Well, that's it: Bush won fair and square. He won a straight-up majority of the electoral vote and a straight-up majority of the popular vote. We Democrats thought we'd done the best job anyone could possibly do of getting the vote out, and we did do a great job, but the Republicans did us one better; in rallying their evangelical Christian base, they beat us at our own game. Bush is not only the winner but a winner with what would appear to be a mandate.
Congratulations. And forgive me if I fail to give a shit. I don't care how many people absolutely love them, "Titanic" was a dumb movie, Creed was a shitty band, and George W. Bush is a lousy president.
In the wake of Bush's re-election, one of the prevailing pearls of wisdom from the conservative side seems to be "Our guy won, so now you have to support him." Like hell I do. I'm not going to all of a sudden say, "Oh, my eyes have been opened, I now suddenly support reckless and unsustainable fiscal policy, military mismanagement and assault weapons on demand" just because Georgie boy got more votes. I'm not going to sit back and convince myself that we don't really need a patients' bill of rights or decent leadership in Iraq. If anyone's waiting for me to get this thoughtful look and exclaim that if so many people support Bush, his agenda must be a pretty good idea after all, bring a book. You're going to be waiting a while.
Another one of the prevailing right-wing opinions, if what I've been exposed to is an accurate indication, is that America completely repudiated the Democratic agenda and we are now officially "out of touch" with mainstream America. Well, if fully 55.6 million American voters are out of the mainstream, the mainstream must be a lot smaller than I was orginally led to believe. But let's for a moment assume the right-wingers are right and we really are "out of touch." If so, then pray tell, how would you recommend that we get back in touch?
As the exit polls are now making apparent, the evangelical Christian voters who put the Republicans over the top this year put "moral values" as the main driving factor behind their vote. I'll presume that that means issues like abortion, stem cells, and gay rights. The polls indicate most Americans support stem-cell research and keeping abortion laws the way they are, so I guess the main thing left is gay rights. It's not even gay marriage -- since both Bush and Kerry have the same view on that issue -- but gay rights in general. So is this the issue we should get "back in touch" with the evangelical Christians on? Should we reverse field on that and decide not to support equal rights for gay people after all? Should we grab a page from the George Wallace playbook and vow never to be "out-faggoted" again on the gay issue? Should we go crawling to the evangelical Christian voting bloc on our hands and knees and say, "Pretty please, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public, vote for me and I promise to hate homos just as much as you do"?
Nope. Sorry. Not gonna happen. Look, I do my best to not be one of those lefties who contributes to the liberal-elitist stereotype by disdaining middle-American values or talking smack about Christianity; hell, I practice Christianity. And I'm more than happy to sit down and have a conversation with evangelical Christian voters about the issues that really affect their daily lives -- I'll explain tax credits that will make it easier for them to send their kids to college, I'll talk to them about improving their health-care options, I'll try and lay out a better strategy for rebuilding Iraq. But if getting their vote means I have to treat gay people as second-class citizens, then I don't think I want their vote that bad. And I don't want to be part of any party that does.
But as a Kerry supporter, I'm now officially out of touch and I need to get in line and support him because everyone else does. Nope, I'm not going to do it. His agenda has hurt America for the last four years and it's going to hurt America for the next four, and I'm not going to be party to that. I'm going to continue to fight it tooth and nail. Compare this attitude to Sisyphus or Don Quixote or who-the-hell-ever -- Bush's plan, to the extent that he even has one, is still a bad plan. And I won't support it.
I see four years ahead that are going to be very, very hard. Not hard just for the Democratic Party -- though they most certainly will be -- but hard for this entire country, Democrats and Republicans, whites and blacks, rich and poor. In the next four years, we will bring at least 3,000 more American soldiers home in body bags, and their deaths may end up being for naught, since at our current rate it's doubtful we'll see free elections in Iraq that more than a handful of people get to participate in. The national debt will go past $8 trillion, and my children (and grandchildren) will be the ones paying for that. The number of people without health care will grow. The singularly asinine Federal Marriage Amendment will be reintroduced at some point, exploiting the already deep divisions between the American people, and Bush's promise to unite America, like so many of his other promises, will go unkept.
These things are going to happen as a direct result of either Bush's policies or his incompetence, and I don't want to be sitting here at the end of four years reflecting on what bad shape the country is in and thinking I could've, and should've, done more to keep it from happening. Until someone gives me a good reason not to, I'm going to oppose George W. Bush, and I don't care how many people support him or for how long. If he somehow gets re-elected 10 more times, I'll oppose him 40 more years.
Anybody got a problem with that? If so, I have a suggestion for you that I actually borrowed from your pal Dick Cheney. You can probably figure out what it is.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 5:19 PM
