% for Kerry
Those whose Most Important Character Trait was:
Strong Leadership (17%) voted 78% for Bush
Honesty (11%) voted 70% for Bush (sic)
Cares for People (9%) voted 75% for Kerry
Strong Religious Faith (8%) voted 91% for Bush
Intelligence (7% - sic) voted 91% for Kerry
In other words, when all is said and done, small-town white Born-Agains made the difference in this election. Given the birth-rate among these educated giants, the Left can not count on winning a presidential election in the foreseeable future, what with our being somewhat-agnostic, humanist, educated, thoughtful and tolerant.
These are not good times for the good guys. Gay-bashing is back! Long live the self-righteous Right!
Maybe a Civil War would be a good idea; but these fuckers already have guns!
The closest correlative I have found for Democrat/Liberal/Kerry voters and Conservative/Republican/Bush voters is that the former read a book a year or more and the latter don't.