My thoughts on Kerry's chances
I think he has an excellent chance of winning. I say this now before the Republican attack machine has even gotten warmed up. Who knows what bullshit they'll throw out there that will stick to him.
I think all signs point to Bush on the way out and Kerry on the way in. Bush's numbers are in decline, the economy is still sputtering (where's that recovery we've been talking about for 3 years?), and the situation in Iraq is a ridiculous mess. In this summer before the election, I feel change in the air, much like I did in 1992.
However, as we all know, we're in a different world now, one where the media is decidedly working against one party, where an election can be altered by a state run by a candidate's brother and an ideologically sympathetic Supreme Court, where a U.S. Presidential administration shamelessly uses everything imaginable to help itself politically and no one says a word about it, where an unjust war can be fought with the manipulated support of the American people, where there are no consequences for killing and wounding thousands when said war is revealed to be started on false information, where there are no consequences for the worst intelligence failure ever that resulted in 3,000 deaths, where a President doesn't have to answer for his past but is free to call into question anyone else's and lead the media to do the same, where American citizens can be detained without question or reason, where the government can keep records on our book purchases, where the CEO of a voting machine company can promise he's going to deliver a state to the President while people throughout the land have to fight to make sure there's even the measliest sort of accountability for electronic voting, where no-bid contracts for rebuilding the devastated country of the unjust war can be awarded to a company formerly headed by the VP that was already in legal trouble and then find out that millions of that money is unaccounted for and no one says anything, where this same VP can tell a senator of the opposing party to "go fuck yourself" and then go on television and seriously say, with no hint of an apology, that he just said what needed to be said and no one questions this, where one party can actually try to legislate discrimination into the Constitution and have a vote on it on the House floor, where one party can rekindle an old cultural war because two idiot entertainers exposed one's breast on a Super Bowl halftime show and actually have networks and media conglomerates play along, where an action movie star can be governor of the country's largest state after the other party staged a coup and removed the elected governor whose party then proceeds to do nothing to retaliate, where the sitting President's administration can actually talk about plans to postpone an election he looks destined to lose, citing unnamed terrorist threats, and then boast about how much safer the nation is under their leadership...
I could go on and on. The skinny is this: Bush is finished, Kerry is the man, change looks to happen, but, in this fucked up state of things, that doesn't mean it will. Bush will do anything to keep power. Mix together the vast resources of the right wing and their dominance of all 3 branches of government; a complacent, thickheaded yet easily frightened electorate; the electronic voting machines; Jeb Bush's Florida; the threat of an election terrorist attack because the administration says it's so; the Bush administration's already demonstrated willingness to use fascist measures, and you see that, if they say 2+2=5, then it's so and we're fucked.
Have you ever seen a time when suspension of the Constitution, the refusal to transfer power, the willingness to hurt one's own people to help one's political cause are conceivable realities?
I think all signs point to Bush on the way out and Kerry on the way in. Bush's numbers are in decline, the economy is still sputtering (where's that recovery we've been talking about for 3 years?), and the situation in Iraq is a ridiculous mess. In this summer before the election, I feel change in the air, much like I did in 1992.
However, as we all know, we're in a different world now, one where the media is decidedly working against one party, where an election can be altered by a state run by a candidate's brother and an ideologically sympathetic Supreme Court, where a U.S. Presidential administration shamelessly uses everything imaginable to help itself politically and no one says a word about it, where an unjust war can be fought with the manipulated support of the American people, where there are no consequences for killing and wounding thousands when said war is revealed to be started on false information, where there are no consequences for the worst intelligence failure ever that resulted in 3,000 deaths, where a President doesn't have to answer for his past but is free to call into question anyone else's and lead the media to do the same, where American citizens can be detained without question or reason, where the government can keep records on our book purchases, where the CEO of a voting machine company can promise he's going to deliver a state to the President while people throughout the land have to fight to make sure there's even the measliest sort of accountability for electronic voting, where no-bid contracts for rebuilding the devastated country of the unjust war can be awarded to a company formerly headed by the VP that was already in legal trouble and then find out that millions of that money is unaccounted for and no one says anything, where this same VP can tell a senator of the opposing party to "go fuck yourself" and then go on television and seriously say, with no hint of an apology, that he just said what needed to be said and no one questions this, where one party can actually try to legislate discrimination into the Constitution and have a vote on it on the House floor, where one party can rekindle an old cultural war because two idiot entertainers exposed one's breast on a Super Bowl halftime show and actually have networks and media conglomerates play along, where an action movie star can be governor of the country's largest state after the other party staged a coup and removed the elected governor whose party then proceeds to do nothing to retaliate, where the sitting President's administration can actually talk about plans to postpone an election he looks destined to lose, citing unnamed terrorist threats, and then boast about how much safer the nation is under their leadership...
I could go on and on. The skinny is this: Bush is finished, Kerry is the man, change looks to happen, but, in this fucked up state of things, that doesn't mean it will. Bush will do anything to keep power. Mix together the vast resources of the right wing and their dominance of all 3 branches of government; a complacent, thickheaded yet easily frightened electorate; the electronic voting machines; Jeb Bush's Florida; the threat of an election terrorist attack because the administration says it's so; the Bush administration's already demonstrated willingness to use fascist measures, and you see that, if they say 2+2=5, then it's so and we're fucked.
Have you ever seen a time when suspension of the Constitution, the refusal to transfer power, the willingness to hurt one's own people to help one's political cause are conceivable realities?
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